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CANDID CHRONICLES

CANDID
CHRONICLES

Leaves from the Note Book of a
Canadian Journalist

BY

HECTOR CHARLESWORTH

TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF
CANADA LIMITED, AT ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE
1925

Copyright, Canada, 1925
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED

First printing, November, 1925.
Second printing, December, 1925.

PRINTED IN CANADA

T. H. BEST PRINTING CO., LIMITED
TORONTO, ONT.

To
KATHERINE (RYAN) CHARLESWORTH
the dear companion of more than half my
earthly voyage, in which joy has
far outmeasured sorrow,
I dedicate
this Book.

FOREWORD

I suppose it may be taken for granted that if a man elects to write memoirs he should begin before he is so old that he has forgotten how to tell the truth: while his impressions of the persons he has encountered and the things he has experienced are still vivid. Therefore it is not as a "slippered pantaloon", ripe for epitaphs, that I present these chronicles.

The problem which confronts a writer who essays such a task, before he is well into his first chapter, is how far he shall go in intimacy; how copious in presenting credentials. As an ardent reader of memoirs, I have taken most pleasure in those volumes which are, within reasonable limits, intimate; and which partake of the nature of vivacious conversation. I may then plead for this book that, like the young lady in a once popular ditty who averred "I'm not so homely as I look", it is not so planless as it seems.

It is perhaps advisable that I should reveal the motive of the early chapters, which deal with the more remote past; and which to some may seem unduly personal. In them I have tried to make the past, as seen through the eyes of relatives and connections long since in their graves, live again: to evoke a suggestion of the cross-currents, great and small, which influenced Canada's social and economic development. In other words I have sought, in my own infirm way, to do what Arnold Bennett did for a corner of industrial England in the early chapters of "Clayhanger"; and what in a much more elaborate way the German[Pg viii] novelist, Thomas Mann, did for one of the Hanseatic cities in "Buddenbrooks"; the difference being that the men and women of whom I write had real identities. My early chapters will perhaps serve as a reminder that not all who helped to bring into being the Canada of to-day were, in the narrower conception of the term, "pioneers", dependent alone on axe and rifle. Not all native sons of a hundred years ago were "cradled in a sap-trough". The rank and file of the uncelebrated makers of Canada, as of every young country, were men of many callings, many aptitudes, and varied ambitions, as my early chapters show.

I make no apology for the circumstance that the pivot around which these chronicles centre is, in the main, the inland city of Toronto. Electricity, radio, and various modern channels of communication have robbed the epithet "provincial" of its former significance. Outside the realm of commerce and industry, the interests of cities, great and small, reveal a surprising uniformity. Toronto, however, has a claim to distinction, in that it is the most cohesively British city to be found outside Great Britain itself. Men of British name and lineage still dominate its affairs to an extent unequalled in any other town of large dimensions in North America. But the feature of its history of which its people have most reason to be proud (whether they are aware of it or not), is that their city has from its inception been in some measure an intellectual centre. Almost the first thing decided by the little group of British colonists and New England loyalists who were its founders was that it should have an university. Amid a network of streams, in an oasis on the edge of an almost unscarred forest, this destiny was planned, and in the face of an unforeseen[Pg ix] commercial development the faith has been kept by their descendants.

This volume, I trust, will not be my last of its kind. Except in rare instances, and then mainly for the purposes of allusion and parallel, the incidents related do not occur later than 1905. In the chapters on actors, a period has been set at 1900.

In writing this book I discovered a fact I did not realize at the outset; namely, that the accumulations of a fairly tenacious memory run far beyond the limits of a single volume; and I lay down my pen with many tales untold.

CANDID CHRONICLES

CHAPTER I

THE CANADA THAT WAS: MAINLY PERSONAL

The problem of Canadianizing the citizenship of this country is one on which some of my friends like to speculate, but it is a subject with which I have never been personally concerned. In my case the process of Canadianization began many decades before I was born. So far as anyone of British blood may claim to be a died-in-the-weave Canadian, that am I; and it is not without pride that I speak of forebears who played their part not only in the beginnings of British settlement in Lower and Upper Canada but in the West itself—for one of my grandfathers was born on the site of what is now Winnipeg before the Battle of Waterloo was fought. The last of my progenitors to cross the Atlantic for the purpose of making a home in the new world came nearly a century ago, and others of them were in Canada long before.

Thus, with the exception of certain memories of a girlhood in Yorkshire, which one of my grandmothers used to relate, all the family lore and traditions which a listening child picks up and unconsciously remembers were, in my case, Canadian. Though from babyhood I have myself lived in or about cities, these traditions reflected a life quite different from that which I have known—a life of struggling scattered communities too busy in the task of creating a new civilization in imitation[Pg 2] of that which had been left behind, to be quite conscious of themselves. I realize now that as a boy I missed priceless opportunities to collect material for a book on the earlier life of Canada. The truth of the matter is that until within the present century, Canadians as a people were all too indifferent toward the records of their social and political history. Like their French predecessors, the Britishers who came to Canada during the first seven or eight decades after the British conquest in 1759 were by nature adventurous, else they would not have come at all. Like all persons of adventurous temperament they were thinking of the present and future rather than of the past. Thus experiences which viewed from the standpoint of the present generation seem romantic and even harrowing were to them affairs of no exceptional moment—part of the routine. Since the dawn of the present century we have all suddenly awakened to the importance of historical records and pioneer lore; and systematic service has been rendered by men like my friend, Prof. George M. Wrong, and many others in collecting the records and presenting the epic of Canadian development. How recent this movement is may be realized by the fact that Lord Minto, when he returned to Canada as Governor-General in 1898, was astonished to find that steps had never been taken to preserve the official records of Canadian historical events, and that it was by his insistence, rather than that of any Canadian statesman, that the Dominion Archives department was established. The Canadian Battlefields Commission is of even more recent origin. Public indifference to records was merely symptomatic of the sentiment of Canadians as a whole toward their own traditions and history during the period of my[Pg 3] boyhood. They were too busy getting on, and watching for the next turn of events, to bother about them.

Now that a new spirit of enquiry has come over the land it is too late for some of us to uncover the wealth of material that once was open to us in the form of family recollections, and which, in the cant of my trade, would have made "good copy". Yet intelligent children listening to the talk of elderly relatives do unconsciously store away in odd corners of the brain a good deal of lore. Personally I am Saxon and Celt in almost equal proportions, and physically almost always identified by Highland Scotsmen when I come into their company as one of themselves—this despite the fact that I bear the pure Saxon-Yorkshire name of Charlesworth. They even treat me as an equal—which, as every Scotsman knows, is a concession. Since it was the Celtic or maternal side of my ancestry that played the more adventurous part in the early settlement of English-speaking Canada, it is on that which I shall first touch. My great grandfather was a Sutherlandshire Highlander of the name of McEachern, which means in the Gaelic, McHector. The McEacherns in the old warlike days were a sept of the great clan of the Macdonalds of Glencoe. He himself had been a soldier and very probably his forebears were Jacobites. In 1811 he journeyed to Fort Garry via the Hudson's Bay route on some mission in connection with Lord Selkirk's ill-fated plan of founding the Red River Colony in what is now Manitoba. His wife was, I believe, a MacVicar and he had connections who were Hudson's Bay Company officers.

At Fort Garry, shortly after his arrival, his wife bore him a son, who was John McEachern, my maternal grandfather, one of the very first white babies to be[Pg 4] born west of Lake Superior. In other volumes, those interested in the history of the Red River Settlement may learn of the sad adventures of Lord Selkirk's party; how they became involved in the fur trading war between the Hudson's Bay Company and the younger Northwest Company—a commercial conflict that involved bloodshed. This must have been a harrowing experience for a woman like my great-grandmother, who had a young baby. Now that the Hudson's Bay route is so much discussed in the West it is interesting to be able to boast of ancestors whose advent to Canada was by that route. Life in the vicinity of Fort Garry in 1812 was too exciting even for a Highland Scotsman like my great-grandfather, and shortly with his young wife and baby he made his way East to Montreal. How I should like to have had the privilege of listening to the personal narrative of the brave woman who with a nursing baby travelled by canoe over the waterways of Northern Ontario, the route by which the furs of the West were brought to the market centre on Beaver Hall Hill, Montreal.

Though my great-grandparents came to the East under these picturesque circumstances, they left behind them relatives, especially the MacVicar connection, who appear in all the lore attaching to the early settlement not only of the Red River region, but of Fort William and Port Arthur. Coming East to escape the perils and hardships of the West, my great-grandparents were but falling from the frying pan into the fire (though the chances for a young mother were better), for the war of 1812 had commenced, and the whole Canadian border was menaced. There was work for a soldier to do, and I learned quite recently from W. D. Lighthall, LL.D., of Westmount, Quebec, who[Pg 5] through the McEachern connection is my cousin in several removes, that my great-grandfather fought under Colonel de Salaberry at Chateauguay as the comrade of French Canadians. The Bonne Entente, of which so much has been said of late, was thus early established among my own people. Liking and respect for the original white race of Canada's history was taught me in earliest childhood.

All Canadian historians unite in emphasizing the significance of the Battle of Chateauguay, not only because it was as important in repelling invasion in Lower Canada as was the engagement of Queenston Heights in Upper Canada, but because it furnished decisive proof of the loyalty of French Canadians to British institutions, and of their valour in defending that allegiance. I am proud to say that it was mainly due to the efforts of a great-uncle of mine, the late Lieut.-Col. Archibald McEachern, C.M.G., that the significance of the battle was commemorated in the erection of the Chateauguay Monument, forty years ago. The latter was a younger brother of my grandfather, born at Lachine in 1819, where my great-grandparents had settled. Subsequently they moved to Ormston, in the united counties of Beauharnois and Huntingdon, and I have many distant cousins scattered through that populous district.

John McEachern, my grandfather, never returned to the West where he was born. In the early days of steam navigation on the St. Lawrence he became a mariner, and two or three years ago I was gratified to learn from an article on early navigation published in the Huntingdon Gleaner that his name was still remembered in the district south of Montreal. He is credited with having invented certain devices for[Pg 6] navigating the Lachine rapids in the days before steam vessels on inland waters had become as powerful as they are to-day, and was associated in business with his connections, the DeWitts, who figure prominently in the early history of Montreal navigation. It would surprise many young people of to-day to know the relatively great part which inland navigation played in the economic life of Canada eighty years ago, compared with that of to-day, when railways run everywhere and the science of bridge building has produced the engineering marvels to link them up.

While endeavouring to avoid the tedium of such an author as Moses, credited, perhaps unfairly, with the "begat" chapters of the Old Testament, I cannot refrain from saying something of my maternal grandmother, Charlotte Burrell, whose connection with Canada antedated that of her husband, the young mariner, John McEachern. She was a daughter of George Burrell, a Dublin Irishman, who through the influence of a cousin, Sir Peter Burrell, for a short period in the later Georgian era, Lord Chancellor, had obtained an appointment in the British administration of Lower Canada. My sister possesses an heirloom with the initials "G. & J. B." deeply engraved thereon, which stands for George and Jennifer Burrell. The surname of this Jennifer, who was my great-grandmother, I have forgotten if I was ever told it, but I do recall that she was a native of the Province of Quebec, and the name indicates Cornish origin. It is Cornish for Guinevere and has rather a lively significance—for the carryings on of Queen Guinevere with Sir Lancelot are not forgotten among the Cornish peasantry, and the noun "jennifer" is sometimes used as a synonym for hussy. I have never met the word[Pg 7] elsewhere than in the Cornish heroine of George Bernard Shaw's drama, The Doctor's Dilemma. The story of Jennifer Burrell illustrates one of the early social customs of Eastern Canada, which, according to Louisa M. Alcott, was also common to northern New England—namely, early marriage—child-marriage almost. Critics are given to questioning the text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet where the age of the girl for whom her parents are arranging marriage is given as fourteen. But in Lower Canada and New England (circa 1800), fourteen was looked upon as the marriageable age of a girl, at which time she began to prepare her linen and other details of the wedding equipment. George Burrell was not Jennifer's first husband; she had been married at fourteen and at sixteen was widowed, with a child.

Of her four daughters, who bore the stately old-fashioned names of Eleanor, Amelia, Harriet and Charlotte, the latter, my grandmother, was the youngest. They were brought up in the Anglican faith of their father, George Burrell, but since they were educated in a French convent at Quebec they had a very kindly feeling for Roman Catholics, and were social favourites among the educated French-Canadian youths of the day. My great-aunt, Harriet, a tall and stately woman, used to boast that they attributed to her a quality which the French term "je ne sais quoi". In later life Aunt Harriet and my grandmother both became ardent Methodists, but I never heard them speak in other but kindly words of the Catholic associations in which they were reared. Once when I was a little boy I heard my grandmother, though in ordinary intercourse almost inhumanly gentle, sharply rebuke a fellow Methodist for speaking slightingly of[Pg 8] the Mother of Our Lord. She lived long enough to attain second childhood; and, then, to the dismay of her daughters, to whom she had neglected to teach French, would converse only in that language, which she had used constantly as a little girl. Facility in two languages is a great convenience for domestic purposes. My mother often told of how aggravating it was when her elders, becoming conscious of "little pitchers", would turn suddenly to French and carry on long animated conversations on subjects they did not wish the children to understand.

My grandmother, after her marriage to John McEachern, lived at Chateauguay Basin, and vividly remembered the episodes of the rebellion led by Louis Papineau in 1837. The rising in Upper Canada under William Lyon Mackenzie was rather a joke in its way. I once asked the late Thomas Anderson, of Eglinton, who had taken up arms with Mackenzie, was imprisoned and made a sensational escape, what the rebellion in Upper Canada was all about. His retort was, "Just some of the boys raising hell, I guess". But in Lower Canada it was much more than a joke. My grandmother, though the daughter of a British official, was indignant at the reprisals which followed Papineau's rising. She told me of fine young Frenchmen, whom she regarded as merely thoughtless and impulsive, being taken from their homes and shot. And I suspect that her husband with his Jacobite ancestry was not sympathetic toward the severely punitive measures adopted.

It was at Chateauguay Basin that my mother, also named Charlotte, was born, but when she was a little girl her father, who had given up navigation, removed to Hamilton, Ont., where, with her elder brothers and[Pg 9] sisters, she was reared, and where I myself was born. Ties with the old Huntingdon district, however, were not broken; as a young girl she made long visits there in the home of her uncle, Col. Archibald McEachern, who in 1860 was appointed Collector of Inland Revenue. This uncle, who was no stern pietist like my grandfather, lived the life of a laird among the Scottish folk, at that time numerous in Huntingdon and Beauharnois. In the Highland Scottish people there exists an abnormal psychic faculty attested by many legends. Col. McEachern was credited with peculiar psychic powers, and my mother, who had no hereditary belief in the occult and was skeptical by nature, has told me of occasions on which she knew him to summon persons to his presence by mere mental effort. He would simply will that some fellow-townsman should come and see him and he would come. He commanded the Huntingdon Borderers, and when in 1870 the Fenians projected an invasion on the Quebec border, to redeem the fiasco at Fort Erie in 1866, he disposed his troops so well that the invaders were afraid to cross the Trout River. For this timely service he received the honour of "C.M.G." and it used to be a joke with my mother that Uncle Archie had been honoured by Queen Victoria for having never fired a shot. After all the best military tactics in such a case was to scare away the enemy without injury to anyone. Unlike my grandfather, "old Uncle Archie", as we used to call him to distinguish him from a younger uncle of the same name, lived to a ripe old age. He passed away in 1898 in his 79th year. One of the activities of his old age was the organization of the Chateauguay Literary and Historical Society to perpetuate the memory of those who won the[Pg 10] victory of Chateauguay. This organization succeeded in raising funds for the Chateauguay Monument, and at its unveiling in October, 1885, he presided.

The military enthusiasm which is inherent in many men of Highland Scottish blood persisted in my mother's elder brother, my uncle John McEachern. From him and from many others who have passed away I learned of the disturbing effect of the American Civil War on Canadian youth. It was very difficult to keep lads of adventurous spirit at home. They knew little of what the war was about, but the influence of American war songs which became popular throughout Canada, and the accounts of battles in an uncensored press, inflamed the spirit of adventure that lurks in all healthy youths. A great deal of censorious rubbish has been written about Canada's attitude toward the anti-slavery struggle. The fact is that the Washington Government at the outset did everything that it conceivably could to alienate Canadian sympathy from the Northern cause. Lincoln's chief adviser, Ex-Governor Seward, of New York, had promulgated a plan to avert civil war by uniting the whole American nation in a war for the annexation of Canada and Mexico. This policy was favoured by many Republican politicians. It was the old Russian plan of promoting wars abroad to avert troubles at home, and with Canada situated as she was in 1860-5 warm sympathies with the North could hardly be expected. Sir John A. Macdonald was indeed so alarmed at this covert menace to Canadian security that he sent Sir Alexander Galt to Washington to ask Lincoln a direct question as to whether he intended to make war on Canada. The President gave his word in the negative and kept it. But there were others around Lincoln who[Pg 11] were not so magnanimously disposed. On the other hand the South made every effort to cultivate British and Canadian good-will. Under the circumstances then the attitude of the Canadian people during the Civil war, so frequently censured by historians, was only human. And the fact remains that something like one hundred thousand Canadians, chiefly mere boys, served in the armies of the North. A few of the more adventurous made their way to the South and fought for the Confederacy. When in the latter stages of the war Washington offered a bounty of $1,000 in gold to any Canadian who would enlist, it was impossible to hold them. Of course some of them were "bounty jumpers" who took the $1,000 and deserted at the first opportunity, but the sentiment of the Canadian community was against this dirty form of trickery, and most of those who enlisted went through with it in a spirit of true adventure. My uncle, John McEachern, was one of them. He ran away to Buffalo and enlisted under the name of John McNair. He was only seventeen, but in the armies of Grant he found many companions of his own age. He fought so bravely that he had the distinction of being selected as one of the sixteen privates to attend General Grant as a guard of honour at the signing of the Peace of Appomattox.

The particular act of bravery which earned him the honour of being present at this great historical event illustrates the folly of certain military customs dating from the middle ages which still persisted in the sixties. The Northern troops went into battle with their colours borne in advance surrounded by a guard of seven—a sure target for enemy marksmen. In one of the final engagements of Grant's campaign the colour guard were all shot down, and a call for[Pg 12] volunteers was made. The Canadian lad, "alias John McNair", was the first to volunteer, and this action led to his selection as one of Grant's escort. Uncle John came through bloody battles unwounded, but the hardships he endured left him a lifelong victim of asthma. He went to Golden, Colorado, in the late sixties and enjoyed many adventures in the pioneer days there. Naturally on his rare visits home he was a hero to his nephew, for he had much to tell not only of soldiering but of adventure in the West—all touched with drollery. The $1,000 bounty money, which he carried in his belt, was stolen from him. He never could prove who took it, but he had his suspicions because one of his comrades thereafter performed every menial service for him, acted as his batman, so to speak, though he was but a private. And he always thought this chap was trying to atone for the theft. He said that the only time the horror of war really "got him" was one night when a group of privates were sitting round a campfire. The idea was abroad in the army that the South was crumpling up and that the war would soon be over. One of the soldiers commenced to talk of the girl whom he was going home to marry, and chanted her praises. As he talked a chance bullet from an enemy sniper caught him through the mouth and he fell over dead. His companions laid their heads on the ground and wept. The tales of Uncle John, that I recall, show that in one respect at least the boys who fought in the Great War of our time were better off than those who fought in the Civil War. That was in the matter of commissariat. Often in the lean and desolate tracts of the South, food supplies would fail and the soldiers went hungry. Once starvation had lasted for three days when the company discovered an[Pg 13] old lean cow in a swamp. She was speedily slain and apportioned, and most of the soldiers were so hungry that they ate their rations raw.

In the light of mature consideration I cannot but think that the more useful hero was my uncle Hector McEachern, who, while the other brother John was soldiering abroad, stayed at home and worked manfully to help support his younger brothers and sisters. He was on the staff of the old Great Western Railway, which prior to its purchase by the Grand Trunk had its headquarters at Hamilton; and his bosom chum and companion was Samuel R. Callaway. The latter was deeply attached to my mother, and Uncle Hector hoped that they would marry. If they had I would not be writing a book of Canadian reminiscences, for Samuel Callaway went to the United States, found favour with the Vanderbilt interests, and became President of the New York Central Railroad in succession to Chauncey Depew. While still a young man my Uncle Hector succumbed to tuberculosis, a few weeks previous to my mother's marriage to my father in 1871. He was my mother's idol, and I, who was born a year after his death, not only bear his name, but in early manhood resembled him so closely, that some old Hamiltonians regarded me almost as a reincarnation of him.

CHAPTER II

THE SIXTIES AND AFTER

In The Man of Property, John Galsworthy, drawing a picture of the massive Swithin Forsyte, speaks of "the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestry"; and such was the condition of my grandfather Solomon Charlesworth, who came to Port Hope in the year 1830 when it was still known as Smith's Creek (or Crick, to give it the neighbourhood pronunciation). Like himself his ancestors had been yeoman farmers in the vicinity of Hatfield, Yorkshire, since Saxon times; and my grandfather had through family tradition imbibed a great deal of sound knowledge that is now taught as agricultural science. Hatfield is a name which conveys little of historic or geographical significance to anyone, but it is one of the few places that are named in the most ancient maps of England; and the suffix "field" signifies that at some time an important battle, probably between Danes and Saxons, was fought there. I ran across a reference to it in a delightful archæological volume, Annals of a Yorkshire Parish, in which it was named as one of the villages conferred by a Plantagenet King on the Earls of Warren for loyal services. Charlesworth, a purely Saxon name, is rare enough in Canada now, and was extremely so when I was a boy; but there were plenty of people of that name in the vicinity of Hatfield a century ago.

Solomon, my grandfather, was the eldest of eleven sons, four of whom came to Upper Canada and took up large allotments of land in various parts of the colony. As I look back it is plain that among them, with the seven brothers who stayed at home, there must have been a considerable accumulation of capital; for the four who journeyed across the Atlantic built substantial homes, and had ample means to clear and stock their farms. In looking over the history of settlement in Ontario it is plain that during the period between 1825 and 1850 this country enjoyed the finest accretion in the form of British immigration, backed by capital sufficient to carry on systematic development, that has ever fallen to its lot. If one traces the family history of many of the public men of the last generation, one finds that their forbears were men of this class. The movement which brought so many solid men to Upper Canada was not haphazard. The vision of Canada as the granary of the Empire is much older than many people of the present century imagine, and was conceived long before the wheat-producing possibilities of the great North West were known. It was a direct result of the difficulties England had experienced in obtaining adequate food supplies during the Napoleonic wars, and the increase of population which ensued after Waterloo emphasized the problem. More than one hundred years ago the statesman and economist William Huskisson, who became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1827, pointed out that the Empire could be made self-supporting in the matter of corn supplies through the development of the agricultural possibilities of Canada. It was preached as a patriotic duty to the squirearchy and yeomanry of the British Isles, and it was, I assume, this sane Imperialistic[Pg 16] movement, as well as the fact that it was necessary for some members of a family embracing eleven brothers to scatter, that brought my grandfather to Canada. He was born in 1804, and died in 1878, when I was but six years old. I remember him as a vigorous bearded man with piercing eyes, and a very tender heart; for tears would come into his eyes at any casual hurt to myself or my younger brother and sister. I learned afterward that he was a man of very impassioned temperament. Upon one occasion, in a rage, he had accidentally killed his favourite horse. He was obliged at all times to keep himself under very stern control. He brought with him from Yorkshire many of the stern ideas of old-fashioned British parenthood; thus, my father as a little lad was obliged to stand up at meals in order to keep his back straight, like the unfortunate youngsters in that lugubrious juvenile classic, The Fairchild Family! Though none of his people had been Quakers, but on the contrary staunch Church of England folk, he used "thee" and "thou" in intimate intercourse in the Continental fashion, which I take to have been a survival of ancient Saxon and Danish usages in lonely Yorkshire parishes.

My father used to read Tennyson's North Country Farmer with constant delight because the character who reveals himself therein reminded him so much of his sire; not that my grandfather used the difficult dialect in which Tennyson wrote the poem, but that those views on life were so characteristic of him—scorn for neighbours "who never mended a fence", and the like. Though nominally a devout Christian he was a pagan in his inherent belief in what I may term the "personality" of his land. To the end of his days he[Pg 17] despised, more than anything else on earth, a "bad farmer", whose fields and fences were shabby and whose stock was poor and ill-fed. He was a strong believer in the land's need of rest, just as a human being needs a rest, and always at least one of his large fields was in "summer fallow", plowed and tended and freed of weeds, but left idle to drink in refreshment from the sun and rain. Another of his theories was that it was a crime to sell straw. All straw must go back to the land in the form of fertilizer; it was "owed" to the land as he put it; and if he had lived to their time he would have deeply scorned the "wheat miners" of the prairies, whose aim it is to get all that can be gotten out of the land as quickly as possible and give nothing back.

The first house he built lay east of Port Hope, Ontario, on the old "base line" which ran between that town and Cobourg, and it commanded a view of the harbour and its lighthouse. It was there that my father, Horatio George Charlesworth, was born in 1847. My grandfather's knowledge of soils taught him that a little north of Port Hope there was clay suitable for brick, and in addition to farming he established an industry which provided the materials out of which many of the older houses and stores in that quaint and charming town were built, though the earliest are of limestone. Subsequently, about 1855, he acquired five hundred acres of bush land about five miles north of the town on either side of the gravel road which runs from Port Hope to Millbrook and Peterborough. Clearing bush land on which there is a large accumulation of dead leaves is like buying a pig in a poke. A considerable part of his location turned out to be gravel, and would be of immense value were it located[Pg 18] near a big city to-day, but was useless except for road-making in his time; but he bethought himself to make this tract profitable by importing Leicester sheep, which thrive on gravel land. Broken patches too stony for tillage he stocked with Durham cattle. In primordial times the glaciers had been all too prodigal in dumping boulders about, and many of the fields were fenced with stone walls, laboriously put together in those days when labour was cheap, and when a large farm was a small community.

If one stands on Ward's Hill, Port Hope, on the old roadway that used to run back of Trinity College School, one may see straight away to the north, across four miles of beautiful rolling country, the gables of the farmstead my grandfather completed in 1859, set down among ten acres of apple orchard. In blossoming time, when the apple trees, the giant lilac bushes, and the locust or acacia trees were in bloom, the sight and scents were thrilling in their loveliness. I have memories of summer nights when the singing in the chapel of Trinity College School could be heard across four miles of valley, and when as the moon rose the whippoorwill would respond with plaintive cries.

A beautiful farmstead indeed, but, after labour-saving machinery did away with the need of much farm labour, desperately lonely for the women folk. I had an aunt, my father's sister, who made the garden a dreamland of flowers, but who literally died of loneliness in the home she loved too much to leave; for the old house lay half a mile away from the main-travelled road; and the nearest highway, an old line road dividing the township of Hope in Durham county from the township of Hamilton in Northumberland county, though visible, was seldom used.

My grandmother, born Mary Pullen, was also a Hatfield girl, and one of several sisters. She had become affianced to my grandfather before he left Yorkshire, and in 1832, when his house on the "base line" was ready for her reception, she came out with her stock of linens and married him. Some of her sisters followed and married in this country; and one became the mother of my second cousin, the late James Elliott, of Montreal, for many years General Manager of the Molson's Bank of Canada. My grandmother was a tall active woman who loved life. She also loved her dairy, but beyond that indulged in few of the strenuous labours of the pioneer farmer's wife. Her sharp tongue always reminded me of that of Mrs. Poyser in George Eliot's novel Adam Bede, but she was fairly well educated for a woman of her period, when feminine education was regarded as a superfluity. She was a staunch Tory, and every day read the Mail after it was established in 1872 (the year of my birth), from the first column to the last. My parents used to laugh when they went to see her because she would allude to many events in Toronto which had escaped their casual perusal. She was a confirmed reader of newspapers and periodicals and her attic was full of old copies of Godey's The Lady's Book, Harper's Weekly, and the Rural New Yorker. It was a delightful place in which to while away a rainy day. There as a little boy, I learned all about the iniquities of the "Tweed Ring" in New York through the cartoons of Thomas Nast.

Her love of reading and of news she no doubt owed to a favourite grandfather of hers, a certain William Moat, a noted schoolmaster, whose house still stands in Hatfield and was visited by a relative of mine[Pg 20] since the war. From his name I take it that he was not a Yorkshire man originally, but a Caithness man,—and the Caithness men are not really Scotsmen at all, but are of Scandinavian origin. At any rate he was a "character", a joyous person who had his special chair in every public house in the district. He would come home singing, and give his little grand-daughter a penny for pulling off his boots; and sometimes he would take her to Doncaster Fair, then as now a great event in Yorkshire. The most interesting fact my grandmother told me of her childhood days was how the news of the triumph of Wellington over Napoleon at Waterloo reached Hatfield. Readers of The Dynasts, and other works by Thomas Hardy, will recall allusions to the measures adopted to rouse England in case of the landing of the dreaded "Boney" and his troops—a catastrophe long feared. Faggots were piled on every hill top, to be lighted in case of a landing, so that within an hour after a landing the news to rise and arm would be conveyed from south to north, from east to west. When Napoleon was conquered there was no further use for these, and on the night when news of Wellington's victory reached Yorkshire the faggots on the hill-tops were lighted for purposes of rejoicing, not alarm. My grandmother well remembered the dancing and drinking and rejoicing and the beacons of victory flaming on every hill top.

My father got his classical name, Horatio, from an uncle, a favourite brother of my grandmother, who settled in Elmira, in western New York, and became a noted free-thinker and speaker in the days when Robert Ingersoll, whom he knew very well, was carrying on his campaign against orthodoxy. I saw Horatio[Pg 21] Pullen once, a charming man of distinguished bearing and a great flow of conversation; but I think he was regarded rather as a family skeleton because heterodoxy was much more seriously regarded forty years ago than it is to-day. Yet his name had no baneful influence on the nephew who bore it, for he remained a staunch churchman who to the end of his days, recited the Athanasian creed with the more fervour, because I, his elder son, was inclined to laugh at its obscurantism from the time I began to think for myself.

The higher education in Port Hope, as in most Upper Canadian towns in my father's youth, largely consisted in reading at a Latin school. This was conducted by one John Gordon. Boys were taught first to cipher accurately, to speak grammatically, and to write clearly; but Latin was the main thing. My father by the age of sixteen had gone up as far as Sallust, the Roman historian, who no longer figures in curricula. John Gordon used to knock Latin into his pupils in the good old-fashioned way with a liberal use of the rod. At this school my father knew as boyhood friends Col. Harry Ward, who represented Durham in the House of Commons for a long period, and afterwards went on the bench; Seth Smith, a noted lawyer and descendant of the fur-trader John Smith, who founded the settlement; Charles Seymour, and other noted men of the midland counties. His favourite among all the group was Lt.-Col. Arthur Williams, M.P., member for Durham, and who died in command of the Midland Battalion in the North West Rebellion of 1885. Lt.-Col. Williams's statue, with drawn sword, the best work of the sculptor, Hamilton McCarthy, stands in the old market square of the town.

Of all my father's school chums the most interesting was Volney Vallencourt Ashford, born on an adjoining farm on the "base line". In the excitements of the American Civil War, Volney Ashford, whose name indicates romantic leanings in his mother, ran away to the South and fought in Mosby's guerilla cavalry, which refused to surrender after Lee had signed the peace. Afterward he made his way to the Sandwich Islands, and in later manhood obtained an ascendancy over the late King Kalakua. In the late eighties he was almost dictator of Hawaii as Commander of the Forces, and his younger brother, Clarence W. Ashford, who had studied law, was Attorney General. After King Kalakua's death, Ashford was suspected of trying to take personal possession of the Sandwich Islands, by some scheme like the abortive plan which forms a part of the action of Richard Walton Tully's famous drama The Bird of Paradise. At the behest of the United States Government the two Ashfords were deported to California; and intervention finally resulted in the annexation of the Islands, a step to which the Ashfords were strongly opposed. Volney died in California, but Clarence Ashford in later years was permitted to return to Honolulu. In 1912 my brother, L. C. Charlesworth, of Edmonton, was strolling about the streets of Honolulu when he saw the sign of "Clarence W. Ashford, Attorney-at-Law". He made his way upstairs to a dingy law office and saw an old gentleman sitting at his desk, to whom he gave his name. "From Durham county, Canada?" the lawyer asked. "I am Horatio Charlesworth's son," said my brother, and with that Mr. Ashford gave a shout, "Aloha" (the Hawaiian greeting), that could be heard a block away. It turned out strangely enough that he too had a son[Pg 23] who, having left the Islands, had settled in the Edmonton district.

Despite the fact that Volney Ashford never resided in Canada after he left Port Hope during the American Civil War, he kept up a fairly continuous correspondence with my father. I met him on one of his visits home after an absence of a quarter of a century—a short thick-set man with an immense military moustache, and the bearing of a buccaneer. My father told me that as a boy he would "sooner fight than eat". When he went back to Honolulu he sent me a complete unused set of all the postage stamps that had been issued by the government of the Sandwich Islands up to 1888, to augment my collection. When I was eighteen stamp collecting seemed a childish pursuit to me, and I sold my album for $10. I was told by an expert philatelist the other day that if the set contained a 2-cent blue of a certain issue (which it probably did) I had thrown away riches, for that particular stamp is worth $12,000 at the current catalogue price.

Another treasure sent us in 1889 by Ashford, which would to-day have much value for collectors, was a copy of the Honolulu Gazette, containing the original text of Robert Louis Stevenson's open letter to Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, in defence of Father Damien, the sainted missionary to the leper settlement of Molokai. It is perhaps the finest and most powerful piece of prose that Stevenson ever penned, but Stevenson in 1889 was not the famous figure that he has since become. I do not think that Col. Ashford was interested in the literary eminence of the author, but as a government official he knew the value and sacrificial character of Damien's work among the lepers; and he shared the general contempt which at that time[Pg 24] prevailed in the South Seas for missionaries of the comfort-loving type. I well remember my father reading aloud to the family the ringing and mordant sentences in which Stevenson contrasted the luxury and ease in which Dr. Hyde lived at Honolulu with the conditions under which Father Damien served the lepers. None of us had the slightest conception of the value that copy of the Honolulu Gazette would ultimately possess for Stevenson collectors; but it was preserved for more than ten years. Ultimately, as so many precious souvenirs do, it fell a victim to the custom of spring house-cleaning.

In many respects Volney Vallencourt Ashford was the most interesting man that Durham county ever produced, not excepting the late Sir Sam Hughes—a man whom he in temperament much resembled—and it is regrettable that he failed to write his memoirs before he died.

Among other boys of the old days in Port Hope was a certain venturesome youth who in the days when Blondin, the high wire walker, was an international sensation, set about to emulate him. Those who knew the quaint old town are aware that its business centre lies in a valley between hills through which Smith's Creek, now called the Ganaraska River, meanders.

This lad strung a wire between two buildings on either side of the stream, and in the presence of hundreds of assembled farmers and townsmen repeated Blondin's feat. Subsequently he took an Italian name, Signor Farini, and joined Dan Rice's circus. He later travelled with the circuses of P. T. Barnum and Adam Forepaugh, saved his money, and in old age was a man of substantial means. A year or so after my father's death in 1910, I was in a Toronto hotel, and[Pg 25] a fine-looking, dapper stranger, hearing the clerk address me by name, accosted me and asked me if I were a relative of H. G. Charlesworth. On being told that I was his son, he asked whether I had ever heard him mention Signor Farini, the wire walker, and revealed his identity with that once famous being. His real name was William Hunt. He gave the suggestion of a retired manufacturer rather than of one who had thrilled thousands in many parts of the world by his feats "under the big top".

I have alluded to the unsettling effect of the American Civil War on Canadian youths of the early sixties; but indeed the whole period from 1850 to 1870 was one of many changes and excitements in Upper Canada. In the mid-fifties the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway from Montreal to Sarnia gradually revolutionized transportation, which up to that time had been based on those traditional conveyances, ships and wagons. It brought in its train much land speculation, inflation of values, bank failures, and new avenues for trade. In assisting my friend, Victor Ross, in the preparation of that vast work The History of the Canadian Bank of Commerce which, under Sir Edmund Walker's initiative, became in reality a history of Canadian finance, I had occasion to look into the social and economic changes brought about by the coming of the railways; and the period was assuredly a stimulating one for growing boys. When the long political turmoil in the United States found its climax in civil war, Canada became a natural source of supplies, and farmers and merchants made profits they had never dreamed of as possible. Though in 1866 the markets of the United States were closed to them by the denunciation of the Reciprocity Treaty,[Pg 26] the accumulations of that period of inflation lasted well into the black days of the seventies.

It had been my grandfather's wish that my father should take a University course and enter the medical profession. He had already educated and sent to Oxford the youngest of the seven brothers he had left at home, a youth who entered the Church and married well. By the irony of things the two brothers, separated by an ocean and more than twenty years in time, never set eyes on each other after the parting in 1830. It was a bitter disappointment to my grandfather then, when his own younger son, child of his middle age, refused to enter a profession; but the pressure of the times was all against study for an ambitious lad. The boy elected to go into business; and it is a reflection of the conditions of the time that he first started with an uncle who had become a ship's chandler in Port Hope. To-day to open a ship's chandlery in any lake town would seem like establishing a snake ranch in Ireland; but my father could remember when the old harbour was at times a forest of masts. The carrying trade of the region of the great lakes was long monopolized by sailing vessels; and there were wild times in all lake ports when the sailors were ashore. Along the shore, not only of Lake Ontario but of Lake Erie, are several decayed towns which were important trade centres sixty years ago.

Ultimately (in 1870) my father went to Hamilton, which, as the chief distributing centre for the rich settlements of the Niagara peninsula and what is now Western Ontario, was a great trading point, at which many commercial fortunes were founded. He had entered the firm of John Garrett & Co., long one of the leading shoe-manufacturing concerns of Upper Canada,[Pg 27] or Canada West, as it was still called by older residents, though Ontario had become the official name. Though the railways were increasing in mileage, much of the business was still carried on by salesmen travelling with horse and buggy, and deliveries were made by wagon. The hotels in cross-roads settlements kept stables of horses which the travellers hired, as relays. With horse and buggy my father between 1870 and 1872 "grid-ironed" most of Western Ontario. An expert horseman from childhood, a long distance drive he made in 1871 was celebrated among the travelling brotherhood. He was at Walkerton in Bruce county on a Friday night, and conceived a desire to spend Sunday with my mother, to whom he was then affianced. The nearest railway point at which he could take a train to Hamilton was Guelph, ninety miles away by road. Selecting a fine team of horses, he started at four in the morning from Walkerton, and by judiciously resting his horses during the day and superintending their grooming and feeding, arrived in Guelph in time to catch a train for Hamilton at 8 p.m. It represented in all about ten hours of actual driving. Ninety miles in ten hours with a single team over the roads of fifty odd years ago was good travelling; and he left his beasts in such fine condition that after a Sunday's rest at Guelph he found them in form to resume the road.

My father was indeed a type of whom the old adage held: "Give a Yorkshireman a halter and he will find a horse." When he was a boy his father gave him a horse that seemed to be a "crock". He nursed it back to health and sleekness and in a year or so by clever trading—horse trading was a popular sport among the country lads of those days—he had a team of fast[Pg 28] roadsters with buggy and harness, all developed from the original "crock". He told me many good yarns about the horse-trading fairs of the midland counties in the sixties. Once he drove to a fair (at Millbrook, I think) and traded horses sixteen times in the course of the day. Returning in the darkness he stopped at a toll-gate on the "gravel road". Another youth drove up alongside, and by the light of the toll keeper's lantern his turn-out looked a tidy one. He offered a trade "unsight unseen". The offer was accepted, and the lads changed from one rig to the other. My father was very sleepy, and waking up from a doze was astonished to find his new acquisition standing patiently at the gate leading to his home. When he got to the barn he found that horse and rig were identically the same as those with which he had started out in the morning.

In truth, though he spent over forty of the sixty-three years of his life in business, my father was never happy except when he was farming, making two blades grow where one grew before, and breeding all kinds of fancy stock, Jersey cattle, of which he was one of the pioneer importers, roadster horses, cocker spaniels, rare poultry; and his hobbies left him continually "hard up". His agricultural enthusiasm made his life one of slavery, though no doubt he was happy in his bondage to growing things. In Toronto, as the city grew, he was constantly moving to spots on the outskirts where he could have space for gardening and at one time in his life, when financial reverses forced him to live in a very small home in a thickly populated street, he literally farmed a 20 × 20 back yard and made the roof of the woodshed a bower of bloom. He died happy in the possession of a large garden at[Pg 29] Toronto and a farm at Port Hope stocked with his favourite Jerseys. One day in the late autumn of 1910, he slaved all afternoon planting hundreds of bulbs of the lovely pheasant-eye narcissus; and coming in exhausted said: "I shall not live to see them bloom." He was apparently in normal health, but in February he was taken, the victim of an obscure malignant malady, undoubtedly intensified by a lifetime of overwork—voluntary overwork born of his intoxicating love for growing things. He never neglected business, though he never had much luck therein; but his inborn passion, a heritage of 'unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestry', robbed him of all his leisure and, finally, of his life.

CHAPTER III

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

It is perhaps an ironical circumstance that I, who have for much of my life been identified with the theatre and other fields of art, and have with my pen consistently assailed the restrictive tendencies of evangelical religionists, should have been born in a Methodist parsonage. It came about in this wise. I have spoken of one of my great aunts, Harriet Burrell, who became an ardent Methodist. She married an eminent divine of that persuasion, the Rev. Thomas Campbell, D.D., who in later life was for a few years professor (of Exegetics, I assume) at Victoria College, while it was still at Cobourg. I was very young when he died, but I am told that he devoted a great deal of unrewarded energy to trying to prove that this world was created in six days of twenty-four hours. In other words, he was a scholarly fundamentalist—now an extinct species. There are still many fundamentalists but they are not scholars. His son, the Rev. Thomas Campbell, afterwards left Methodism and became Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church of the United States. My own recollection of the father was that he was a kind little man, who let me play with the fossils he had accumulated to prove his theories of creation. My father and mother had married in 1871, and in September 1872, when I was expected to arrive on this earth, Dr. Campbell was a Methodist minister at Hamilton. My father was preparing to leave[Pg 31] Hamilton and establish a business at Windsor, Ont., so my parents were boarding; and my great aunt Harriet was good enough to offer my mother the ample accommodations of the parsonage for the great event of her young life. So to this day I do not like to hear people speak savagely of Methodists though I must confess that they are often an irritant.

My earliest consciousness of the little boy that was I, is of looking through the gap in a fence at two women with long dark robes and large white head-dresses who were busy among a wilderness of vines cutting great clusters of purple grapes, and chatting in a strange language. One looked up and smiled at me; and after a laughing word to the other, brought me a bunch of grapes, and tried to make me talk. I know now that they were sisters of a French convent near our home in Windsor. The time must have been the autumn of 1875 when I was three years old.

Windsor in the early seventies was by all accounts a lively and picturesque community—not unlike New Orleans in social complexity. It had a considerable negro population of escaped slaves, who had come to Canada by the famous "underground railway" conducted in the fifties by abolitionists. French Canadians, the earliest settlers, were numerous, as they still are; and there was an active and numerous English-speaking commercial class who had made a great deal of money during the Civil War. I recall being terrified of negroes, but delighted with the French boy "Evareece" (Evariste) who was my father's factotum—always merry and a great hand with children. Associated with these early memories is constant sense of moving water. This was, of course, the Detroit River, where my mother used to take her[Pg 32] three babies for an airing on the ferries. I also recall a jolly gentleman with red whiskers, who lived next door and used to look over the fence at me and say, "Bless his little heart and body!" This early acquaintance was destined to have important developments for me; for the rosy gentleman who loved children was Tom Davey, the leading theatrical manager of Detroit, a noted figure in his time and father of a still more noted daughter, Minnie Maddern Fiske (born Davey). Twenty years later, I told Mrs. Fiske, who had become a noted star, of my early memory of her father, and it cemented a friendship that has lasted through three decades. Minnie Maddern, whose mother was an actress, was even then on the stage, and my mother in after years told me of how Tom Davey took her to Detroit to see his little girl, then a child of tender years, play Arthur to the King John of the famous tragedian, John McCullough.

The friendship of Tom Davey was worth possessing, apart from his own charming personality, for my father and mother were at all times welcome in his theatre, where all the renowned actors played. At that time every prominent merchant in Windsor maintained a neatly equipped room for the convenience of shoppers who came over from Detroit and to avoid customs duties disposed their purchases about their persons. My father dealt in fine shoes and had a factory for the manufacture of special orders; and Davey used to bring many an actor and actress across the river to deal with him. This special order business, conducted for the most part on a smuggling basis, was my father's undoing as will presently be disclosed. Among the celebrities whom Davey brought to procure long boots suitable for Shakespearian roles[Pg 33] was Lawrence Barrett, the tragedian; and there were dealings with many lesser lights. Thus the country youth who had never seen a really fine play until he was twenty became, before he was thirty, a devotee and habitué of the playhouse. I picked up incidentally from Davey a knowledge of the technique of acting which he imparted to me when I as a very young man took up dramatic criticism. Another of my friends in Windsor was Col. Arthur Rankin, whose son McKee Rankin was already becoming famous as an actor. Col. Rankin, who had represented Essex in the old Legislature of Canada, was credited with having fought six duels, and once sent a challenge to Sir John Macdonald, which was ignored. He was one of the early advocates of game preservation and a great sportsman, as indeed were all the well-to-do Windsorites, for wild turkey and quail were at that time abundant in the Essex peninsula, especially on the tract that has since been set apart as Rondeau Park.

Though my father arrived in Windsor only at the end of 1872, he threw himself headlong into politics, which were at that time in a fevered condition owing to the famous "Pacific Scandal", which seems a trivial affair enough in the light of immensely greater scandals which have since occurred in Ottawa politics. He was an ardent supporter of Sir John A. Macdonald, the statesman chiefly assailed. In the legislative elections of 1875, he was one of those who succeeded in electing the Conservative John C. Patterson, afterwards Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba, for the riding of North Essex. It was a hotly contested battle, and though the Conservatives triumphed in Essex, the party went down to defeat in the country as a whole, and the five years of the Alexander Mackenzie régime[Pg 34] began. My father's ardour led to his selection as President of the Windsor Conservative Association. He also entered Windsor Council for an electoral district in which many of the voters were ex-slaves. Those were the days of open voting and when the negroes when asked how they wished to vote, "Massa Chollesworth" was the usual answer. But political partizanship is always a hazardous thing for a business man.

I have spoken of the special-order phase of my father's shoe business. He was not a practical shoemaker, but merely a salesman and organizer. He had picked up an expert to run his little factory; and when an order came for a pair of actor's boots lined with peach-colored silk, or to be made of some special kind of leather not obtainable in Windsor, this foreman would cross the river to Detroit and buy the necessary materials. No one ever thought of declaring small purchases of that kind. As time went on this foreman, though a valuable mechanic, took to liquor and became exceedingly truculent. One day in 1876 my father incautiously dismissed him, and the fellow at once reported to the Customs Department that my father had been engaged in smuggling for three years. It was technically true, though the items were mere bagatelles; but my father was a marked man because he was an active Conservative and the Mackenzie régime was rabidly Reform. The Customs Collector was himself one of my father's closest personal friends; and it was with tears in his eyes that he broke the news to him that he had been instructed to seize and confiscate his business. There was no redress, but on the Collector's representations my father was allowed $500 cash for the enterprise in which he had sunk all he had, and the energy of three of the best[Pg 35] years of his life. It is hardly to be wondered at that all his life the word "Grit" was more or less anathema to him; and that later when he was teaching me to ride he would point to some man who looked especially awkward and ill at ease in the saddle and say: "Look at that fellow; anyone could tell from the way he sits that he's a Grit."

Luck came his way, however, for at Toronto an enterprising manufacturer had decided to establish one of the earliest Canadian experiments in chain stores in order to market his product. My father was appointed manager of the new enterprise. It was his duty to select the points at which it was advisable to open new stores or acquire existing business establishments. The chain store system, though it looks very profitable on the surface, has always been extremely hazardous both in Canada and the United States. At all times it requires sufficient capital to provide amply for each individual enterprise, and much depends on the efficiency and honesty of the local manager. It can only be successfully operated under the modern system of a quick cash turnover; whereas fifty years ago all Canadian retail business was conducted on the credit system. The profits in one town were absorbed by the losses in another; and under the credit system cash did not come in quickly enough to meet the expenses of the parent manufacturing plant at Toronto. This was, I think, the invariable experience of men who experimented with the chain store idea prior to the adoption of the cash system. The originator of this project carried on as long as he could, and finally threw up the sponge and fled to Australia. The retail stores were disposed of and the manufacturing plant was carried on by others until, finally in the early[Pg 36] eighties, my father obtained sufficient backing to take it over in his own name.

I remember vividly my first arrival in Toronto one bright autumn day in 1876, when I had just turned four years old. It was in the old, domed train-shed, which still forms part of the Union Station, and I have still the picture of my father, a tall, slender, boyish-looking man of twenty-nine running along the platform to help my mother down with her babies. It was so far as I know the occasion of my first ride in a hack; and the vehicle drew up in front of a little house on the south side of a hot road on which the yellow sand lay deeply rutted. This was on Bloor Street East on the northern fringe of what was then the city of Toronto. It seemed strange to me to be told that while I stayed in my own front yard I was in Toronto, but that if I broke rules and crossed the road I would be in another place, Yorkville, one of the many villages which have gone to make up the modern Toronto.

Not long after we moved across the road into Yorkville to occupy what seemed to my childish eyes then a very large, square, roughcast house, surrounded by shade trees and nearly opposite Church Street. It was subsequently removed when the late Robert Simpson decided to build a home there. Next door was the home of John O. Heward, member of a well-known family. A little further along toward Yonge Street, was the home of Senator McMaster (now Moulton College), and the old Hubertus home. To the east across a delightful lane, where ragged lady and golden rod bloomed, was the residence of Sir Frank Smith, and beyond that the residence of Robert Wilkes, the leading wholesale jeweller of the time, who was almost as prominent in[Pg 37] the counsels of the Reform party as was Sir Frank in those of the Tories.

It was in connection with Mr. Wilkes that I have my first recollections of tragedy. The Wilkes children were many, and were the playmates of the Charlesworth brood. One summer holiday my father had taken my brother and myself to Port Hope to see our grandmother. Returning on the night train we saw several of the Wilkes children come aboard at Whitby Junction. We spoke to them but they seemed dazed and looked as though they had been crying. To our dismay they passed on down the aisle without answering our greeting. As my father was paying the hackman who drove us home to Yorkville, the latter said: "That was pretty sad about Mr. Wilkes down at Sturgeon Point to-day," and then we learned that he had been drowned together with his only son and one of his daughters. It had been a chain of calamities: the boy had gotten beyond his depth; and his sister had rushed to his rescue and found herself helpless; then the father went to their aid, and all three perished. The drowning of Robert Wilkes caused very widespread grief, for he was very eminent, not merely as a business man and a Liberal politician, but as a leader of Methodism; and I still recall the picture of the mute grief-stricken little girls on the train who had been the eye-witnesses of the tragedy.

The corners of Bloor and Yonge Streets are now for the most part of the day the busiest traffic intersection in Toronto and probably in Canada, but in my childhood they were very quaint. The Hon. Frank Smith's little horse-cars used to come up Yonge Street to that point, and there the horses would be changed to the other end for the down trip. In winter the[Pg 38] heating was provided by pea-straw strewn on the floor. Just north of Bloor Street was an old inn with a courtyard, very like the pictures in some of Dickens's novels. It was called the "Red Lion", and it had a swinging sign with a fiery red animal painted thereon, supposed to represent the King of Beasts. Yorkville was indeed a single parish in which nearly all the leading residents knew each other.

On leaving Windsor my father promised my mother to give up active participation in politics, and he kept his word; though he always remained an enthusiastic Tory. My own earliest recollection of a political campaign is of the election of September, 1878, when the N. P. (National Policy) was the issue, and Macdonald defeated Mackenzie. I was confused over the distinction between the letters "N.P." and "M.P." which I heard on all sides. Yorkville was in the Prime Minister's (Mackenzie's) constituency, and politics naturally seethed there. My father came in at dinner time on election day jubilant because Alfred Boultbee, the Conservative candidate had carried Yorkville against Mackenzie, but subsequent returns showed that Mackenzie had defeated him in the rural districts. This was his only consolation, for he had gone down to defeat in the country, and his subsequent treatment by his own party proved one of the shabbiest episodes in Canadian politics. He had been in the habit of saying on the platform that the Tories were by nature deceitful and incurably "wicked", but he soon learned that, however deceitful and wicked, they could outshine opponents in the rare virtue of gratitude. Twenty years later I used frequently to see the former Prime Minister on the streets, and no man ever wore a more mournful countenance.

I never learned why my father and mother, in selecting an Anglican Church to ally themselves with, chose the Church of the Redeemer, then a frame building on the north side of Bloor Street, set in what had been the "Potters Field" or pauper burying ground, instead of St. Paul's, the pretty little stone church which lay just across the street. It may have been that since we resided on the north side of the street we properly belonged to the parish of the Church of the Redeemer as a Yorkville institution; and that St. Paul's lying in Toronto, over the way, had the right to the south side as its territory. But I rather think the explanation lay in the fact that Canon Givens of St. Paul's was aging, whereas the Rev. Septimus Jones of the Church of the Redeemer was an active, vigorous man, with a family of whom everyone was taught from childhood to be a parish worker. At any rate the Rev. Mr. Jones and his family became our very first friends; and James Edmund Jones, K.C., Police Magistrate of Toronto, is my very oldest surviving male acquaintance.

The Rev. Septimus Jones was a man of distinguished personality, whose rare business ability was always strongly manifested in the deliberations of the Synod. He was one of the leaders of the Evangelical or Low Church wing, though his utterances were always moderate. He was a devotee of music, and liked to lock himself in his study and play the violin; and he had been one of the choristers of the Philharmonic Society as re-organized under Dr. Torrington in 1873. When the safety bicycle came he took to its use, and actually rode to Hamilton one day when in his seventieth year. He had a dry, pungent wit, which was never used to hurt anybody's feelings. At Sunday school it used to delight the children when he would tell of having[Pg 40] seen, as a little boy in England seated on the shoulder of his father, the coronation of Queen Victoria; and of the cloaked gentleman with a large arched nose who rode beside the carriage of the young Queen, and seemed in very truth her guardian. This was the great Duke of Wellington.

It was through Mr. Jones's efforts that the stone edifice now known as the Church of the Redeemer at the corner of Bloor Street and Avenue Road was erected; and presently we moved into that vicinity to be near it. More than ever we were in the heart of a parish for almost every second person thereabout attended the church and all were pleasant, agreeable neighbours. Within a very few years, owing to the growth of Toronto and the movement of its people northward, the Church of the Redeemer became the leading evangelical church of the diocese, holding a very close connection with Wycliffe College as a training ground for divinity students. Naturally as a child I heard much of the great battle between High Church and Low Church, then at its height, and saw something of its leading figures.

The environs of the University of Toronto, when we moved to the neighbourhood of Avenue Road in 1880, were very different from now. A large tract now covered by the buildings of Victoria College, Annesley Hall, and the Domestic Science edifice was rented out by the bursar of the University as a cow pasture; for many residents in the vicinity kept their own cows, which was considered the safer course for families with young children, in those days when typhoid fever was rife. As a boy of nine or ten it was my duty to bring our cow home with me on my way from school. When I lost the key of the pasture, I had to go trembling[Pg 41] to the bursar's office to procure a new one. I wonder how the present business staff of the University would take it if their duties included the conduct of a cow pasture. Below the knoll where Victoria College stands was a marshy patch where dragon flies of myriad hues were to be seen on summer days. The Torontonians of to-day are little aware of how much of the city is built on marsh land, once traversed by many small streams. A military map of 1828 shows a veritable network of them, and building contractors laying the foundations of large buildings often discover this disagreeable fact. A stream once ran under what are now the foundations of Massey Hall, though this was long before my time. I distinctly remember as a little boy in the seventies a stagnant pond which submerged the valley in which Hart House stands in its chaste beauty. It was a disgusting place, but was drained before 1880; long after, a stream ran through the valley beside the present site of the Royal Ontario Museum, and dispersed itself I know not where. I am not very old, but the city of to-day except for a few landmarks would be quite unrecognizable to a returning stranger who revisited it after forty years' absence.

The quiet parochial life of Yorkville and the college district was even then shot through with the spirit of growth, and there were prophets seemingly rash who predicted that Toronto would some day be a city of 200,000. But to most people this seemed ridiculous commercial optimism. Whenever I read one of Booth Tarkington's later novels like The Magnificent Ambersons and The Midlander, which have as their underlying motif the growth and mutability of cities, I am reminded of the processes which have taken[Pg 42] place in Toronto within my own experience; and which have extinguished the old professional and academic aristocracy of my boyhood.

To our own household, glimpses of a wilder and less parochial life came to us from a woman still celebrated in the annals of Winnipeg, Fort William, and Port Arthur,—the late Victoria MacVicar. I have spoken of the relatives of my great grandfather left behind in the West when with his wife and baby son he made his way from the Red River Settlement to Montreal. The parents of Victoria MacVicar were among these. She was my grandfather's first cousin, though many years younger. Her elder brother, John MacVicar, is said to have been the first white child born within the Arctic circle, at some Hudson's Bay Company post the name of which I have forgotten. Subsequently the MacVicars settled at Prince Arthur's Landing, now Port Arthur, and owned the land on the waterfront which is now occupied by the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Victoria became the business woman of the family.

On her many visits to Toronto "Vic" MacVicar, as my mother called her, was always welcome to make our home her own; she was a wonderful hand with children. The tales she had to tell of Indians, and of her childhood in Fort Garry and other Western outposts, were fascinating. One of her stories of a narrow escape from the Sioux, then on the warpath, made the chills run down our spines. Mother used to say, "Vic keeps the family tree"; and in one way or another she seemed to be connected with almost everybody in the Canadian West. We heard much from her of her friend Donald Smith, afterwards Lord Strathcona, and of Major Boulton of Boulton's Scouts, whose life she had helped to save in 1870. I think her stories[Pg 43] of a wonderful chain of relationships must have been true. Two or three years ago my friend W. J. Healy, Provincial Librarian of Manitoba, collected the narratives of the older survivors of early days in the West for his book Women of Red River, and several of his informants mention Victoria MacVicar as a relative.

She came into especial prominence in connection with Louis Riel's first rising in 1870. The picture she gave us of Riel was quite different from the villainous conception we all had of him in the East after his second rising in 1885, for which he was tried and hanged. They had been boy and girl together, and at one time Riel was in love with her. She spoke of him as a dreamy, handsome, clever youth, half mad with ambition. I think history bears out this view. Riel seems to have gotten an idea of creating a kingdom of his own in the Canadian West similar to that which Aaron Burr failed to establish in the region of the Southern Mississippi. At any rate, Victoria MacVicar had a great deal of influence over Riel; and when he started his rebellion in 1870 she was sent for to come from Fort William and see what she could do with him. She found that he had imprisoned a large number of white residents of Fort Garry and was threatening them with death as a reprisal for the accidental killing of a crazy follower of his. After several interviews she did finally induce Riel to release all but Thomas Scott, whom to his own misfortune, he ordered to be shot. It was memory of the murder of Scott that closed the door to a reprieve for him in 1885 after his second rising, when Blake, Laurier, and other prominent statesmen of the East were demanding it. Riel was at first adamant in the case of Major[Pg 44] Boulton. She regarded Boulton as doomed, and as a last recourse sent for a woman whose son had been killed. The latter's persuasion, added to her own, won the day.

Victoria MacVicar told us that after the release had been arranged, Riel said, "Victoria, I want you to stay and breakfast with me." Whereat she rushed from the room with the words, "I will never break bread with a rebel." If true it seems to me a tasteless and indiscreet outburst, though characteristically feminine. But Riel was gentleman enough to keep his word, and she honoured him for that. Probably he knew that she was an intense loyalist who from childhood had taken very seriously the fact that she was named after Princess Victoria, while the latter was heiress apparent.

Victoria MacVicar's visits to us were frequent during the whole period of the second Riel affair, which with the trial and subsequent agitation lasted long. It troubled her that this friend of childhood was to be hanged. She was an ardent spiritualist, like so many persons who have lived in the wilds; and related a singular story of psychic occurrences on the occasion in the autumn of 1885 when he was executed at Regina. She was at that time visiting Chicago, and early on the morning of the fatal day visited a medium to learn whether he was really to hang or whether a reprieve had arrived at the last moment. While the interview was in progress, she avowed that the face of the medium, who had gone into a trance as part of the usual ritual, changed horribly. Then she heard a sound like the pulling of a bolt, and the medium said, "Your friend has passed into the beyond." But she did not get a message from Riel, which I assume was[Pg 45] what she sought. My mother warned us children that this was all nonsense, the work of Victoria's too vivid imagination. But it was blood-curdling to hear her relate it with absolute conviction. She was a tall raw-boned Scotswoman with a weather-beaten countenance, roughened by Western winds. But she had grey piercing eyes and a fine voice that made any tale of hers astonishingly graphic.

With all her mysticism she was a wonderfully competent woman of affairs. The mission which brought her so frequently to Toronto was a three-cornered dispute over the expropriation by the C.P.R. of her holdings at Prince Arthur's Landing—a dispute in which the Ontario Ministry of Crown Lands was also involved, in the matter of water-lot rights. Single-handed she battled with officials of both railway and government, and was, if I remember rightly, her own lawyer in most of the negotiations. And she finally got a cash settlement of $90,000. Her end was rather sad. After she obtained this settlement, she commissioned my father to choose for her a matched team of black roadster horses. They were beautiful animals, but too spirited for a woman driver. One day while she was driving on the waterfront of Port Arthur they ran away, and she never fully recovered from the injuries she then sustained—a tragedy for so active and vital a being.

CHAPTER IV

MAINLY ABOUT CLERGYMEN

Certain "progressives" in Canada are busily engaged in an agitation for measures which they imagine will eliminate from the minds of boys a taste for military parade. It is a good deal like the wisdom of those who thought that a taste which has existed in every section of the human race since the beginning of recorded time, and long before that, could be eliminated by statutes like the Volstead Act and the Ontario Temperance Act. In my school days there was no cadet training on the systematic method that prevails to-day, but the boys were very keen about military affairs for all that. And it should be added that if their elder brothers had not been equally keen we should to-day have no Western Canada at all for "progressives" to represent in Parliament. In 1885 the Canadian Northwest was saved for the Dominion in the main by youths from the offices, factories, and universities of Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, despatched to the scene of Riel's activities without any preliminary training to speak of, at the very worst season of the year, for travel in a wild and undeveloped country. I am glad that in John Buchan's Life of Lord Minto, who as Lord Melgund was Chief of Staff under Gen. Middleton in that campaign, due credit is given for what these untrained levies accomplished.

Vividly I recall the thrill and excitement when, on a slushy Saturday morning in March, the call to arms came, and orders were given that the Queen's Own Rifles and the Royal Grenadiers of Toronto must entrain before noon on Monday en route for the Northwest Territories. It was a much more difficult expedition than it would be to-day, for the Canadian Pacific Railway was not yet completed, and there were gaps in the wilds of New Ontario which could only be bridged by marching over frozen lakes. Later the Queen's Own Rifles, mostly clerks out of offices, made the long march to Battleford over the snow and slush of a prairie in spring. In the winter of 1915 when I read of the complaints made by the first Canadian Expeditionary Force about the hardships of wintering on Salisbury Plain, I could not but think of what the lads of 1885 went through with no preliminary training.

My father was one of many merchants and manufacturers called together by the City Council on that exciting Saturday of March, 1885, to help solve the problems of supply and equipment. A primary necessity for the marching in New Ontario which lay before the men, was lumbermen's shoe-packs, a combination of moccasin and top boot, and he as a shoe-man was instructed to get hold of all he could. Through Quebec trade connections he had shipments rushed to Toronto in time for debarkation on Monday and in co-operation with his rivals in the trade located supplies elsewhere. Altogether the despatch of the Toronto regiments in forty-eight hours was a fine achievement in military and civil co-ordination.

To a boy of twelve it was a thrilling sight to see the young soldiers in uniform scattered through the church[Pg 48] on that anxious Sunday. As it turned out they all came back, but no one knew just what they had to face, for there were many rumours of American intervention, and of Fenian battalions in formation at Chicago and other Western cities to go to the assistance of Riel. The superintendent of the Church of the Redeemer Sunday School was Edward Campion Acheson, a young student of Wycliffe College, now the Rt. Rev. Dr. Acheson, Bishop of Connecticut, and at that time a junior chaplain of the Queen's Own Rifles. He was one of the handsomest of men, fair and of pure classical type, with aquiline nose and all. I remember his presiding over the Sunday School devotions in his uniform, and later he wrote letters to be read to the pupils, intimately describing the experiences of his campaign. One description of how the soldiers spent Easter Sunday of 1885, marching over a frozen northern lake near Jackfish, Lake Superior, and singing "Onward Christian Soldiers", has always lingered in my memory. The Bishop of Connecticut retained his military enthusiasm, for he was perhaps the most eminent of chaplains of the U.S. Army in the Great War.

The return of the troops in the early summer of 1885, a burning hot day, was a gala occasion; to each bayonet was attached a bouquet, and the rigours of the campaign were apparent in their uniforms. The red tunics of the Grenadiers had faded to streaky neutral tints, and the dark green of the Queen's Own Rifles were similarly despoiled by rain and sun. The better known officers of the expedition, like Col. (now General Sir William) Otter and Major (afterwards General) James Mason, got their individual ovations, but to most of the throng the centre of attraction was[Pg 49] Capt. Howard of the U.S.A. Army and his Gatling gun. The Gatling, one of the early models of the machine gun, has long since been superseded, but forty years ago its facility in rapid fire was regarded as miraculous, and it was first tried out in active service in the Northwest Rebellion. Howard was sent to the North West to demonstrate its use and was permitted to wear his American uniform. He made a striking picture in blue, riding ahead of his famous arm, the terrors of which had been celebrated by all the newspaper correspondents—and scores of boys and men ran along beside it, enthralled by its brass barrel burnished for the occasion.

The Sunday School of which I have spoken was more or less of an adjunct to Wycliffe College, and not only Mr. Acheson but others of the students served as teachers. They used to invite the boys of Bible class age to tea in the college refectory very frequently, so that while I myself never entered the University of Toronto I have been familiar with its environs and its history for forty years. The old feud between High Church and Low Church has since died down, though the ancient rivalry between Trinity and Wycliffe cropped up at the last election for a Bishop of the Diocese of Toronto. But when I was a youngster the quarrel was almost as much discussed in Anglican circles as Church Union among certain other communions to-day. The very foundation of Wycliffe College, as a centre of evangelical thought, had been opposed by the Bishop of Toronto, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Bethune; certain evangelicals like the Hon. Sam Blake, whose father, William Hume Blake, had been chiefly instrumental in establishing it, brought a great deal of bitterness into the struggle.

In after years when I had become a newspaper reporter I was present at the celebration of an anniversary of the opening of the college, when the Hon. Sam Blake, telling of Wycliffe's history, lost control of his emotions—as he was apt to do in moments of excitement. He told of the many obstacles that had arisen at the outset and how the original founders had met each obstacle with prayer—prayer which had been answered. After retailing several incidents which he regarded as direct answers to prayer, he dealt with what he termed "the final obstacle", the threat of Bishop Bethune that he would refuse to ordain graduates of Wycliffe. "Well," said Mr. Blake, "we had overcome many obstacles with prayer, but this seemed most formidable of all, and so we prayed once more that this cup should pass from us, and prayed fervently, and again it pleased God to answer our prayers—for shortly afterward Bishop Bethune died."

Mere type cannot do justice to the mordant fire of Mr. Blake's tones. His voice was naturally biting and vibrant, and it was clear that in the rapture of triumphant recollection he had become oblivious to the diabolical implication of his words. Among the officials of Wycliffe College were men of very sweet and gentle piety, like Dr. N. W. Hoyles, K.C., and the first Principal, the Rev. Dr. Sheraton, who were appalled at Mr. Blake's speech. And afterwards Dr. Sheraton came to the reporters almost with tears in his eyes and implored them to suppress the allusion to Bishop Bethune. It was a bitter pill to have to cut out the very liveliest part of a rather uninteresting report, but so finely did Dr. Sheraton plead the case of his College, and the irreparable harm that might be done by the widespread publication of what might be[Pg 51] twisted into a charge that the evangelicals had prayed for the death of their bishop, that the reporters did what they have done in thousands of instances,—took the kindly course and struck out the utterance. Most of them knew that, for all his uncontrollable bitterness of tongue, "Sam" Blake, as he was universally known, had a great and kindly heart; much warmer it was believed than that of his eminent brother, the Hon. Edward Blake, who was not emotional and apparently took very little interest in the controversy of the "Highs" and "Lows".

Bishop Bethune's successor, the Rt. Rev. Arthur Sweatman, D.D., was a man of peace. As those familiar with the old controversy of the seventies are aware, he was a "compromise" candidate after the long deadlock in the Synod had become a public scandal. He was a very tall and distinguished man with a mincing accent, born, I think, of some inherent disability of speech, which he had painfully overcome. When I was a very little boy my home was not far from where he lived, and his love for children was known to every youngster in the neighbourhood. He would stop and pat one's head in an absent-minded way, and say something quite inconsequential but very endearing; and it was considered quite an honour to be caressed by the new bishop. Despite the hesitation of his utterance I never heard a speaker who carried with him a finer atmosphere of philosophic dignity, or gave a more complete suggestion of sincerity and refinement. And he could on occasion exercise authority with almost electrical effect. Once, when reporting the Synod, I heard him silence a prominent lay delegate who had indulged in unchristian utterances. The quickness with which he rose in his vestments and lawn sleeves;[Pg 52] and the rapier-like swiftness with which he said, "Sit down sir, you forget yourself," utterly cowed the truculent speaker. He delivered a short address on the occasion when I was confirmed, in which he explained the "grace" or divine effluence that should come with the laying on of hands; it was one of the most beautiful imaginable and really seemed to bring down blessings from the skies.

Though no ecclesiastic ever filled the episcopal office with more essential dignity than Bishop Sweatman, he was no lover of canonical dress for its own sake. He liked to don a blue serge suit and sail with the young boys on Toronto Island where he lived in summer; and his breadth of view rendered him more or less suspect by the more extreme evangelicals of the Anglican Church. Into the Toronto Club, of which he was a member he never carried his office, and though a most temperate man, had no hesitation in ordering a whiskey-and-soda when he thought it would do him good. In 1893, when I was a junior on the staff of the Toronto World, which was carrying on single-handed a fight for Sunday street cars, I went to see him with a request that he sign a petition asking for their introduction. We had already learned from Prof. William Clark of Trinity University, their ardent and scholarly advocate, that the Bishop personally favoured the innovation, but nevertheless I was rather timid in approaching him. He was most genial about it, and did not disguise his hope that our campaign would be victorious. "But," he said, "I speak as Dr. Sweatman, the private citizen, and I must ask you in honour not to publish his views. You come to me as Dr. Sweatman, the Bishop of Toronto, and I have many in my flock, laymen as well as clergy, who do not share[Pg 53] my views, and to whom an expression of them in my official capacity would be an embarrassment. Therefore I must refuse, but good luck to you."

In my youth I came to like Anglican clergymen of all shades of thought; and indeed I am disposed to think that in all churches, the majority of the clergy are fine, self-sacrificing men, much maligned because of the actions of a few truculent bigots and marplots, who sometimes get the public ear and whose tirades are unendurable to all tolerant men. Though Dr. Sweatman was not an orator, the Anglican Church in Canada boasted many fine speakers forty years ago. Finest of all, I think, was the Rt. Rev. Edward Sullivan, D.D., Bishop of Algoma, who on his retirement from the terrific ardours of that diocese, as it was in his day, became Rector of St. James' Cathedral. He had a rich Dublin accent, the most graciously virile and musical that I have ever heard, and he preached the doctrines of the simple heart. The sanity and sincerity of his utterances did much to redeem the pulpit in my eyes, for the critical faculty developed early in me, though I was careful to keep my opinions to myself. In the eighties, Bishop Sullivan, Canon DuMoulin (afterwards Bishop of Niagara), and Dean Carmichael of Montreal, who had been fellow students at Trinity University, Dublin, and who had come to Canada together, were regarded as the three great orators of the Church. Dean Carmichael I never heard, but Canon DuMoulin was much sought as a speaker for all occasions. His voice had not the music of Dr. Sullivan's,—there are indeed many types of Irish accent, and his was peculiarly flat and unattractive. But when he spoke his phraseology was so racy, thoughtful, and vital that he was at all times fascinating.

I remember an occasion when the swiftness and raciness of Canon DuMoulin's wit was publicly manifest. In the spring of 1887 the Irish Nationalist Party sent the notorious political gad-fly, William O'Brien, M.P., and a minor Irish land-owner, Richard Kilbride, to Canada to attack the then Governor-General, Lord Lansdowne, who was accused of evicting tenants on his Irish estates. Their purpose was to secure a demand by the people of Canada for his recall, and so injure his public career. Needless to say the effort failed completely,—Canadians refused to formulate such a demand, and Lord Lansdowne lived to enjoy one of the most varied and notable careers in the history of Great Britain. But O'Brien's visit did much to let loose the tide of bigotry, and was injurious to the status of Irishmen in Canadian public life. O'Brien and Kilbride were scheduled to speak at a public meeting in Queen's Park, Toronto, on a certain Monday afternoon in June. On the preceding Saturday, a great meeting of loyalists was announced for the same place. I was early on the scene and wiggled my way into a good place at both meetings. I have never seen Queen's Park so full of people since—except on one occasion, the open-air reception of the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour in 1917.

As I recall them the speeches at the loyalist meeting were mostly "tosh" of the familiar flag-waving order—the exceptions being those of the Rev. Principal Caven of Knox College, whose high-keyed Gaelic accents were difficult to hear, and the Rev. Canon DuMoulin. The latter as a native Irishman conversant with the situation from the Unionist standpoint had the other speakers somewhat at a disadvantage and his voice had wonderful carrying power. It was his[Pg 55] task to put the resolution affirming good-will toward Lord Lansdowne, and when he asked for the "Ayes" a forest of hands went up. He then rather superfluously asked for the "Nays", and presently his voice rang out, "I see but wan hand,—and (with a dramatic pause) it looks as though it should be taken home and wa-ashed." Of course there was a great roar but I have since reflected what splendid courage the possessor of that single unwashed hand must have possessed to brave such a mob. Canon DuMoulin's sally, however, left everyone in such good humour that no harm came to him.

The O'Brien meeting two days later was a more riotous affair. It was called for late in the afternoon so as to insure a large attendance. I was carrying home from school a large Union Jack which we had lent for a celebration there, and I remember that as I hurried toward Queen's Park a kindly stranger told me I had better hide it if I wished to avoid trouble,—advice which I took. But though I again wiggled my way near to the platform and was within good hearing distance, I did not catch a word,—such was the din raised by the loyalist part of the throng, including many of the university students waving the bull-dog sticks then an indispensible part of a student's outfit. I can still see the spectacled William O'Brien, who with his pointed beard bore a resemblance to Bernard Shaw, standing on his toes and screaming at the throng without avail. Kilbride with his heavy ruddy countenance fared no better. He was a well-to-do man, owner of a celebrated race horse "Campaigner", and had refused to pay rent for land he had under lease from Lord Lansdowne. So he was greeted with a chorus of "Pay Your Rent". Among[Pg 56] the sights I saw was that of an aged Irish woman trying to thrash a student with her umbrella amid the laughter of his comrades. There was one moment when matters looked serious. The northern part of the site of the meeting was flanked by great piles of brick for the foundations of the new Ontario Parliament Buildings then in course of construction. The Chief of Police had taken the precaution to place a long line of constables to guard this ready ammunition. Once the crowd broke and rushed toward them and the police drew their clubs ready for rough work. But in reality the crowd was merely fleeing from another body of police who were clubbing their way through the crowd to arrest a group of men engaged in fighting.

In connection with the visit of William O'Brien, there was one man who kept his head, the late Edward F. Clarke, editor of the Orange Sentinel and afterwards Member for West Toronto in the House of Commons. Though a prominent Orangeman Mr. Clarke was tolerant by temperament, and he suggested that O'Brien be offered the Orange Hall to say what he had to say and then ignored. It was sane advice, but it brought on Mr. Clarke considerable criticism. My father had a singular experience in connection with the visit of O'Brien and Kilbride. It chanced that he had business in Montreal and Quebec on the very dates they were to speak there. Curiously his goings and comings by train and steamer in both cities coincided with those of the Irish party, and he stayed in the same hotels. For three full days he could not escape them. O'Brien was attended by some American sympathizers who came to the conclusion that my father must be a spy. Finally in St. Lawrence Hall at Montreal one of these henchman approached and with[Pg 57] meaning in his eye informed him of what the Irish did to "informers". It chanced that my father was in company with the late William Mullarky of Montreal, a strong supporter of the Irish cause; and the vocabulary the latter let loose on the interloper, convinced him of his error.

Dickens, when he first visited Toronto, obtained the impression recorded in American Notes that it was a riotous city. And as I recollect it in the eighties the charge was still true. O'Brien during his visit was struck from behind by a coward while taking a quiet stroll. In the east end of the city Orange Young Britons out on parade thought nothing of rushing into the homes of Catholic families just to frighten them. In those days the city perhaps really deserved the epithet, "the Belfast of Canada," which I have always thought a disgusting and insulting accusation when employed of recent years. Among the many episodes which I heard of, but did not witness, was the man-handling of the Fenian leader, O'Donovan Rossa, which he had done much to provoke. An early street car strike which roused the forces of bigotry because the President, Sir Frank Smith, was a Roman Catholic was the occasion of much rioting, quelled by Col. Denison personally with his mounted Body Guards. The character of the little horse cars, not unlike the "Toonerville Trolley", which ran in the eighties may be judged from an incident I witnessed during that strike. The cars had not run for days when to my surprise I saw one coming up a main thoroughfare. Presently half a dozen men ran out from the sidewalk, ordered the conductor and driver out, unhitched the horses and with a slap of the lines sent them galloping up the street. Then with ease they[Pg 58] shoved the car off the tracks over into the ditch. Reflect how many men it would take to ditch a modern street car.

Rioting came to a climax when in the late eighties Archbishop Walsh, a most kindly man who had been well liked by Protestants and Catholics alike at London, Ont., during his incumbency as Bishop of that Diocese, was stoned on his arrival in Toronto to assume the archiepiscopal office. Decent citizens hung their heads for shame, and the newspapers which had been encouraging brawling of this character were subjected to popular pressure to mend their ways. The fact that Dr. Walsh was a very close personal friend of the Conservative leader, William Ralph Meredith, perhaps tended to emphasize the brutality of the incident in the minds of some. At any rate a healthy public sentiment in favour of decency was aroused, and though there has at times been a recrudescence of the latent riotous impulse, nothing so disgraceful has occurred since.

The allusion to Canon DuMoulin's racy humour has carried me rather far afield. I recur to the old group of Anglicans to mention another orator of impressive personality, the Rt. Rev. Maurice Baldwin, Bishop of Huron, also of Irish descent, though purely a Canadian product. He had a vigour, intensity, and beauty of language that brought his hearers an authentic thrill. But for a boy at least I recall no more interesting preacher than the Rev. J. Goff Brick, a homely little weather-beaten Englishman, one of the early missionaries to the Peace River country. He had a marked cockney accent, but the tales he told of the far away wilderness in which he laboured were fascinating in a rare degree and he invariably succeeded in[Pg 59] imparting his own enthusiasm to his hearers. Both Bishop Sullivan and Mr. Brick were insistent on the fine qualities of their Indian wards in districts where they have not been contaminated by association with white whiskey-peddlers and railway construction gangs. The days of the old missionary clergy of the East were passing in the eighties. I knew two who in the early days of Upper Canada had laboured under conditions such as their successors encounter in the Northern outposts. One was the Rev. Canon O'Meara of Port Hope, who to my childish mind was astonishingly like a turkey-gobbler, but who was greatly loved and esteemed. Later I also knew very well the late Canon Henry Bath Osler of York Mills, who prepared me for confirmation, and who was as devoted and indefatigable a country parson as ever lived, driving many miles to offer consolation at sick beds and to bury the dead,—a bright cheery little man who literally diffused human kindness. Both he and his brother, Canon Featherstone Osler, father of four famous sons, were originally missionaries, and in youth had encountered hardships in what is now rich pastoral country.

In my youth I think I had rather too much of church, enough at any rate to last a good many years; but I have never lost my love for that compendium of beautiful literature, the Book of Common Prayer. Teachers of literature, perhaps for politic reasons, in dealing with the treasures of the Tudor period, are apt to ignore its pure, fresh, sonorous prose. But I have long felt that if there is any distinction in my literary style I owe much to the fact that as a boy I was perforce in constant contact with the noble prose of the Prayer Book.

CHAPTER V

MY BEGINNINGS AS A WRITER

For the tasks I have since set myself as a writer, I was singularly ill-equipped in the matter of education; and I have never quite solved the question in my mind of how and why I chanced to become one. But I have noted the saying somewhere that the writer invariably educates himself; by something like animal instinct he picks up here and there what he needs for his mental nourishment. That is for the most part true of most of the writers who graduate from newspaper offices, or win distinction in the trade of journalism. What I have learned has been very largely through association. I have always been an omnivorous reader, interested in almost everything, but never a very greedy one. I do not suppose that I have read more than 2,500 books in the fifty odd years of life; but they have all been books that I wanted to read and the contents of which I, often quite unconsciously, remembered.

Such education as I had in boyhood was excellent, but ceased before I was fifteen years old. There were good books at home, but we had no literary friends. My mother had an excellent and discerning literary taste, as evidenced by the fact that she chose as her favourite novelist Anthony Trollope, whose greatness as an interpreter of human life has only lately come into full recognition. This was at a time when Trollope was not deemed worthy of an equal place with Thackeray[Pg 61] and Dickens. To-day, though his pages never attained the living power of many of those of Dickens, I think that he is generally recognized as equal to or perhaps greater than Thackeray. But Trollope is a writer best appreciated by men and women of mature years. My mother, as a young girl in Hamilton, had been the friend of two very noted newspaper writers of their day, John Tyner, and William Wallace Breckenridge. I still possess an early collected edition of Tennyson, given her by Breckenridge; and she would go about her household duties laughingly reciting passages from Shakespeare. She used to half frighten me with her satirical and lugubrious recitation of the potion scene from Romeo and Juliet, and would sometimes burlesque passages from Hamlet. She was a delightful woman, who, without beautiful features, gave an impression of beauty, by the delicate hues of her complexion, the warm tints of her auburn hair, and above all by the sweetness of her expression. She has been dead for more than a quarter of a century; but old men still speak almost with tears in their eyes of her loveliness when they first saw her with her three babies so nearly of an age. It was, as I have tried to say, a loveliness more of atmosphere than of actual definition, yet it left undying memories with all who knew her.

When she discovered my aspirations she was very ambitious for me that I excel as a writer and never deviate from standards of taste, once my course was fixed; and from her I inherit a sense of humour that has been my salvation on many occasions. But neither she nor I dreamed of the course that was my destiny, when in my fifteenth year my father decided that I should leave school to become equipped for a business career. An active man, of conflicting interests and[Pg 62] expansive ideas, he felt his inefficiency as an office executive, and willed that I be trained to supply his deficiency in the business that then seemed to promise large results. And so one night when we were riding together in the long shadows before sunset, he asked me how I should like to be articled for three years with an English accountant who had come to Canada, and was regarded as the most expert man of his profession in this part of Canada. It was with a good deal of pride in the responsibilities that were to be mine that I consented. Thus for three years I became a slave to ledgers and figures and learned to hate them heartily.

In the preceding years I had had some good schoolmasters and several inefficient ones. Most of my education was obtained at the largest public school in the city of that day—Wellesley school—presided over by a renowned Scottish dominie, Adam Fergus Macdonald, whose memory is still green. "Mac" used the rod sparingly because he did not need to. He could frighten a culprit almost into nervous prostration by a glance from his piercing eyes and a growl from his deep voice. I think he regarded it as a mark of physical degeneracy that Canadian lads in that day did not wear kilts; and in the drill company, the best in the city schools, every boy had to wear a Scottish cap. When he discovered that I was in part of Highland ancestry my fortunes with him were made. He was a great moral force, who not only kept his subordinates up to the mark but somehow or other kept the minds of three hundred boys tolerably clean,—a rare achievement.

From Adam Fergus Macdonald's principality I passed on to another, that of Archibald MacMurchy,[Pg 63] father of a distinguished family, at what he loved to term "The Old Grammar School". It was more vulgarly known as Jarvis St. Collegiate Institute, but Dr. MacMurchy never employed that modern appellation; and he was proud of the fact that from its portals youths had been going forth to battle with life in a new world since 1805. I never knew a teacher who spoke so little. He had brought gesture in discourse to its fullest development; and after gazing sorrowfully and intently at a misdemeanant would simply point to the "imposition" book and say, "Two hundred lines", and jot down a memo to see that the task was not forgotten. When I entered the "Old Grammar School" the older boys were full of tales of a teacher of English literature who had retired at the end of the preceding term; of the order he kept; of the way he scarified the conceited; of his rough and ready methods of sex education, where he thought admonition necessary. The ways of "Sam" Hughes were an ever-popular theme; and the boys could not understand why he should want to go away and be a country editor. Needless to say, this hero was destined to fame as General Sir Sam Hughes. He was not then so eminent in military circles as his chum, the chief instructor in mathematics, Major Fred Manley of the Royal Grenadiers, who had had a fine record for efficiency in the Northwest Rebellion. Major Manley or "Fred", as he was known behind his back, was a capital teacher, with a humorous twinkling eye, who kept perfect order by making fun of any boy who became "fresh". Good teachers never need to use the cane, and Major Manley was one of these; but there were teachers more nervous and less efficient whose weaknesses were known to all the boys, and whose lives they made a torment. The[Pg 64] most serious speech I ever heard Manley make was one impressing on them the cruelty of such tactics. And indeed the boys did in the end torment some of these less efficient teachers out of their positions. One, a man of high scholastic attainments and a Master of Arts, afterwards ended his days, untimely, as keeper of a small grocery store. It was for this man and another that Manley pleaded mercy among the boys he could influence, but the cruelty of youth is incorrigible.

The dearest memories of my schoolboy days, however, centre around the successor of Sam Hughes as chief instructor in English and Literature, William Huston, M.A. Huston, a native of Whitby, would have been recognized as Canada's greatest teacher. He was then (1886-7) but twenty-four or twenty-five, but appeared much older; with bristling eye-brows and eyes that twinkled with good humour behind heavy glasses. Tall and raw-boned, he looked as if his clothes had been blown on to him in a windstorm, but his magnetism was of a most compelling quality. Despite his youth, his career had already been most distinguished. He had come within one mark of winning the Gilchrist Scholarship of the University of London, a most coveted honour, and had been Principal of the old Quaker college at Pickering. A year or so after I left school he was appointed Principal of Woodstock College, where he was rapidly winning fame when his career was cut short by death at the age of thirty.

Huston was able to fascinate boys with the intricacies and irregularities of English grammar; and he opened a new world to me, and I have no doubt to many others, by his power of literary criticism and exposition. Though it was not directly under his[Pg 65] department, he touched on the classic origins of all imaginative literature: he would tell the story of Ulysses and other classic romances and pull the curtain aside to reveal far vistas of beauty in the whole realm of poetry. His tastes were by no means antiquated. He expounded the metrical beauties of Swinburne's Forsaken Garden, and it was from him I first learned of Robert Louis Stevenson, when he told us to advise our parents to buy the new novel, Kidnapped.

Looking back, it seems marvellous how much he taught us in the single hour of each day that we enjoyed his society; and to me the year I spent under him was priceless. Under Huston I took in and stored away a host of impressions and enthusiasms, which were presently to burst into active impulses and shape the course of my future life.

I cannot tell just when in those adolescent years, while I was toiling over ledgers in the laborious but not always tedious business of learning to be an auditor, the feeling was borne in on me that I must become a writer. I found I was woefully ignorant. All of a sudden as it were, I found myself possessed of a desire to acquire familiarity with all literatures and all arts, and in time to become one of the great company of letters. There is a phrase which I encountered many years later, but which has ever since haunted me, because it perfectly embodies feelings which have been mine since my seventeenth year. It is to be found in the essay on Mazzini by that great modern but little known master of the English tongue, Frederick Myers, in which he says (without slightly difficult application) that anyone who does not feel such aspirations is but "the empty-handed heir of the ages",—and this has been the gospel of my inner life.

Almost the first thing that I did when the realization of the inadequacy of my knowledge and of the countless untrodden paths of beauty that lay before me, was to procure a copy of John Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding and read it carefully, and I think understandingly. It was a tough task for a lad in his seventeenth year, who had never been studious and had very little leisure. Locke's close reasoning and precision of style, remarkable for an English writer of the pre-Addisonian epoch, is no doubt simple enough for the average student, but there was nothing in my experience to prepare me for metaphysical and philosophic discourse, save a certain schoolboy aptitude for Euclid. But in the month when I was grappling with Locke, reading and re-reading to make sure that I was following his meanings, I could feel the muscles of my mind expand, and my confidence grow, just as the person who is learning to play golf or to swim finds new uses for untried muscles in his body and rejoices therein. I never followed up metaphysical reading, though in the next three or four years I dipped into most of the philosophers, and was fascinated with the doctrines of Spinoza and Hegel. Mill's Logic, which I tackled two years after Locke, rather repelled me, though his treatise on Liberty fixed certain political principles of mine; and I could wish that on this continent more people accepted John Stuart Mill, and fewer, Billy Sunday, as a prophet.

Though the desire for mental exercise took me to the philosophers, I can now see plainly that it was the artistic and imaginative aspects of literature, the phases of it which tend to blend with other arts, that really attracted me most. The reading room of the public library not far from the office became my[Pg 67] University. There by judicious arrangement of the time I took for luncheon, and by not stopping on the street to talk to anyone, I could have a full forty minutes intensive reading. And I acquired a personal love for translations of Goethe and Heine. Heine's Atta Troll, epic of a captive bear who ran away and joined her companions in the woods, with its mordant championship of intellectual liberty, especially appealed to my mind,—which was like that of all ardent youths, rebellious against the trammels of its surroundings. I have not looked into Atta Troll for years, but it is a great allegory and a moral tract.

It must have been somewhere about the same time that I acquired an enthusiasm for Plato, not so much for the dialogues which deal with the religious views of Socrates—though the Apologia is great as thought, great as poetry, and, in a sense, great as drama—as for the dialogues which analyse the emotions of love and the emotions of beauty. These won my enduring affection—the Banquet, which as translated by Shelley is a masterpiece of glowing English prose; and the Phaedrus, one of the most gracious of the Carey translations.

My sudden plunge in the great world of literature was so replete with adventure that I had little time for thoughts of girls and sports, the normal aptitudes of healthy youths. I take no especial pride in that fact. Lovely and charming girls are after all the greatest thing in human existence. It was lucky for me that the location of my home, by this time far out in the suburbs, compelled me to walk a great deal; and I was also fortunate that when mentally lax I could always saddle a horse, and amble peacefully along the beautiful by-ways of York county in those days when the[Pg 68] motor car was merely the dream of a few inventors. One of the most glorious of physical sensations is to ride on country roads on a warm June night, and savour the odour of the unseen shrubs and flowers in the farm gardens. To the sensitive, every changing month from May to October has its own specific odours, young grass at one time, new cut hay at another, ripened apples at another. And it was natural that my first impulse when I started to write should take the form of nature poetry.

It is with some pride that I recall that while I was living this exhilarating life of mental adventure and sensuous delight,—intensely happy and intensely melancholy, often in one and the same hour,—I was not lazy and stupid in the prosaic business of accountancy. Excitement had been added to the game (for the game of double entry book-keeping can be quite as fascinating as cross-word puzzles, for example) by the fact that my chief had become a public assignee, and in the ledgers and day-books that came to our hands we had to unravel the sordid mysteries of many insolvencies.

I can imagine nothing more calculated to disgust an idealistic youth with business, then an experience in an assignee's office, especially in a period when commerce is generally unsettled, as it was in Canada in the period of 1890. The clear proof of the shabby tricks and subterfuges men of repute had resorted to in the vain hope of keeping their businesses afloat; the deceptions they had practiced even on trusting friends and relatives; the worries, as painful as a malignant growth, they had endured—all these things were clear before my mind. I believe that modern banking science, when truly practised (as it sometimes is not),[Pg 69] and the gradual elimination of the credit system has done something to remedy matters for men of honest intentions, but the inner anatomy of business in 1890 certainly offered no very alluring prospect to a lad privileged to peer into it, as I was. I used to think despairingly, "Am I to be fettered to this sort of thing for life?"

Then circumstances arose that, in spite of myself, upset the plans which had been made for me. My father ever since 1880 had foreseen that Quebec was the natural home of the shoe industry, owing in the main to its freedom from labour troubles and for other reasons as well. He had desired to move his industry thither, but his partners would not consent. The ability of Quebec to produce more cheaply had in the end compelled abandonment of the manufacturing side of his business, in which crisis his creditors behaved with splendid magnanimity,—not at all like the creditors in novels,—and he had attempted to carry on as a jobber. But here again, in an era of falling prices, the men whose goods he was handling found it convenient to unload and undersell him at the factory. Therefore he closed up while there was still a chance to avoid disaster; and the object which was in view when I was articled as a student of accountancy, disappeared. When the three years of my time as an articled clerk expired, my chief offered me a position to stay with him and run the routine of the office at a rising stipend. But this ended in a more tragic way. He was an accountant of amazing penetration, whose ability to see through a bad mess led to his being frequently called in consultation by other assignees and liquidators; but his judgments in dealing with his fellow beings were child-like. His youth had been one of[Pg 70] drudgery in the black towns of the North of England, and when prosperity came to him it was too much for him. He developed a fatal connoisseurship in whiskey and an overweening desire to learn to play the game of poker. There were plenty of rascals about willing to teach him. The first signs of disintegration came when I, who looked after the banking of the firm, would discover in going through the checks at the end of the month withdrawals not only from his own personal account, but on the trust accounts of the various insolvent estates in our charge. I would ask about them, and he would nervously assure me that everything would be all right. There could be one end to this. Late on a winter afternoon in 1891 he called me into his room, said that he knew I was worried, but that money was coming from England that would amply cover all claims, but that he was feeling unwell and thought he would take a brief vacation. Next morning I found he had absconded. His creditors, largely already creditors of estates in his hands, knew it was not worth while bringing him back. He tried to make a living as a newspaper man by use of his shorthand in Buffalo,—apparently he feared exposure if he applied for an accountant's position there, since references would be asked—and in the end committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a railway train.

For two years I had been scribbling privately; and in order to avoid the impression that I was not attending to business, as well as from sheer diffidence, I had been sending verse and prose sketches anonymously to the young weekly newspaper, the Toronto Saturday Night, then conducted by Mr. E. E. Sheppard. I sometimes signed my initials and sometimes the pen-name "Touchstone", which I chose because of one of[Pg 71] the jester's saying, "Call me not fool till Heaven hath sent me fortune." A week or so before the disappearance of my chief in the assignee's office, an item appeared as the very first paragraph on the front page of Saturday Night in which Mr. Sheppard, or "Don" as he signed himself, requested that the contributor who called himself "Touchstone" call on him or send him his address. My elation was naturally tremendous, and I went to see him. In after years he told me that he had expected to meet a man of about thirty-eight (his own age) instead of one twenty years younger. But after making some inquiries and sending for my father, he finally offered me the post of assistant editor in succession to the late Duncan A. McKellar, who was going away to New York to try his fortunes in company with his pal, the late Peter McArthur. The stipend he offered to begin on was so low that I could not have afforded to accept it, had the crisis I have spoken of not occurred almost at the same time. I had one other option: the Timothy Eaton Company was just at that time entering on the marvellous career of expansion which constitutes one of the greatest of business epics, and needed trained office men to grow up with the business. I had a chance to start there on somewhat better terms, but was already too deeply bitten with the hope of becoming a writer to accept. Thus for good or ill, in the second week of March, 1891, being some months less than nineteen, I became a newspaper man.

CHAPTER VI

WHEN JOURNALISTS WERE PICTURESQUE

Edmund E. Sheppard, who had taken the responsibility of launching me in newspaper work, was the most picturesque figure in the Canadian literary and journalistic Bohemia of thirty-five years ago, and in some respects the most unique mingling of likeable and offensive traits that I have ever known. He was a man of intensive energy:—that is to say, he would at certain periods work prodigiously and at others loaf. This is a familiar condition with the literary temperament; but he was something more than a literary man. He was both dreamer and schemer, with the result that he managed to get a good deal more out of life than the average man; to travel much in foreign lands and to retire from active duty with a competence at an age when most men of his calling are happy to be still at work and wondering what is to happen them in old age, if they are unfortunate enough to live to advanced years.

Several men of my acquaintance have made considerable fortunes out of the newspaper business, but they have done so largely by gradually attaining a sort of mental atrophy which enables them to shut out from their vision the varied and fascinating panorama of human existence, and to concentrate on money-getting pure and simple. They grow less interesting every day they live, and the world grows less interesting to them. But "Ned" Sheppard, as his friends called him, or[Pg 73] "Don", as he was known to the wider public, was at all times interesting. He was the type who could always find the money for what he wished to do. He was born in the early fifties in Elgin county, Ontario, where his father was both a small farmer and a preacher of the Disciples Church. The elder Sheppard was a man of very narrow and rigid ideas, I have been told, and under his stern rule the son, who was a natural rebel against all conventions, had so sad a time of it as a boy that it embittered him for the rest of his life. At the time E. E. Sheppard published his rural novel, Widower Jones, in the late eighties, it was widely rumoured that in its title character he had rather brutally satirized his own father. At any rate he acquired in boyhood a hatred of pietists, to him synonymous with hypocrites, that lasted all his life.

In his 'teens he managed to scrape up enough money to go away to Virginia and study medicine at one of the cheap colleges of the impoverished South; but without finishing his course he drifted to the Mexican border, where he worked as cowboy and stage driver, and picked up a marvellously racy vocabulary. I do not swear much myself, but I know good swearing when I hear it, and Mr. Sheppard, when the spirit moved him, was an artist. On the border he picked up a distinctive habit of dress, half-Spanish and half-American, and resembled one of Bret Harte's immaculate gamblers. It may be pure imagination, but I have a theory that the late Cuyler Hastings, an actor who came from the same part of Western Ontario as Mr. Sheppard, copied him when he created the role of the Sheriff in the famous melodrama, The Girl of the Golden West—a make-up now familiar the world over through Puccini's opera based thereon. "Don"[Pg 74] had two hats, a tall "plug" for outdoor and a slouch for indoor wear,—and in the years when I knew him best I hardly once saw him with his head uncovered. Under his trousers he wore top boots of fine Spanish leather; and he liked to surprise British visitors to his office by putting his feet on the table and displaying these unique articles. He habitually chewed tobacco, and his aim at a distantly placed cuspidor, when he felt the need of expectoration, was invariably accurate. On one occasion the late Sir George Ross visited his office on a political mission; and Sheppard with a view to convincing the Premier of Ontario of his brusque independence practised this gift throughout the interview, occasionally ejaculating an unprintable synonym for buncombe which has its origin in ranch-life. Sir George was never in danger, but would jump nervously every time a quid flew past him to the cuspidor. The first thing Mr. Sheppard told me by way of admonition when I entered his employ was that he could drink all the whiskey the staff required, and it was no idle boast; though in those days it never seemed to unsteady him. On the contrary liquor made him pensive and morose; and it was a unique sight to see him ruminating under his slouch hat; meditating some attack on a charlatan, or some plan to "land" an advertising contract. Saturday Night, his weekly paper, had a few shareholders and a nominal board, and at the annual meeting he would present a statement of affairs with the words: "You won't understand what this means and I don't intend that you shall." Everyone took it as a good joke, for the promised dividend was always paid.

He had cut his teeth in newspaper work in St. Thomas and London, Ont., and in 1882 came to work[Pg 75] as a reporter in the Mail, in Toronto, where his picturesque bearing and remarkably alert mind took the fancy of the late John Riordan, the paper manufacturer, who with Christopher W. Bunting owned the newspaper. John Riordan, I have been told, was always very ambitious to follow the lead of the famous New York publishers of forty years ago. Thus the Mail building, which still occupies the corner of Bay and King streets, Toronto, was constructed as a replica of the old New York Tribune building facing City Hall Square. At his home town, St. Catharines, he drove a team of trotters after the manner of Robert Bonner, who had made a fortune out of a fiction-weekly, the New York Ledger. Finally he decided to emulate James Gordon Bennett, who had founded, in connection with the New York Herald, a newspaper of different name, known as the Evening Telegram. The latter title having been pre-empted in Toronto, Mr. Riordan established the Evening News, and selected E. E. Sheppard, as the livest man in his employ, to conduct it.

The methods adopted by Sheppard to gain fame and circulation for the News were lurid, and anticipated many of the "circulation stunts" of to-day. For a time he printed it on pink paper; and when I was a youngster, most boys desired their fathers to take the News in order that they might have pink kites. Less innocuous was the institution of the "Peek-a-Boo" column containing offensive and often malicious gossip about leading men and women of Toronto society. This is a very old journalistic trick to get circulation. It was practised in New York before the American Civil War by the elder Bennett, and in Canada it was employed by William Lyon Mackenzie, whose plant[Pg 76] was thrown in Toronto Bay, not for political reasons, as some school histories state, but because he had assailed the moral character of the wives and daughters of members of the alleged Family Compact. Pressure of public opinion compelled Sheppard to drop the "Peek-a-Boo" column, and with this cicatrice removed, the News won favour by the freshness and interest of the writing which appeared in its columns.

I do not think any Canadian editor ever showed better judgment than Sheppard in discerning newspaper ability. In later years I came to know several of his colleagues in the conduct of the News and they were all men of fine gifts. They included the late Louis P. Kribs, a Waterloo county "Dutchman" whose humorous articles signed "Henery Pica" were copied all over America; the late Thomas A. Gregg, who, with his brother George Gregg, had originally promoted the establishment of the Mail and who later was one of the founders of the Toronto Star; the late John A. Ewan, who subsequently became one of the editors of the Globe; and among the brilliant juniors who have made a great success in life was Walter Cameron Nichol, who became Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia and a knight.

I am speaking of a period several years before my own entry into newspaper work; but in the nineties the lore of three decades was open to the young man interested in the history of his calling. One of Sheppard's circulation stunts was to try and make the News the organ of the then young and thriving body, the Knights of Labour, though I do not think he had any actual sympathy with its aims. I recall seeing a Labour procession in the mid-eighties when the entire staff of the News, editors, reporters, business clerks,[Pg 77] compositors, and pressmen were compelled to walk wearing white "plug" hats like a minstrel company. Sheppard with his black goatee and sallow Spanish countenance walked at the head with Louis Kribs, a bulky blonde figure who looked like a German comedian and was nick-named "The Crown Prince". They were figures that one would not soon forget. I learned in after years that the white plug hats were a job lot picked up by Sheppard at a dollar apiece, and that it was a grievance with the staff that every man was compelled to purchase one at that figure. They refused to take them home after the parade, and when I went to work for the News in 1896 many of them were still lying about the office, and were used as waste baskets; while at the noon hour the printers' devils would play football with them. They were indeed hardy perennials.

Kribs was one of the kindest hearted men who ever lived. He and his wife were childless and made a practice of adopting orphans and giving them a start in life. He had seldom less than four little ones in his home, of whose misfortunes he had learned in the course of newspaper work. And he was a famous hand at hoaxes. In the seventies, while conducting a country newspaper at Barrie, he had chronicled the death at Allandale, across Kempenfeldt Bay, of one T. H. O. Mascat, who had been run over by a train. Half the population of Barrie walked over to view the remains, only to find that the unfortunate victim was an ordinary tabby. The greatest hoax that he perpetrated while on the News staff was the announcement of the retirement from public life of Sir John A. Macdonald, accompanied by the full text of an alleged farewell address. For a few hours it caused consternation in[Pg 78] Canada, until the more learned citizens discovered that it was copied word for word from the farewell address of George Washington, a document really written, it is supposed, by the great federalist, Alexander Hamilton. Sir John did not resent the hoax, for he was very fond of Kribs and two years later was instrumental in having him appointed news editor of a new Conservative organ, the Empire. Kribs was a gifted oboe player, who had been a member of the Waterloo town band; and another recruit of the Empire staff was James W. Curran, the present editor of the Sault Ste. Marie Star and a renowned authority on the docility of wolves. Curran had been a trombone player in the Orillia town band; and after I went to work on the Empire staff in 1893 I was told of the melancholy duets transposed for oboe and trombone with which they used to while away the night hours. That was before the days of "jazz", and these duets may be said to have anticipated Paul Whiteman in weird combination effects. I once told the famous conductor, Walter Damrosch, of these duets, which I regret never to have heard personally, and he shuddered at the thought of them.

I never knew Louis P. Kribs very well, but he was literally adored by all his associates, a contrast to Sheppard, who was not popular and was sensitive about the isolation he suffered in his own calling. And it was through Kribs, who would not willingly have wronged any man, that Sheppard lost the News, though I do not believe that it ever made a dollar for anybody throughout the forty years of its existence.

The military calling boasts its heroes, but it boasts its liars as well. At the close of the Northwest rebellion of 1885 some prevaricating soldier told Kribs[Pg 79] that the 65th Battalion of Montreal, largely composed of French Canadians, had shirked their duty while on active service in the West, because of their sympathy with the rebel leader, Louis Riel. Kribs, never a model of discretion, wrote and printed the yarn. There was a less offensive story going the rounds at the time which related to the 65th battalion. It was of a captain who being told that a band of rebels was concealed in a coulie gave the order, "Front rank, ready, present, fire!" and when the soldiers kept on banging away shouted peremptorily, "Stop shoot! Leave some for the rear rank!" The men of the 65th battalion did not mind this yarn; but, when Kribs published his tale of dereliction in duty, all its officers entered suit for damages against the News, of which E. E. Sheppard under a purchasing agreement with the Riordan interests was already part owner. They also took proceedings for criminal libel against Mr. Sheppard personally, as editor of the offending newspaper.

Then ensued a long game of hare and hounds. Political animosity between Quebec and Ontario has never run so rancorously as in the mid-eighties, owing to the agitation among French Canadians over the hanging of Riel. Under the libel law of Canada actions both criminal and civil must be tried in the home town of the injured party, or the nearest legal centre thereto. This clause is a menace to justice, because it operates very strongly against the prospect of a fair trial. If Sheppard and Kribs had been taken to Montreal in 1885, matters would have been black for them. Sheppard took responsibility for the article, though he had not seen it until it appeared in print, and owing to his natural sense of caution would probably have "killed" it, as newspaper men phrase it. The only[Pg 80] course open to him was to evade service of writs and warrants; and this he succeeded in doing for nearly two years. For months the Quebec police officials had great difficulty in securing the signature of a Toronto magistrate to the warrant. Col. Denison, then the sole police magistrate, was usually conveniently absent from his office, or on the bench, when the High Constable from Montreal would appear on the scene to seek his signature; and local justices of the peace were also diffident. At last the warrant was validated by the higher courts; but the game of evasion went merrily on. Sheppard had convenient exits broken in the offices of the News on Yonge street, Toronto, which enabled him to vanish when the alarm was given. The office was indeed a curious rookery. There was a platform or balcony on the second floor where you might stand unseen and watch anyone moving about in a corridor below, through which a police officer searching for the accused must necessarily pass. One of the News stereotypers told me that on one occasion when the High Constable of Montreal was known to be in town, he and a fellow employee had arranged to douse the official with a barrel of flour from this vantage point. Fortunately the information leaked to the "boss", who gave stern orders against violence. If the incident had transpired it would have been disastrous, for it is a very serious matter to assault an officer while in the pursuit of duty.

Finally the long game of hide and seek ended by Mr. Sheppard's voluntary surrender. The long litigation in the courts had been very costly; he had been unable to meet his obligations for purchase of the News, and the Riordan interests were resolved to dislodge him. There were economic reasons to justify this[Pg 81] course. They were the owners of the Conservative organ, the Mail, though they had already quarrelled with Sir John Macdonald and announced that the publication would thenceforth be independent in politics. Nevertheless it was an embarrassment in business to be known as the partial supporters of a publication at open war with the province of Quebec. Sheppard was practically ruined; and it was arranged that he should depart. At Montreal he was most leniently treated. Instead of imprisonment, he was fined the nominal sum of $500, and the civil suits were withdrawn. It was the knowledge that they had accomplished their purpose and as they supposed ended the career of their enemy that led to this magnanimity on the part of the officers of the 65th Battalion—or so I have been assured.

In reality this supposed misfortune was the luckiest event that ever happened to E. E. Sheppard. The litigation had advertised him throughout the length and breadth of Canada, and it had created for him many sympathizers in Ontario. I have spoken of the junior, Walter Cameron Nichol, then a verse and skit writer on the News. Though but a boy he, with one of the News advertising staff, had projected a weekly newspaper devoted to political commentary, social gossip and musical and dramatic criticism. This was the origin of Saturday Night, which has not only been the most successful of all Canadian weeklies, but the only one of its kind that has survived.

Walter Nichol and his advertising friend had been unable to raise capital for their project, but Mr. Sheppard had friends who were willing to advance money to set him on his feet again, and having nothing else to turn to he looked favourably on the projected[Pg 82] weekly. His name did not appear in the first issue, which was gotten out by Nichol in the autumn of 1887, but in the second he began the front page of independent commentary which has ever since been a feature of Saturday Night, and to which I have myself in later years contributed countless words.

Mr. Sheppard himself when he chose to apply his mind to the task was a splendid editor with a fine discernment in securing talent. Unfortunately for themselves Mr. Nichol, who became assistant editor under him, and his friend, who had become advertising manager, quarreled with Sheppard because they did not think they had been fairly treated. They accused him of having grabbed control of a project which had originated with them. They demanded a "show-down" and were refused. Early in 1888 they left and established another weekly on similar lines entitled Life. They lacked the prestige and the means to swing the enterprise, though Walter Nichol wrote witty lampoons of which Mr. Sheppard was the target in many instances.

One of his ideas was a fake questionable submitted to public men as to whom they regarded as the world's three greatest men. Sheppard's alleged answers were as follows: First, Edmund E. Sheppard; second. E. E. Sheppard; third, "Don".

To-day in British Columbia Sir Walter Cameron Nichol is recognized as a model of dignity and business acumen, but as a boy-reporter in my native city of Hamilton where he served his apprenticeship on the Spectator he was regarded as a "terror", and I heard many amusing stories of his pranks. There was in those days a character who was a good deal of a fop known as Miles O'Reilly Jarvis. Nichol wrote a few[Pg 83] verses of asinine poetry and sent them to Puck signed by Jarvis. They were of course thrown in the waste paper basket; and for weeks Nichol bombarded the famous editor, H. C. Bunner, with enquiries as to when they would appear, assailing his literary intelligence and proclaiming the verses the work of genius. These communications, each containing fresh copies of the verses, were also signed by the name of Jarvis. Finally Mr. Bunner instructed one of the Puck staff to write a jocular story about the Hamilton poet Miles O'Reilly Jarvis, who was so confident of his genius. The article was a huge joke in Hamilton, but Mr. Jarvis set an investigation afoot and the letters were traced to Nichol, who had not kept the secret. He was threatened with criminal proceedings, compelled to make an apology, and was a sadder and wiser boy before he heard the last of Miles O'Reilly Jarvis.

In disgust with the difficulties of carrying on Life and the failure to obtain the share in Saturday Night that was his due as first promoter, he went to British Columbia, where his rise to affluence and eminence is a matter of history. After he left his partner tried to continue Life with other assistance. A young literary aspirant, just graduated from the University, whom I later came to know well, was induced to advance five hundred dollars on condition of being appointed to the staff. The first use that was made of this windfall was the purchase of a ton of coal, for the finances of Life had sunk so low that the staff was literally freezing to death. The balance of the funds financed two more issues, and then the young man who had advanced the money was out of a job and out of pocket. Thus perished the first rival of Saturday Night. Mr. Sheppard had been too shrewd[Pg 84] to advertise its existence by answering lampoons at his own expense, but on its collapse he penned this epitaph: "The name of Life has been changed to Death".

Saturday Night was itself unpretentious in quarters and equipment in those days. Its chief ornament was a vast "old master" by Guercino of doubtful value, which Mr. Sheppard picked up in a European auction room as a bargain and subsequently presented to the National Club, where it still hangs. The weekly occupied three narrow floors and a basement in the Grand Opera House building, which as the only first-class theatre in Toronto at that time was an excellent location in which to house a publication of the kind. Every playgoer had the name of Saturday Night before his eyes; and on publication day sheets were pasted on the windows to tease him into buying. The editorial rooms upstairs were the nearest approach to a literary Bohemia that Canada afforded at that time. A dark and narrow hallway led to them, and they had at one time been the quarters of a defunct Press Club at which Henry Irving and other celebrities had been entertained. On the wall was a sketch of the great actor, which had been made from life on one of these occasions. Many scribbled names, some noted, still decorated the panelling, when I first entered these quarters in 1891; and on the same floor was the studio of the celebrated landscape painter, O. R. Jacobi, whose finer canvasses to-day command a high price. He was a peculiar fusty old Teuton with the soul of a poet, and he looked as though he lived on the smell of an oil rag and slept in his clothes, as I believe he not infrequently did. He used to let me go into his studio to watch him paint in his peculiar minute spots,[Pg 85] from which, however, he evolved unique and charming effects in colour; and sometimes he would come into my room to get warm.

In the frank picture of E. E. Sheppard which this chapter presents I trust I have not belittled his real powers. His was indeed a remarkably prophetic mind. Two or three years after he finally left Canada for California in 1910, he wrote a book entitled The Thinking Universe. It was a metaphysical disquisition, which owing to the writer's lack of familiarity with the vocabulary of metaphysics and philosophy was somewhat unintelligible, yet in it he unquestionably anticipated the Einstein theory. More remarkable still was a paper he prepared in 1897 which he hoped to have the privilege of reading before the British Association for the Advancement of Science which convened in Toronto that year. His offer was rejected by those in charge of the programme because of his lack of scientific standing, yet his secretary, to whom it was dictated, and who remembers its contents, not long ago informed me that in that paper Mr. Sheppard prophesied the advent of what is now known as "radio" in explicit terms. He also once planned a life of Christ as viewed by the common man of to-day and visited Palestine to get "atmosphere", but, perhaps fortunately, became overawed by his own project.

The contrast between the mind of the man given to so much abstract, if not entirely lucid, thinking and his daily conversation was startling. Once when a local poet tendered him verses apostrophizing Toronto in this wise,

Mr. Sheppard said that the poem, like the Don River itself (a muddy stream which flows through the eastern part of Toronto), was "hog-wash". The poet retorted with a quatrain:

CHAPTER VII

POETS AND WOMEN WRITERS OF THE PAST

The young man whom I succeeded as assistant editor, Duncan A. McKellar, was a person of beautiful character, with a dark, melancholy Scottish face that seemed to foretell his early death. He was a talented black-and-white artist and was a prominent member of the Art Students' League, now the Graphic Arts Club, and I think had had something to do with selecting its Latin motto, which signified "Not a Day Without a Line". He also wrote charming verse, and our acquaintanceship had begun with his liking for my own nature lyrics. Like Mr. Sheppard, he had not known that the anonymous person who sent in prose sketches signed "Touchstone" was identical with "H. W. C.", the verse writer to whom he had some time previously awarded a prize in a competition for a poem on November's garland, the golden witch-hazel. Duncan McKellar's poetry was collected by his sister a year or so ago and makes a charming little book. The most famous of all his lyrics, "Indian Woman's Lullaby", was set to music for women's voices by Dr. A. S. Vogt. It is one of the finest part songs in the modern repertoire, and is very frequently used at competition festivals. The text has been admired by hundreds of thousands of listeners who never heard of the author. Between McKellar and Peter McArthur, already established in New York as a humorous writer, existed a friendship which was the[Pg 88] nearest approach to a Damon and Pythias relationship that I have ever known. They shared diggings in Brooklyn after McKellar went to New York and McArthur wrote jokes for McKellar's pictures. The latter was just beginning to find a market that offered a secure income when stricken with tuberculosis. McArthur stood by his pal in this adversity; and when McKellar was brought home to Canada to die, used to journey hither to visit him, although it must have meant a strain on his resources. Peter McArthur's own end in 1924 was so peaceful and gentle that it left beautiful memories, and he told me a characteristic story of what were almost McKellar's last words. A well-meaning clergyman came into the sick-room and asked a question with which ministers, with the best of good intentions, feel it their duty to torment the sick: "Have you made your peace with God?" The dying artist glanced up with a smile in his beautiful dark eyes and said softly, "I don't think I ever had a quarrel with God." And he spoke truly.

McKellar delayed his departure for New York for a few days to "break me in", as he put it, but my first instructions in how to fix up copy for the printers were given me by the editor of the women's department, Miss Elliott, now Mrs. Joseph E. Atkinson, wife of the proprietor of the Toronto Star. I almost fell in love with her, so charming was she; and she had an attractive gift in both verse and prose. She used many pen-names, and thousands who are unaware of her actual identity must be familiar with them. To the earliest of her writings that I recall she signed "Frances Burton Clare"; but in her weekly column of commentary for Saturday Night she used "Clip Carew", a capital pen-name. In a week or two she[Pg 89] resigned to join the staff of the Globe, the fame of whose woman's department had been made by "Garth Grafton", no less a personage than the popular novelist, Sarah Jeanette Duncan. She then assumed the pseudonym of "Madge Merton", which she carried to the Montreal Herald, and in after years used that of "Pandora".

As an auxiliary of Saturday Night, Mr. Sheppard published a cheap though perfectly innocuous paper of the Family Herald brand known as the Fireside Weekly, and edited by Miss Kate Westlake, a woman of delightful character who knew everything there was to know about newspaper routine, since she had been a reporter and proof-reader on country weeklies, had written up the cattle at fall fairs and done every kind of job there was to do in a small office. She was most resourceful, and when the famous Indian Chief, Sitting Bull, died, she sat up late at nights and at break neck speed wrote a dime novel, Sitting Bull's White Ward, which she sold to the Bedells of Philadelphia for $500. She would have been a treasure in a modern newspaper office. Subsequently she married the well-known apostle of facts about Canada, Frank Yeigh, and many sorrowed when she died.

Though I never kept a diary, my memories of my first day in an editorial room and of the persons who called, are as vivid as though it were yesterday, for I had enjoyed no literary or artistic acquaintanceships and had hungered for them. An early arrival was the poet William Wilfred Campbell, then an Anglican clergyman at Wiarton. He brought with him an advance copy of Harper's Magazine for April, 1891, containing The Mother, the finest example of ballad poetry that has ever been written by a Canadian, and[Pg 90] his own best achievement. He wished it reprinted in Saturday Night, and McKellar showed me how to put it in hand so that the copy would be kept clean. Within the next twelve months The Mother was reprinted in hundreds of publications in every English-speaking country. Shortly after its appearance Mr. Campbell was accused of plagiarism by Katherine Tynan Hinkson, the Irish poet, who had, it transpired, written a much inferior poem on the same subject for some British publication, at about the same time that Campbell had written his ballad for Harper's Magazine. I am able to disprove the accusation of plagiarism with regard to The Mother, which still crops up occasionally. Mrs. Tynan was mistaken in thinking that the legend of the mother who had died in childbirth and returns from the grave to seize her infant from the arms of the new wife is peculiar to Ireland; it is common to the folk-lore of all countries.

In 1890 I had found a group of "Russian Ghost Stories", in an old copy of the Eclectic Magazine, which included this legend. I had attempted to make a poem of it, and was so disgusted with my own attempt that I tore up the copy. When Campbell showed me The Mother I was naturally excited and asked where he had found the legend. He told me he had read it in a book on folk-lore by John Fiske, entitled, I think, The Childhood of the World. Here then we have the coincidence of a single subject obtained from three distinct sources appealing to three writers at about the same time and all attempting to use it; Campbell handling it so perfectly that no other can hope to surpass his version, Mrs. Tynan treating with a fair amount of skill, and myself making a wretched abortive attempt. The same thing has happened[Pg 91] with regard to almost every revolutionary mechanical invention of modern times. That is why I believe in a certain nebulous form of telepathy, unconscious thought transference, which may some day be put in harness as radio has put sound waves in harness.

Campbell and I became friends and kept up a random correspondence for some years. This friendship was cemented first through the coincidence with regard to The Mother and also because he had liked a lyric of mine, Jeptha's Daughter in the Mountains which I am proud to say was also deeply loved by Kate Westlake Yeigh, though it was better in conception than execution. But we came to differ because I questioned the wisdom of an elaborate charge of plagiarism Campbell framed against Bliss Carman when the latter's poetry was just coming into fame. The attack caused a sensation in Canadian literary circles thirty years ago; and I did not think Campbell's citations sustained his case. It seemed to me that a poet who had himself suffered an unwarranted attack of plagiarism, on what looked like prima facie evidence, should be chary of assailing others on a similar count. There is a great deal of nonsense in most charges of plagiarism. If it were a crime Shakespeare must be lying in the nethermost pit of hell. Plagiarism when conscious justifies itself if the culprit's creation is better than its source.

In my early weeks of newspaper life I made many lasting friendships. Two visitors who came in to see McKellar on the very first day were the artists Charles W. Jefferys and Robert Holmes. Jefferys has kept his status as an illustrator and later as a water-colorist with remarkable success; the woods of eastern Canada[Pg 92] and the prairies of western Canada have no more sincere and tasteful delineator; and his historical studies in black and white truly depict the early life of this country. Robert Holmes taught nearly two generations of Upper Canada College boys to draw, and his studies of Canadian plant life have almost a spiritual essence. Though time must have worked its changes on them they seem the same to me as on that day, over thirty-four years ago, when I felt that shaking their hands was an initiation to the world of art. Another artistic friendship formed at the outset was with Carl Ahrens, a poet with the brush if ever there was one, and like most of the older Canadian artists, a man of truly native inspiration.

As I have said, Miss Elliott was retiring from the staff, and in the same week as I began my apprenticeship, another beginner,—my elder by nearly twenty years, but nevertheless a novice—arrived on the scene. She was Grace E. Denison, that wholesome buoyant woman whose pen name of "Lady Gay" soon became widely famous. I cherish a deep affection for her memory, for she was in those days almost a second mother to me. A more celebrated protégé of hers was Arthur Stringer. To her deep regret she had been denied children; and the mothering instinct was profound in her. Her desire to do things for young people was sincere and intense. Many women who are now settled down with growing families recall the debutante parties she gave yearly; and during the time of my early apprenticeship young girls who adored her were constantly running in and out of her office. The pen-name "Lady Gay", so perfectly suited to her personality, she took from Dion Boucicault's comedy, London Assurance, of which the witty Lady Gay[Pg 93] Spanker is the heroine. Her tongue was sharp, and her repartee quick, but at bottom she was all kindness, though rather proud of her skill in offence, when provoked. Very characteristic was a remark I once heard her make to a fellow newspaper woman, "Faith Fenton", of the Empire, now Mrs. J. N. E. Brown. Faith Fenton had been sent to interview the famous contralto singer, Agnes Huntingdon, at the request of Miss Huntingdon's manager, and had been treated with unnecessary rudeness. "I know how I'd get even with her," said Lady Gay. "How?" asked her friend. "I'd say that she has a bull neck," was the response. It was quite true, and I have no doubt that Lady Gay would have done so in the circumstances.

In handling social gossip in a manner that titillated curiosity without giving offence, no journalist was her equal, and despite her cynical joviality she was a woman of deep emotions who had seemingly been predestined to sorrow. She was a daughter of Canon Sandys, of Chatham, Ont., and of aristocratic Irish lineage, and in youth she had been engaged to a man she loved deeply. His accidental death shortly before the day of her marriage prostrated her for a long period. She cured herself of melancholy by the task of writing a novel, so excellent that it was immediately accepted by the old publishing firm of Belford. It was about to be put into the hands of the compositors when the Belford printing house was burned and the sole copy of the manuscript destroyed. She found it impossible to rewrite it. When she did marry, the union was not a success, and during the later years of her life she lived alone. She felt it cruelly that she was not told of her husband's illness, and on the day he was buried sat in long meditation by his coffin. She told me that[Pg 94] in that hour the sense came to her that all the little things that had separated them were forgiven and blotted out; and very soon she followed him. I had by that time again become her colleague; and on the last occasion when I saw her in life she came to the office in the gayest and kindliest of moods, with charming words even for those with whom she had been on rather difficult terms. That night she was taken ill in her lonely apartment and was dying after hours of agony, too weak even to use the telephone, before her condition was discovered.

Among the friends who used to come in to see Lady Gay in the old days of 1891 was another writer of aristocratic Irish descent, the late Katherine Blake-Coleman, beloved of thousands through her writings over the pen-name of "Kit". She was a discovery of E. E. Sheppard, who to his eternal honour always encouraged beginners and may be said to have discovered most of the writers who attained prominence in Canada in the period from 1885 to 1900. There was always a touch of mystery about "Kit". From her reminiscences of Irish life, in which she was at her best, it was plain that she as a girl lived in the same type of baronial hall and the same society as that described by George Moore in his many recollections of youth. I fancy it must have been in the neighbourhood of Connemara, for she used to dilate on the beauty of the peasant girls in that region. She was highly educated, and that she had spent a part of her life in Paris was also clear from her writings. Bernhardt was one of her close friends, and they used to see much of each other whenever the French tragedienne visited Canada. An acquaintance who in youth lived in Dublin told me once that she had been married to a very[Pg 95] prominent Irishman of international fame, long since dead, but he did not tell me the name because, as he averred, he had promised her never to reveal it. The motive of her desire for silence he never fathomed.

The brilliance and charm of two articles "Kit" wrote in 1890 for Saturday Night, one on Bohemian life in Paris and one on Sarasate in his younger days, attracted the attention of Christopher W. Bunting, who established her on the woman's page of the Mail, where she continued to write until her sudden death. Her page, which reflected a warm personality and a wonderfully stored mind, was a real "circulation-getter". Women whose husbands were opposed to the newspaper in politics insisted on having the Saturday issue; and it was the only feminine department I know of that was consistently read by men also. Her correspondence was enormous, and she occupied a favoured position in the newspaper world of Canada. She was sent to Europe and on distant assignments all over America, which gave her a great deal of experience on which to draw. In fact, we were all very envious of "Kit", but liked her extremely. She had a diffident nervous manner, but her speech was rich and caressing when she chose to talk to anyone she liked. Her sense of humour was as keen as that of Lady Gay, and they, after the Irish fashion, used to give each other "bars", but it never interfered with their intimacy.

Of all the friends of my apprenticeship days the one who became most famous and certain of a measure of immortality was Emily Pauline Johnson, daughter of G. H. M. Johnson, head chief of the Mohawks in his day. Already lyrics of hers had won a tribute from the British critic, Theodore Watts Dunton, who because[Pg 96] of her lineage had described her in the Athenaeum as in many respects the most interesting woman poet at that time living. A great many of the poems of Pauline Johnson which have since passed into popular literature and are constantly reprinted in all sorts of publications were originally published by Mr. Sheppard, who was the first to recognize her genius, and while I was with him it was my duty to fix them up for the compositors, with the cryptic markings which no doubt puzzle some writers who reclaim their manuscripts after publication. Some of these scripts would have a collector's value to-day, but few were preserved. I was told not long ago that a simple signature of Pauline Johnson's now commands a price of $5 and autograph letters a still higher figure. But, though some of us recognized her rare lyrical inspiration as early as the nineties, the future value of such scraps of paper was unrealized. The price she received for some of her most charming poems was absurdly low,—I recall making out a pay slip of $3 for "The Song My Paddle Sings"—but at that time it was not customary for Canadian editors to pay for poetry at all. To-day conditions are hardly improved, because many Canadian editors take pride in rejecting poetry altogether.

I never met any native-born Canadian who gave a more complete sense of aristocracy than Pauline Johnson, though when I first met her she was very poor. The Mohawk tribe, the dominant element of the Iroquois or Six Nations, are the nobility of the North American Indians, as their features show; and an old authority, the late Horatio Hale, to whom Pauline Johnson once introduced me, claimed that in their tribal councils they had achieved a form of popular[Pg 97] representation before such a political idea had taken actual form in England. This is as it may be, but the Mohawks have a fund of literary lore and balladry, not unlike that of the early Irish people. Much of it was imparted to Pauline Johnson by her grandfather, an aged warrior who had fought in the wars of 1812 and who lived until about 1875, when she was a girl of sixteen. The Mohawks also had a tribal music of their own; and my first meeting with the famous music critic, the late H. E. Krehbiel of the New York Tribune, was when he came to Canada with a Mr. Tunison to collect some of these musical themes, and naturally sought out Miss Johnson and her brothers.

Pauline Johnson's ancestors had for generations been chiefs of the Mohawks in Western New York State before the movement to Canada under Joseph Brant. They took their English name of Johnson from the great British pro-consul, Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Western New York before the revolutionary war, and held the Six Nations loyal to the British Crown. When the Mohawks were given grants of land in the Grand River country of Canada it was necessary for them to adopt English names, and admiration for Sir William Johnson had led many of them to adopt his cognomen. Chief G. H. M. Johnson was a man of high education who spoke English, French, and German, and as a young man had acted as an interpreter for an early Welsh missionary to Upper Canada, the Rev. Mr. Howells. In the Johnson home at Brantford was a mutilated wooden idol, the last, I was told, that had ever been worshipped by the Mohawks. To demonstrate to his fellow aborigines that nothing would happen if violence were offered to this idol, the young interpreter had taken a[Pg 98] hatchet and split it apart. This demonstration was credited with having helped to convert his tribesmen to Christianity.

Subsequently the young chief married Miss Howells, daughter of the missionary. I knew her well in her declining years and she was a most charming gentlewoman. Though Pauline was extremely proud of her Mohawk descent and attributed her literary powers thereto I think she owed something in that respect to the Howells strain. Howells, the missionary, had a brother who settled in Ohio, and became a noted editor. And his son, William Dean Howells, was assuredly the finest novelist that this continent has yet produced, if we except Henry James, whose best work is European rather than American, and Mark Twain, whose Huckleberry Finn is the greatest American novel, but whose essays in extended fiction were few. The long book-shelf of William Dean Howells will certainly rank in future times as the most complete, discerning, and vivacious chronicle of American society in the nineteenth century. His father, of whom he writes so beautifully in his reminiscences, was for some years American consul at Toronto in the eighties, and founded the Swedenborgian sect in Canada, which still survives. But I do not think that the Ohio branch of the Howells family quite forgave their cousin for having married an Indian chief, and Pauline Johnson received small encouragement from her famous relative in her early literary endeavours. Pauline Johnson's brothers, Beverly and Allan, tall wiry men of very distinguished appearance, used occasionally to visit Howells in New York, and one of them told me an amusing story of the novelist's distaste for lionization and the social life his wife enjoyed. "I was raised on[Pg 99] corn meal mush," he said, "and would like to live in the same simple way now, but my wife won't let me."

One of the many interesting souvenirs in the Johnson home which, when I knew the family, was on Napoleon Street, Brantford, was an autograph portrait and letter from Count von Bismarck. A German friend of Chief Johnson's had obtained a photograph of him in full regalia, and sent it to the Iron Chancellor. Bismarck, who I have heard from other sources, was in idle moments deeply interested in matters pertaining to North America, was delighted and courteously reciprocated. After the Chief's death the Johnson family became impoverished, but during Pauline's childhood and girlhood they had lived in a handsome home, "Chiefswood", occupying a beautiful site overlooking the Grand River. Here Chief Johnson had been accustomed to entertain eminent visitors. This early training gave Pauline a poise and social charm that was enhanced by her native feeling of aristocracy as a Mohawk Princess. Among the friends for whom she had cherished an affection as a child was Sir William Butler, a great soldier, who afterwards became very eminent in South Africa and whose wife, Elizabeth Thompson Butler, painted "The Roll Call" and other famous battle pieces. During the time Gen. Butler was stationed in Canada he used to go up to Chiefswood periodically to shoot. Sir Garnet Wolseley was another great soldier whom she had known as a child; and she cherished charming memories of Prince Arthur, afterward the Duke of Connaught, who had stayed at Chiefswood, on the occasion when he was inducted as a Chief of the Six Nations by Chief Johnson. Forty years afterward, the Duke of Connaught, while paying his farewell visit[Pg 100] to Vancouver, learned that Pauline Johnson was lying in hospital suffering from a malignant growth in the throat, and went to call on her. To the dying poet this act of kindness, signifying that she was not forgotten, brought happiness for weeks.

Pauline also knew many famous actors and actresses of the late Victorian period, for it was customary to entertain them at Chiefswood when they visited Brantford. Among her closest friends were the once famous Belgian artiste, Hortense Rhea, the delightful English comédienne, Rosina Vokes, and the lovely American actress, Belle Archer, who was, I think, Edward H. Sothern's first leading woman when he became a star. Whenever any one of these celebrities was playing in Toronto, Pauline Johnson was usually asked to come and stay with them. Once she took me to call on Madame Rhea, a lovely auburn-haired woman of exquisite social graces. I was then a shy lad under twenty, and the actress laughed very heartily at my deep blush when she said: "You are a ni-ice boy: I am going to keess you," and promptly saluted both cheeks. Belle Archer's physical loveliness was supreme, and I recall Pauline taking me to lunch with her when she was playing Maid Marian in Tennyson's rather thin poetic drama on the Robin Hood legends, The Foresters. The Robin Hood was a slim and handsome youth, a native of Guelph, Ontario, named William Flynn. He is now the famous character actor, William Courtleigh, and strangely enough I never met him again until after I had begun these pages, when I encountered him in the Lambs Club, New York. When I recalled the luncheon of long ago he said, "My God, that was thirty-five years ago," and was quite relieved when I said it was only thirty-three,—for in the[Pg 101] dominance of youth which prevails at the present time, Broadway actors do not like to be reminded of how long they have been at the game.

Pauline Johnson owed a debt of gratitude to Frank Yeigh, who discerned that better fortunes awaited her if she would give recitals throughout Canada of her own poetry. The result was that in a year or two she had saved enough money to go to London with a scrap book of fugitive verse and certain original manuscripts. The late John Lane of the Bodley Head was just then making a fight for the recognition of the younger poets, which did much to influence British literature in the nineties, and on meeting her at once arranged to publish a volume of her lyrics. The man to whom he assigned the task of selection from the material she had brought with her, was the ill-fated John Davidson, one of the most brilliant poets of the late nineteenth century. His Ballad of a Nun and Ballad of Tannhauser are magnificent expressions of his pagan creed. Pauline afterwards told me how fond she became of Davidson, a very brusque man with a broad Scottish accent, and characteristic frankness in expressing his opinions. Some of her lines he would damn emphatically, but would raise his voice in acclaim of the originality of others. The nineties in London was the age of the stylists who were straining to give freshness of interest to British prose and poesy,—the fruitful Yellow Book period,—and anything that savoured of freshness was sure of a welcome. Davidson, as those who are acquainted with his sad story are aware, became a suicide.

No Canadian who went to London up to her time received quite so warm a welcome as Pauline Johnson. Throughout the London season of 1893 she was a social[Pg 102] lioness—a woman who but two years previously could hardly afford the money to put stamps on return envelopes for her manuscripts. This London experience was, I think, the happiest episode of a rather sad life. One of the kindest of her hostesses was Lady Helen Blake, whose husband subsequently became Governor of Jamaica. Some years afterward "Kit" visited Jamaica on a newspaper mission, and when the hostess of the Government House at Kingston learned that she came from Canada and knew Pauline Johnson, her hospitality was generous. Another individual who was profoundly interested in the noble features and distinguished personality of the Canadian woman-poet was the actor George Alexander, not at that time knighted. He wished to have a full-length emotional drama made from a short story of hers, A Red Girl's Reasoning, of which the clash of tradition between white and red races was the theme. But the story, though it made an effective one-act sketch and was used in that way by Pauline Johnson, lacked sufficient material for the type of emotional play in which Alexander was at that time popular.

White Wampum, her first book of verse, beautifully produced by John Lane, was an immediate success from a critical standpoint, and is precious to-day, although I do not think first volumes of verse ever bring any very substantial rewards to the author.

I have met many literary women since, but none with quite so interesting a personality. By nature she was the soul of generosity, and money, when she had it, literally ran through her fingers. The greatness of her heart is shown by the fact that on one occasion, before she was famous, but had a few hundred dollars of her own, she paid out every cent of it to save from[Pg 103] prosecution a young bank clerk of her acquaintance, who had been guilty of peculation. She did it, too, without letting him know. When he was told by his employers who his benefactor was he was extremely grateful. In after years I asked her if the money was ever repaid her. Her face became pained, and she reluctantly said, "No; but let's not talk of it."

A most interesting experience was to drive through the Six Nations Reserve in Brant and Haldimand counties with Pauline Johnson and her brothers. All the Indian farmers, of course, knew them. One summer day we were driving along a road in Haldimand when Pauline said to me: "Did you know there were still pagans in this part of Canada?" On my expressing surprise she said, "Most of them here about are pagans; we will go into one of their houses, and over the fireplace you will see a turtle rattle; that is the instrument they use in their worship; but be sure not to comment on it." I forget whether the people were Onondagas or Tuscaroras. We alighted and Allan Johnson spoke in Indian to the housewife, who knew no English, asking permission to enter. It was accorded, and the interior of the log shanty was so clean that one might have eaten off the floor without qualms. By a sign Allan showed me a turtle rattle on the wall,—the shell of a great "snapper" with the neck pulled out to serve as a handle had been scooped out and filled with dried peas. Worshippers of that tribe used to shake this instrument rhythmically in their sacred dances, and they had, and may still have for aught I know, a "Long House" for such ceremonies. But the accessories which surrounded that particular instrument of pagan worship were rather extraordinary. Above it[Pg 104] was a framed coloured lithograph of William, Prince of Orange, "presented by the Hon. W. H. Montague, M.D., M.P." (at that time a member of the Federal Government). Beneath, pinned on the wall, were an Orange badge and another signifying membership in the East Haldimand Conservative Association—verily a strange mingling of ancient custom and modern politics.

CHAPTER VIII

TWO FAMOUS FIGURES: SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD AND GOLDWIN SMITH

My first experience of the ruses newspapers and especially weekly publications sometimes have to adopt to reconcile the date of publication with the chronology of events came three months after I commenced my journalistic apprenticeship, and the occasion was the death of Sir John A. Macdonald on June 6th, 1891. The greatest of all Canadian statesmen had been seized with apoplexy some days previously and lay unconscious at Ottawa. None of his doctors could say definitely just when death was likely to ensue; and the small, slow press on which Saturday Night was then issued, necessitated going to press forty-eight hours ahead of the day of issue. The problem (one that editors have to face every time a famous man is dying) was how to anticipate events. If the newspaper came out with an article assuming that the Prime Minister was still alive when he had been dead twenty-four hours, the effect would be disconcerting to those readers who did not know the routine of the publishing business. If on the other hand the article assumed that he was dead, while he was still alive, public sentiment would be outraged. Mr. Sheppard wrote in advance a very fine and discerning obituary editorial which he read to me, and then informed me that he had to go out of town. His instructions were that I should come down very early[Pg 106] on the morning of publication day and if Sir John were not dead, take his proof and use my ingenuity to amend it in such a way that the newspaper would not actually commit itself. It was a tricky job for a youngster, but I accomplished it in such a way as to win a compliment from the chief. As a matter of fact Sir John did not die until after the issue had been run off, but the average reader, his mind coloured by the news, probably assumed that it was a "rush" editorial written after that event. On many occasions I, like every other responsible newspaper man, have had to play similar tricks on the public, and in these matters intuition counts for a great deal.

The death of Sir John A. Macdonald, to which I alluded at the outset of this chapter, made remarkable changes in the Canadian political scene, and affected the fortunes of a great many public men. As it occurred just when I was making my beginnings in newspaper work I was destined to see much of the troubles that ensued during the next decade. The young reader of to-day cannot imagine how great a place Sir John filled in the minds of the Canadian public during his later years, or what a gap he left. I myself saw him but once, but his name was daily on every one's lips, and to vast numbers of the community he seemed the prop which supported the whole structure of Canadian nationality. By his opponents his supposedly unscrupulous cunning and insouciance in the face of attack were regarded as begotten of Lucifer. His reputation has grown with the years that have so amply justified his foresight; but forty years ago he was pursued by personalities in a degree that would be astonishing to-day. Yet his magnetism was such that those who were his friends loved him for his very[Pg 107] weaknesses. They justified his most characteristic saying uttered in response to a man who said he was glad to support him when he was right,—"That is not enough, I want friends who will support me when I am wrong." The power of his criticism was vital even after death. I know of the case of one widely known Canadian, a very able, ambitious man, whose career was detrimentally affected by a single phrase uttered by the old chieftain. When Sir John, with the assistance of friends, founded the Empire newspaper in 1887, as official organ of the Conservative party, the name of this brilliant, progressive journalist was suggested as editor-in-chief. The Prime Minister announced his veto with the words, "That young gentleman is a footpad". The epithet stuck for thirty years. I never learned what event had caused Sir John to utter his condemnation, but his veto was an error in judgment, for the story of the Empire would have been more lustrous had the suggestion been adopted.

Even school boys were excited over the Jesuit Estates Bill controversy in the late eighties, and I well recall how Sir John Macdonald made many people feel ridiculous by the contemptuous speech with which he closed the debate in the House of Commons. He told an old story of a Jew who went into a restaurant and in a wayward mood ordered ham. While he was eating a terrific thunder-storm occurred, and the startled Jew exclaimed, "All this noise over a little bit of ham!" Such a wheeze coming after all the orators of the House had been thundering for days made every one appear a little silly. This type of cool and calculated levity always exasperated Sir John's opponents beyond words.

Years after the Jesuits Estates controversy was dead, I heard an inside version from a veteran Roman Catholic journalist which showed how ridiculous the whole row really was. The dispute arose over the proposal of the government of the province of Quebec to pay a claim of $300,000 or $400,000 to the Jesuit Order, outstanding since the days of the French régime. In certain ultra-Protestant circles the very name "Jesuit" is regarded as Satanic, despite the glorious history of the Order's early missionary endeavours in Canada. While the same prejudice could not exist among Roman Catholics, it is a known fact that other Orders regard the Jesuits with considerable jealousy on account of their superior culture and enterprise. In Quebec forty years ago there was at least one order much more powerful and influential than the Jesuits. This organization was strongly opposed to the Jesuit claim, and if Ontario had left the issue alone it had little chance of being recognized. The proposal to pay the claim was as good as dead when the Orange politicians took it up. This swung popular sentiment in Quebec to the side of the Jesuits and when the demand came that Sir John should veto the Jesuit Estates Bill, the proposal was properly resented as an unjustified and bigoted interference with provincial rights. Thus, though they did not know it, the pulpiteers and politicians who railed against the bill in reality rendered staunch service to the Jesuit Order.

Five months before Sir John's death there were stormy scenes in Toronto on the occasion of his exposure of annexation activities, when he uttered the famous slogan, "A British subject I was born; a British subject I shall die", and held up a pamphlet written by the late Edward Farrer, at that time an editorial[Pg 109] writer on the Globe, in which it was suggested that the United States force Canada into annexation by cutting off the bonding privileges, by which in winter months the ports of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard are open to use by Canadian importers and exporters. In his reminiscences Sir John Willison relates that public excitement impelled the owners of the Globe to secure police protection for their premises, although they themselves knew nothing of the pamphlet. The speech was delivered from the stage of the old Academy of Music on the site of what is now the Princess Theatre, Toronto. Though in the past thirty years nearly all the great actors of our time have been seen on the same spot, nothing of a mimic order has equalled the dramatic effect of the old Chieftain's disclosure.

Some sticklers for ideals censured Sir John because the pamphlet in question was stolen from the store room of the publishing house where it had been printed and where it lay awaiting distribution. In after years I learned something of the printer who secretly accomplished the theft from the office of Hunter, Rose & Co. and sold it to the Conservative organization. He was given a government job at Ottawa, and some months later a member of the firm of Hunter, Rose & Co. threw out a hint to the Dominion Police that he was worth watching. A search of his rooms was made at the instance of Col. Percy Sherwood, and it was found that he had stolen a large batch of the private correspondence of his ministerial chief, Hon. John Haggart. The same firm had a similar experience with another printer who, unlike the thief just alluded to, was a pillar of the Methodist Church he attended. It occurred five years[Pg 110] before the incident of the Farrer pamphlet, shortly after Sir Rider Haggard leaped into fame with his novel, King Solomon's Mines. Naturally the publication of its sequel Allan Quatermain, was awaited with intense interest, and the copyright laws were then in so loose a state in the United States that it was necessary to bring out new books with rigid secrecy in order to prevent piracy. It was arranged that Allan Quatermain should be issued simultaneously at London, New York, and Toronto, and the date of issue in all three cities was known to the trade. There was at that time in Chicago a publishing firm engaged in piracy, one of whose members had connections in Canada. A week or more before the day on which Allan Quatermain was to go on sale, the Chicago pirates sent an emissary to Toronto who bribed this particular printer to steal the proofs. The theft was easily accomplished and the proofs were not entrusted to the mails. The agent took them to Chicago where a big staff of compositors had been assembled. Haggard's novel was set, printed, and bound in a very short time, and was on the market more than forty-eight hours before the honest edition, issued I think by Harper and Brothers. Since the pirated edition was much cheaper, the sales of the regular edition were diminished, and the thief remained in the employ of the Toronto publishing house unsuspected.

In connection with the theft of the Farrer pamphlet, Goldwin Smith, who was suspected of having not a little to do with the project of circulating it, was deeply incensed and never forgave Sir John, who at one time had been a close friend, for what he deemed an act of dishonour in "receiving stolen goods". He was credited with a rather amusing aphorism. The same[Pg 111] printing house had not long previously published Sir Oliver Mowat's booklet Evidences of Christianity. Appearing as it did on the eve of a general election in Ontario Sir Oliver's excursion into theology had excited some derision. Goldwin Smith, in speaking of the theft of the Farrer pamphlet, said that the thief had first come on the Evidences and "by a strange assumption mistaken it for a political brochure". The subtle irony of this comment was perhaps more easily grasped then than now.

In my year of apprenticeship with E. E. Sheppard I had glimpses of Goldwin Smith, who was an occasional visitor to the office, and seemed to enjoy "Don's" breezy, independent commentary on things in general. Together they staged the first and last attempt in modern days to run a business man of the highest eminence for Mayor of Toronto in the person of the late Sir Edmund Osler, who at that time had not been knighted. There were committee meetings of the "intelligentsia" every day or so in the office of Mr. Sheppard, at which Goldwin Smith usually presided, but as the event proved they were quite out of touch with popular opinion, then as now, inimical to a "silk stocking" candidate. In the business office was John A. Harkins, still a prominent Liberal and at that time a merry, amusing young man who had enjoyed a complete training in practical politics. Harkins, whose humorous sallies were a continual delight to me, used to wink when he would see the notables assembling, and say, "What they should do is get out among the boys, instead of discussing the millennium they are trying to start." The defeat of Osler had unquestionably a bad effect on municipal life in Toronto, since it discouraged business men of eminence from seeking election for[Pg 112] many a year, and a financier of his ability was sorely needed in the boom days of that era. Mr. Osler later entered politics as a candidate for the House of Commons, but did not rely on a committee of intelligentsia. He left his election to the war organizers and remained unbeatable until the day of his retirement.

Once after Goldwin Smith had left his office, Mr. Sheppard said to me, "I'm very sorry for that man". It seemed rather a ridiculous assertion, for to my youthful eyes the former Oxford professor led an ideal life. He occupied the most attractive home in Toronto; he was the host of nearly every celebrity who came to Canada; his means were large; he had ample leisure for scholarly pursuits; he could travel where and when he wished; his abilities, if not his opinions, were universally respected. Surely an ideal existence in the eyes of any young man of literary ambitions,—a condition of felicity to which few earthly sojourners attain. And so I asked Mr. Sheppard why anyone had to be sorry for Goldwin Smith. "He is a disappointed man," said Mr. Sheppard; "he thinks that with his abilities he should be filling a much greater place in the world's affairs." It was a very shrewd and accurate estimate of the mental attitude of the "Sage of the Grange". And perhaps Mr. Sheppard's clairvoyance was the more accurate because he had within him the seeds of the same malady, public ambitions which, thwarted, embittered his later years. In his memoirs Goldwin Smith speaks with extreme contempt for the whole social circle which surrounded him during his long residence in Toronto. And when I think of how people used to mention his views and utterances almost with bated breath, and thrust him into the limelight on every public occasion as "Exhibit A" to prove[Pg 113] the city's distinction and culture, his words savour of ingratitude.

Arnold Haultain, for many years his secretary and later his biographer, more than hints that in Goldwin Smith's incessant though at times covert support of the annexation movement, he cherished the dream that if it were ever accomplished the people of this continent would be so grateful that they would elect him President,—which shows how far out of touch with realities even the finest minds may become. His friendship with Sir John and his advocacy of protection in the seventies is now known to have been due to his belief that it would tend to detach Canada from Great Britain through the creation of trade barriers. When in the later nineties I became a member of the staff of the Toronto Mail and Empire the office was replete with traditions associated with Goldwin Smith and he sometimes visited us in a friendly way to have a chat. For the Empire newspaper before it was merged with the Mail, he had an extreme dislike. I was once sent to interview him for that newspaper on his return from a trip to Europe, and was greeted by a polite but firm refusal, although the other newspapers were honoured with a delightful discourse. Of the Mail office he had been an habitué from the earliest days of his arrival in Canada. Whether this friendship would have continued had a fortunate typographical error not occurred, is doubtful. On one occasion in the seventies the late T. C. Patteson, one of the famous early editors of the Mail wrote an editorial containing an allusion to Goldwin Smith's pessimism and mentioning that he possessed "an heritage of woe"—an allusion to his father's suicide. Mr. Patteson's handwriting was so[Pg 114] obscure that the phrase appeared as "an heritage of love". The editor stormed over the error; but had it not occurred relations would assuredly have been severed; for Goldwin Smith was very sensitive about his father's death, and felt that it had debarred him from a public career in Great Britain,—a curious obsession.

During the period from 1886 to 1895 when the Mail, originally the Conservative organ, opposed that party, it doubly endeared itself to the "sage of the Grange", who was a staunch believer in independent journalism. His friendship almost wrecked it, for he nearly succeeded in bringing it into the annexation movement. Some of its staff were more or less mixed up in petty conspiracies with the late Charles A. Dana, of the New York Sun, and Francis Wayland Glenn, of Brooklyn, a former member of the Canadian House of Commons to bring about that end. It is not generally known that Goldwin Smith was the author of many editorials on various questions which appeared in the Mail at that period. It is sad to have to say it, but Goldwin Smith was a much more vitriolic writer under cover of anonymity than in his signed articles. He was the author of probably the most savage editorial that ever appeared in the Mail, in which Sir Charles Tupper was dubbed "The Prince of Political Cracksmen". So long as Tupper lived this editorial was a source of embarrassment to the newspaper. In both Tupper's campaigns against Laurier, in 1896 and 1900, the Mail and Empire, back in the fold once more, of course strongly supported him, and the old editorial was dug out and broadcasted through Canada. In many parts of the country it was no doubt accepted by voters as a current[Pg 115] expression of opinion. Needless to say it was a gross libel on one of the ablest and most courageous of Canadian statesmen.

Mr. Arthur Wallis, for many years editor of the Mail and Empire after the death of the late Christopher W. Bunting told me of another grossly libellous editorial, from the pen of Goldwin Smith that almost got into print. It dealt with municipal politics and was liberal in abuse of a certain public figure. The author brought it into the office one afternoon when Mr. Bunting was in rather a hilarious and reckless mood. It was so pungent that he said, "That's great; it will be in the paper to-morrow morning," marking instructions to that effect on the copy. It chanced that Mr. Wallis, then a junior on the editorial page, was entrusted with the task of making it up that night. When he encountered the proof with the emphatic "MUST" on it, meaning that it should appear even if everything else was left out, he naturally read it and was appalled at its violence. Visions of expensive libel suits and elaborate apologies came before his mind. He could not get hold of Mr. Bunting by 'phone and though it was a serious step for a junior to cancel explicit instructions from the editor-in-chief he resolved to take the risk of leaving it out. The next morning he came down in fear and trembling, and was called into Mr. Bunting's office. "What became of Goldwin Smith's editorial which I marked 'Must'?" the editor asked. Wallis answered that he had feared Mr. Bunting had not read it carefully, and had assumed responsibility for holding it over. "My God, boy, you saved my life," said Bunting, "I have not slept a wink since three o'clock this morning. I wakened up in the night and suddenly the whole thing came back to me.[Pg 116] I lay there dreading the arrival of the newspaper, and you can judge of my relief when I found it had been omitted. Never hesitate to use your own judgment again, Wallis."

Going through the Morgan collection of manuscripts in the New York Public Library recently I saw a manuscript, "Berlin and Afghanistan", by Goldwin Smith, the collector's value of which lies in the fact that it never succeeded in finding a publisher. It was locked up in a glass case, and I could not help wondering what it contained that it should have been suppressed.

Goldwin Smith dealt rather a harsh blow to the city in which he resided so long, and to the University whose staff had always delighted to honour him, when he left a large fortune to Cornell University at Ithaca, N.Y., where he had been for a brief period professor of history, many years before. The injustice of the gift was emphasized by the fact that Cornell was in no need of endowments, whereas University College has always been in straitened circumstances. A fair division at least would have been acceptable. After his wife's death Goldwin Smith grew more discontented with Toronto than ever, and announced his intention of ending his days at Ithaca. An accident followed by a lingering illness prevented his carrying out this intention. A Scottish newspaper friend of mine made a very shrewd comment on the bequest to Cornell, when he said: "It's hard luck that Goldwin Smith did not go to live at Cornell University. In three months time he would have become so sore at not receiving enough attention that he would have changed his will in favour of the University of Toronto." Beyond a doubt that is what would have happened. Discontent with his surroundings was a[Pg 117] ruling phase of his temperament. In his Oxford days he had little but dispraise for that University; yet as a voluntary exile in Canada, he wrote of it in phrases of haunting beauty.

There is a mistaken impression that the Toronto Art Gallery and Grange Park was given to the city by Goldwin Smith; the donor was really Mrs. Goldwin Smith, as a great memorial tablet shows, and the property was originally that of her first husband, William Henry Boulton. Mrs. Goldwin Smith merely deputed her husband to carry out her intentions. The late Sir Edmund Walker, who with the late E. F. B. Johnston, K.C., had been instrumental in securing a promise of the benefaction for the Art Gallery, told me that they had considerable difficulty in getting the old scholar to make the proper provisions. It was not that he desired to violate his wife's clearly expressed intentions, but, as old men do, he kept putting it off from day to day. Then the provision he proposed was so vague that it was doubtful whether the Trustees of the Art Gallery would have had a clear title; and there were no safeguards in Goldwin Smith's suggested codicil to compel the city to carry out its just obligations in the matter. Finally Sir Edmund persuaded him to allow Z. A. Lash, K.C., to draft a clause in his will covering the gift. Mr. Lash who was unequalled anywhere in the art of drafting a tight and fast agreement or contract, struck while the iron was hot, and thus a fine art museum and a beautiful public playground were secured to the citizens of Toronto for all time.

Goldwin Smith himself was very deficient in artistic taste. His dining-room sheltered daubs, copies of portraits of the leaders of the Cromwellian revolution of the seventeenth century. The originals were probably[Pg 118] made by journeymen limners and the copies are worse. I have always imagined that the daily contemplation of these grotesque "objects of art", still compulsorily preserved in an ante-room to the Art Gallery, gave a bilious colour to his thought.

When he wished to be mischievous, the old gentleman could be almost diabolical. I remember such an occasion at a closing exercise for divinity students in the educational centre of Methodism, Victoria College. Goldwin Smith had come as a guest unprepared to speak, but Chancellor Burwash urged him to do so. At last rising and addressing the young men who had just received their degrees as Bachelors of Divinity, and had been quite unctuously dedicated to the service of dogmatic religion, the great man commenced to relate reminiscences of theological controversies in his youth. "I recall the day," he said, "when the news was whispered through the streets of Oxford that John Henry Newman had gone over to Rome. There were many troubled hearts among us that night; and there were those who feared that the days of the Church of England were numbered. But the Church of England has survived as churches have a way of surviving, and this proves the comparatively small importance of theological dogmas in their affairs." With further illustrations he left the unmistakable impression that creeds were mostly nonsense anyway, and wound up, "When you come to my years most of you will no doubt realize that, after all, reason is the only guide".

Such a rejection of the whole theory of revelation within the walls of a theological college was appalling to everyone except the reporters, who were enjoying the fun. Poor Chancellor Burwash, troubled in spirit and at a loss for words, got up and tried to make a defence[Pg 119] of faith, but the day was ruined for him; and Goldwin Smith sat ironically smiling as the Chancellor sought for terms to refute him without becoming impolite to a distinguished visitor.

The shade of Disraeli must laugh, if shades do laugh, at the Nemesis which has overtaken Grange Park, where the old scholar loved to stroll and reflect under the elms, and where eminent men like Matthew Arnold and John Morley in days gone by strolled and discoursed with him. In their famous controversy over an invidious reference to him in one of Disraeli's novels, Goldwin Smith described the taunt as "the stingless insult of a coward". But as one of his oldest friends said to me, "the sting lasted all his life". It used to take the form of outbursts against the Jews. On several occasions he wrote articles condoning Russian pogroms, and in private conversation used to suggest that the rite of circumcision should be amplified to include sterilization. To-day Grange Park is the chief playground of the little children of Russian and Polish Jews whose homes envelop the old colonial estate on every side.

Yet, despite the bitterness with which his inner nature was stored, no more courteous and stately gentleman than Goldwin Smith ever lived. He was a most entertaining man. At the period when I was one of the editors of the Mail and Empire he would sometimes come into my office and chat. I remember that on one occasion he was extremely anxious that we should oppose the prohibition movement, which had already become formidable. He came armed with blue books and reports showing its failures and hypocrisies. He was rather disgusted when I told him that, although I had nothing to do with fixing the policy of the paper,[Pg 120] I was sure that such a step would be regarded as impolitic, especially in view of the newspaper's party connections. "Ah! politics, politics, always politics," he sighed.

He grew quite droll in discussing the municipal elections which were then approaching, and said, "I have lived nearly thirty-five years in Toronto and have never, so far as I am aware, cast an intelligent vote." (This was of course an inverted form of swank, for his judgment in men had often been excellent.) "I usually leave it to Chinn," he went on; "Chinn is a most excellent butler, and he is better equipped than I to choose the proper candidates. So I say, 'Chinn, whom shall I vote for?' and follow his advice. But even Chinn is fallible! He once told me to vote for E. A. Macdonald for Mayor—and I learned afterward that the man was insane."

The late Edward Farrer was full of good stories about Goldwin Smith, whom he used frequently to assist in preparing articles for the English reviews when old age or ill health made him indolent. Farrer would be sent for, and would find the old scholar sitting wrapped in blankets with his feet in a mustard bath. "Ah, Farrer," he would sigh, "I fear the inevitable dissolution is at hand". His adoring wife would say: "Now Goldwin, you must not talk such nonsense; you know you will be better to-morrow if you obey my orders." "Don't delude yourself, my dear," he would reply, "dissolution is inevitable; we must face it bravely." Presently Farrer would tell him a lively bit of political gossip, or invent it if necessary, and the subject of dissolution would be forgotten.

The most amusing story that Farrer ever told me was one relating to Joseph Haycock, the noted farmer[Pg 121] politician, who led the Patrons of Industry in the Ontario Legislature from 1894 to 1902. Haycock was a man of fine mentality, with a racy, original mode of speech, but a typical "side-liner". He was and is entirely indifferent to convention and used to carry a large pair of wire cutters to tear off his chewing tobacco with. He explained that his teeth were getting too worn to bite it, and that one was always dropping and losing pen-knives; whereas with a pair of wire-cutters, the noise they made when they dropped was a safeguard against loss. At the time of which I speak, a quarter of a century or more ago, his teeth were incisive enough for all practical uses.

Goldwin Smith, who always took an interest in the agrarian movement and started the Farmers Sun with his own money to promote it, was attracted by reports of Haycock's terse and amusing speeches. "I am interested in this man Haycock," he said to Farrer one day. "Do you know him?" "I do indeed," said the journalist. "He's the best company in the Legislature."

"Well, bring him over some afternoon; and by the way, does he take a drink?" "Does a duck swim?" was the retort. Thus when Farrer brought Haycock to the Grange a day or so later Chinn was instructed to provide the best whiskey in the cellar.

After introductions the old professor said: "I cannot drink whiskey myself, but I have some which my more fortunate friends tell me is excellent. May I offer you some?" Assent was readily given, and as the farmer leader took the decanter in hand he gave it a rapid shake before pouring out a libation. As the conversation proceeded Goldwin Smith pressed his guest to have another, and then another, and the pouring[Pg 122] was always preceded by a shaking of the decanter, at which the host would give a little jump. Finally Haycock was obliged by legislative duties to take his leave. "A most interesting man," said Goldwin Smith, "but tell me, Farrer, why did he shake the decanter. Was there anything wrong with the whiskey?" "No," explained Farrer, "but you see Joe is used to drinking farmers' whiskey down in Frontenac county, and from force of habit he gives it a shake to bring up the tansy blossom from the bottom of the bottle and make it bite!"

The allusion to "farmers' whiskey" reminds me of a story told me by the late R. H. Bowes, who was at one time adjutant of the Queen's Own Rifles. He was at Niagara Camp with his commanding officer, the late Col. Arthurs, and strolling about the old village they stopped at an inn and had a drink. On taking a large "shot" of whiskey Col. Arthurs was seized with violent pains. The hotel proprietor rushed in from the office to see what was the matter. "Let me see that bottle," he said to the bartender, and inspecting it exclaimed, "My God, boy, you've given the colonel the farmers' whiskey. Did you want to kill him?"

CHAPTER IX

LEARNING LIFE WITH A NOTE BOOK

My youthful ambitions had never included a desire to be a newspaper man in the ordinary acceptance of the term. I wanted to be a good writer—a stylist if you please—and I had been warned that if I took the plunge into daily journalism, in Canada or for that matter anywhere else, I might as well say good-bye to literary aspiration. And that advice was good, for not one in a hundred young men of literary aptitude survives the grind of newspaper routine. So far as I myself am concerned, my obstinate clinging to artistic interests in a calling which has to do with them but remotely, has been a financial handicap. If I have given readers any pleasure through discourses on the several arts during the past three decades I have the additional satisfaction of knowing that it has been a free gift to them; for my income from the newspaper business would have been considerably larger if I had never let my thoughts dwell on music and pictures and other beautiful things,—I was almost going to say, if I had never read a serious book. Many times in years gone by friends expostulated with me at the folly of a man who had developed considerable aptitude for the routine of newspaper direction wasting his time on interests to which the majority of men and women, are, however they may disguise it, indifferent. Bad business truly, in a country in the making like Canada. But the answer[Pg 124] is that I have lived and have arrived at middle age, retaining a youthful delight in new and beautiful sensations. To-day I encounter friends of my boyhood who in the process of making money have missed these things, and who sometimes tell me they envy me my interests and enthusiasms, because the prospect of old age finds them arid of intellectual and emotional resources. But if I have preserved these resources it has been in spite of, rather than because of, my connection with newspaper work.

The mistake I made thirty years ago was not in failing to go to New York to try to live by my pen as so many discouraged seniors advised in those days; but in not seeking a career in London. As late as the close of the South African war a good friend who had passed through London on his way home from Capetown, urged me strongly to pull up stakes and try my luck there. He said it was the natural field for a man of my tastes and aptitudes, because there I would find the largest assemblage of people interested in the same things that I have always been interested in, that exists anywhere. It is a fact that most of the Canadians of my own generation, who while still young went to London, did well, though at first they had a hard struggle. The broadening of Britain's imperial outlook in the social sense long since made the Canadian of average vitality a welcome figure in London and in the golden years between 1894 and 1914, London was indeed a happy hunting ground for the man from afar who had anything to say and a measure of ability in saying it. But I have always been a home-bird, rootedly Canadian, and subject to nostalgia in even brief absences. In 1900, when I was so strongly urged to pull up stakes and go abroad, I had a young[Pg 125] wife and the hope of a family some day and I did not feel like taking the risk. Perhaps my election was lucky; because fate has since dealt sore blows to Britain and had I gone there I should probably now be endeavouring to send my children back to Canada in their own interests.

In 1892 circumstances drove me into daily journalism with no particular desire to shine therein. As a lad in the accountant's office I had already become acquainted with several reporters, when they called in to enquire about insolvencies; their calling exercised no fascination over me. When I first came to mingle among newspaper men as a working associate it secretly amused me to discern that they held a much higher opinion of their importance in the world than the business and social community with which they were surrounded actually accorded them.

A singular phenomenon of the newspaper business in all the larger cities of this continent is that as they have increased in wealth and population the number of newspapers has decreased, and the vigour and distinction of those which have survived has steadily declined. In 1892 when Toronto boasted but one quarter of its present population (if that), there were six daily newspapers and within a year or so, when the Star came into existence, seven. As I look back, the comparative youthfulness of the men who dominated the journalist scene, and unquestionably exercised a great influence over Canadian opinion surprises me. The picturesque Mr. Sheppard, whom the community feared if it did not admire, was still under forty. His only equal in enterprise and progressive instinct was William Findlay Maclean,—now the Nestor of the House of Commons, and at that time just breaking[Pg 126] into politics, at the age of about thirty-five. Down in the Globe Office young Mr. Willison, now Sir John, was proving that youth was no handicap to his filling the shoes of a famous father of Confederation, the Hon. George Brown. In the Telegram office, John Ross Robertson, himself in middle age, had discerned the ability to appeal to the sympathies of the masses of an aggressive young Liberal, destined to become the most violent of Tories, John R. Robinson. Full maturity was to be found chiefly in the Mail office, conducted by Christopher W. Bunting, and that journal was still revelling in the fact that it had shaken off Conservative allegiance. The official organ of the Conservative party, the Empire, was conducted by the late David Creighton, a man of most attractive personal character, but a rural journalist by instinct, who never felt quite at home in city newspaper work. Mr. Creighton to young eyes seemed older than he really was, and he had a staff of gifted young men around him. Indeed, throughout its brief career of seven years, I do not think any Canadian newspaper was ever so well endowed in personnel as the Empire. There remained the News, always hobbled in some way or another, but edited by a cultured man and prince of good fellows, Thomas A. Gregg, who because of the shrewdness that lay back of his genial presence was known as "the Fat Mephistopheles". Among the men who held responsible positions there was hardly one who had reached the age of fifty. That condition is no longer true, because the men who came forward in the late eighties and the nineties have for the most part shown a quality of vitality that has kept them at the top. Many of my pals of thirty years ago when we were all cubs together are conducting newspapers in[Pg 127] various parts of Canada; others have won distinction in business; others are valuable civil servants; and a few are well known in other parts of the world. Few indeed became actual failures in life, though when I entered daily newspaper work in 1892 some family friends implored my parents not to let me continue in such a "sink of iniquity". My father did not disguise his displeasure, though business depression was so widespread in those days of "blue ruin speeches" that he hesitated to advise me where to turn.

Mr. Sheppard after a year had decided that he could do nothing more for me in his "kindergarten" and advised me to "get in touch with life". For that end he said, and said truly, that there was no better school than the calling of a newspaper reporter. Moreover, he wanted as deputy an editorial writer who could supply on his front page whenever he felt like laying off or going on a journey. He had found one in a bright and original young country editor who had run a newspaper of his own in the village of Pickering, Joseph T. Clark. Countless Canadians know Joe Clark—despite the fact that he has for years been a recluse in his sanctum in the office of the Toronto Star—a man about whom there is nothing small except his stature. It was characteristic of Joe that when he found that his acceptance of a permanent position under Mr. Sheppard meant my departure, he should bestir himself to find me a post. He had been writing on the World for a few months and had formed a friendship with its managing editor, the late John A. Ewan. Ewan had manifold duties. He used to perform the city editor's task of assigning reporters to their duties and handled much of their copy; he wrote editorials; he met the public; and he supervised the[Pg 128] Sunday World, a small weekly which W. F. Maclean has established as on open défi to the rigid Sabbatarianism which then prevailed in Canada. Mr. Maclean had even tried to sell it on Sunday, but the law had stepped in. The Lord's Day Alliance could not prevent his using the word "Sunday", though it tried to do so; nor could it prevent him publishing it so late on Saturday night that it would be read on Sunday. It was to read the proofs, clip stories, and write special articles on the Sunday World, and make up its few pages, usually six or eight, that Mr. Ewan engaged me. Consequently Saturday was a long day for me; but I had a good deal of leisure on other days of the week. Therefore in a newspaper office where there was always a shortage of reporters for financial reasons, it was not long before I was hooked on to the reportorial staff as well. In that office anyone was likely to be assigned to any kind of duty at any time, and within a month after my arrival I was even drafted into the task of writing an occasional editorial. For a lad under twenty to be asked to contribute his opinions in a daily paper everyone was talking about was quite an exalting experience.

I doubt if there has ever been a newspaper office anywhere that was run in a more rough and ready manner or was such a gathering place for interesting characters, as the old World office of the nineties. Situated near the corner of King and Yonge streets, the very heart of the city's life, its accessibility made it a place of visitation at all hours of the day or night. The premises had been a retail shop in other days; in the forward part, the counters where clerks had sold dry goods or groceries still remained and this served as the business office. Behind, an ordinary mercantile[Pg 129] store room had been converted into editorial quarters with very bare furnishings. A lane ran alongside from which strangers could walk in off the street upon the staff, without any of the formalities which attend admission to an editorial sanctum to-day. When it was necessary for an editor to carry on a confidential conversation, the participants got into a corner and talked in whispers, or more frequently adjourned to the hotel next door. There was a good deal of drinking among the lesser members of the staff, but the paper always came out and somewhere on its front page there was always something fresh and pungent to interest the public. For the great virtue of the World office was that not only W. F. Maclean himself, but all his senior aides were first rate journalists by instinct, with their fingers on the public pulse, and an inherent ability to distinguish what was news from what was not, and "dish it up" in a vitally interesting way. No wonder, when I labour through tedious columns of undigested detail about some trivial story that could be more effectively handled in a third or a quarter of a column, present-day journalism seems to me flat and mushy.

The first morning of my arrival in the World office I got an inkling of the "shirt sleeves" method by which it was conducted. Throughout the three or four years that I was connected with that newspaper, it had seldom supplies of paper for more than a few issues and sometimes barely enough for one. There was a commotion in the lane outside the editorial room; a roll of paper had arrived, and the teamster and his assistant were having difficulty about rolling it through a window into the press-room. They were making artificial difficulties, as teamsters in expectation[Pg 130] of beer were apt to do in those days. A sturdily built, youngish man with strongly modelled features and eye-brows that stood out like antennae, was looking cynically on. Presently he became impatient and said, "Give me that crowbar." He seized it and in short order had rolled the paper into the cellar single-handed. It was the redoubtable "W. F." himself, who although a Bachelor of Arts and a gold medallist of the University of Toronto could never refrain from turning his hand to any thing around his shop. I have seen him seize a broom and sweep a clutter of discarded "flimsy" into a corner; and he was always sitting down at somebody's desk to scribble with a stubby lead pencil some idea that had come into his head. Nobody from the office boy to the janitor thought of addressing him by any other title than "W. F." This was the "live wire" who in the Federal general elections of 1891 had astonished the community by his "cheek" in contesting the supposedly safe Liberal riding of East York with a former Prime Minister of Canada, the venerated Hon. Alexander Mackenzie himself, and to come within 25 votes of being elected. Shortly afterward the noble and solitary Mackenzie died; and one of the gala nights of my first year in the World office was that on which the news came in that Maclean had redeemed the old constituency for the Conservative party. It was no easy battle; for the death of Sir John Macdonald had left the party at sixes and sevens. Maclean was far from popular among the "elder statesmen" of Toryism, because of his known radical ideas. For the most part he had to depend on the oratorical services of ambitious lads from the law school; and he had no money of his own. There has never been in this country[Pg 131] quite so clever a candidate in the art of winning and holding the votes of an electorate as William Findlay Maclean. In thirty-three years he has never known defeat. I do not know on how many occasions his constituency has been gerrymandered or had its boundaries altered. The original riding of East York to which he was elected in 1892 is now so split up that its various sections form the whole or parts of eight Ridings. Its population was then 25,000, and it now numbers 400,000. At each succeeding election he has had new constituents to face; and no candidate has ever encountered so much opposition in his own party; and yet he has always won elections. This record of victory is the more interesting when it is added that Maclean never stopped for a second to consider whether any policy he espoused was popular or not; and never joined a secret society or other organization through which he could exercise a "pull". I was never more bitterly disgusted with my own calling than when the news came that after forty-two years of struggle he had lost his newspaper. It was an inspiration to work under him, although with his new absorption in politics we saw less and less of him; and I honestly believe that the scores of able newspaper men who served on the World at various times remember that service with pride. It is something after all, even when the pay envelope fails to arrive promptly to feel that you are in contact with a directing mind of real distinction and vitality—and the mind of W. F. Maclean assuredly was that during his career as editor. Had he stuck to that calling alone, and stood aside from the turmoils and conspiracies of politics, I am satisfied that the World would have survived. The Canadian community is[Pg 132] unquestionably the poorer without it; and the main cause of its downfall was the divided ambition of its chief. The battles he fought for the public ownership of public utilities, for such boons as Sunday street cars, for the development of the beautiful suburban environs of Toronto, have all borne prodigious fruit, but only from the few has he ever received a word of gratitude; and by many of his contemporaries in the newspaper calling he was regarded with jealousy and suspicion.

In his prime Maclean was a fighter who could deal blows as effectively as his own claymore-wielding ancestors, for he is a lineal descendant of the old Highland chieftains, the Macleans of Lochbury, "Maclean of the Bloody Hand" among them. You may learn something of the Macleans in William Black's novel Macleod of Dare, and it was this clan which finished the work in connection with the destruction of the Spanish Armada, when some of Philip's galleons were blown northward into the Hebrides. "W. F." never signed an article, but his "signature" was the kind of type he used, a fine, small nonpareil to distinguish it from the other contents of the sheet; and for years his ironical jibes at public men, recognizable as his work alone, were a feature of the newspaper. I can see him still working with his stubby lead-pencil, a diabolical grin on his face signifying complete absorption in his task, grinding out little witty paragraphs shrewd as rapier thrusts. And he often took this means of forecasting important news that was not ripe for disclosure in the ordinary columns.

For some years after its foundation in 1879 with a few hundred dollars of borrowed money, the World had been a family affair. The father, John Maclean, a[Pg 133] most gifted writer on economic subjects, had at one time conducted a newspaper in Hamilton, Ont. His position as the first journalistic advocate of the policy of protection for Canada is a matter of history, and he trained up his four sons, James Maclean, John Maclean, W. F. Maclean, and Wallace Maclean, to the newspaper business from their tenderest years. By 1892, all were dead save W. F. and Wallace, an able editorial writer, whose independence of thought once or twice got his brother into political scrapes. A year or so after W. F.'s departure for Ottawa there was a tempest over an editorial which Wallace wrote advocating the abolition of the Orange Order. Since East York had many Orange electors it looked like political death for W. F. to have his newspaper come out with such a bald declaration. He had refused to join the order, but he was not prepared to undertake the quixotic task of destroying it. But somehow or other he managed to weather the storm, and seemingly it did him no harm politically. I think his personal friend, the Hon. N. Clarke Wallace, who represented West York, had much to do with quelling the storm. Contemporaries of the Macleans would have it that "Jimmy" Maclean, whom I never saw and who was his brother's news editor, was the ablest of the whole family. He had that rare newspaper endowment of ability to "bump into news"—the newspaper man's second sight which very few possess. Of "Jack" Maclean I heard less, save that like his father and all his brothers he was a good writer with a serviceable fund of general information.

John A. Ewan, who had succeeded "Jimmy" Maclean as chief aide in the editorial room, was also a born journalist who had worked his way up from the[Pg 134] printer's case, had made his mark as a descriptive writer on the News under E. E. Sheppard and had been Ottawa correspondent of the Mail during the period of its independence when it was the bête noire of Sir John Macdonald. The power of the Prime Minister in those days to make news collection difficult for papers he disliked was great, and Ewan's life at Ottawa was a daily battle to avoid being "scooped". At the time of which I speak he was famous for having ventured to call Sir John a liar to his face. The incident had occurred prior to the federal elections of 1891, when the whole country was on the qui vive to learn the date of the polling. Ewan had personally interviewed the Prime Minister, and received a promise that he would tell him the date as soon as he told it to anyone else. One morning the Empire newspaper, Sir John's' personal organ, appeared with the exclusive announcement, and the heated Mail correspondent waited for the old chieftain in the corridor and called him a liar with emphasizing adjectives. I learned afterward of the casuistry to which Sir John resorted to keep his word not to "tell" the news to anyone without disclosing it to Ewan, and at the same time give the Empire a "scoop". One night he sent for Fred Cook, the Empire's Ottawa correspondent, to discuss another matter, and in the course of the conversation scribbled something on a sheet of paper in apparent absent-mindedness. He made a casual allusion to the fact that the country seemed to be anxious to know the date of the general election, and passed on to other topics. When Cook was leaving, Sir John pressed the paper upon him without comment. It bore a date and nothing more; but, as the old newspaper saying went, it[Pg 135] was not necessary for a house to fall on Cook for him to discern what it meant.

Ewan had a violent temper, as this episode showed, but a kindly heart. He would go up in the air if any reporter talked of "roasting" someone who had affronted him; and World reporters were frequently affronted in those days. "That's not your business," he would shout, "your business is to get and write the news, your personal feelings do not count." Sound advice which should prevail in every newspaper office. I saw him roused on one occasion when a reporter almost literally did let a house fall on him without getting the news. One Sunday the side wall of a house in the residential districts fell into an excavation alongside it, disclosing the whole interior while the family were in various rooms. It was a big "story" then or at any time; but in those days before Sunday street cars few people came down town on the first evening of the week and somehow or other the World was scooped. Next afternoon when the staff assembled Ewan was in a towering rage. While he was talking of the incident a young reporter came in and said: "Oh, I saw that just after it happened; it was the funniest thing you can imagine; the people in the house were so taken by surprise." For a full minute Ewan was speechless. "Why in the name of the eternal didn't you mention it last night?" he asked. "Oh! I don't know," said the reporter; "I was busy with my assignment." "Good-bye," said Ewan, "you're fired. A young man like you had best go into the ministry." However, the lad stuck to newspaper work and has held responsible posts for many years.

Shortly after my advent to the World office, Edward Farrer finally parted company with the Globe,[Pg 136] and J. S. Willison immediately sent for Ewan to take the post of chief editorial writer. His fame grew, and the Globe sent him as correspondent to various parts of the world. He reported the South African War, in company with Col. C. F. Hamilton, now Secretary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He also went to Cuba during the Spanish American War, and his account of the Battle of San Juan Hill, which he witnessed in company with the British military attaché, was probably the best published in any newspaper on this continent. He himself told me of how this British officer was almost beside himself with amazement and dismay at seeing the American troops using black powder, which made them targets for the enemy, when smokeless powder was available. Ewan's excursions for the Globe extended all over the continent; and one of the most unique was a trip, in company with J. E. Atkinson, to investigate the workings of prohibition in Kansas and other states. Atkinson as a prohibitionist was sent to record sobriety; Ewan as an anti-prohibitionist was instructed to detect non-enforcement. Both got what they were after. Atkinson had no difficulty in finding total-abstainers; while Ewan had no difficulty in locating drinkers and bootleggers. Atkinson was received in the parlour; but Ewan was entertained in the barn.

W. F. Maclean's sound newspaper instinct led him to appoint Walter J. Wilkinson, Ewan's successor, as news editor; and he soon discovered that he had an aide who could give even his famous brother "Jimmy" Maclean "cards and spades" as a news-getter, and beat him. "Wallie" Wilkinson is still the doyen of the news editors of Canada, and since 1897 has filled that post with the Mail and Empire, to whose return to[Pg 137] prosperity he largely contributed by his genius for news organization. Thirty years ago on the World his task of keeping up with three other morning papers, all of which had ample financial backing (whereas the World had none) and adequate staffs, was supremely difficult. But I never knew a man who loved the game for its own sake so much as he. Inadequate as was his staff, his ability to instil into reporters his own gusto for getting the news and scooping the other fellow, and "dishing it up" so that readers would know what it meant, brought wonderful results. With him the instinct for his task was hereditary, as in the case of the Macleans. His father, Jonathan Wilkinson, was one of the best-known Ontario editors of the nineteenth century, and was the founder of a very prosperous publication, the St. Thomas Journal. "Wallie" had been almost cradled in a newspaper office, and was a reporter since boyhood. His experience now runs well beyond half a century, and no other newspaper man in Canada or possibly elsewhere has so long a record of continuous editorial authority. In the old days he was literally strung on wires; and he had one of the rarest of newspaper gifts, the ability to recognize public interest in subjects in which he was not interested himself. For instance, although I do not think he ever went voluntarily to a concert, and only occasionally to the theatre, he more than any Canadian editor was responsible for building up the news importance of musical and dramatic events. With a few brief experiences elsewhere, I was associated with Wilkinson wherever he went until my retirement from daily journalism in 1910, and he more than once tried to lure me back. Playing the game with "Wallie" in the nineties, when there was a steady run of big[Pg 138] murder and conspiracy stories, was great sport for a youngster; and his quickness of mind, his resources of newspaper sense, were a continuous stimulus. He could make the reporter's life so fascinating that one seldom thought of money.

While there never was a greater stickler for accuracy in matters where serious interests were involved, he liked a good "fake" once in a while. As a young man he invented a story which went around the world and is, I dare say, in many nature books. In the eighties the most famous elephant in the world was Jumbo, the favourite of the children in the London Zoo, whose name added a permanent word to the English language. For some reason or other it was thought advisable in the interest of Jumbo's health to give him a constant change of scene. He was sold to P. T. Barnum and became the leading feature of "The greatest show on earth". One afternoon while the circus was at St. Thomas, Ont., Jumbo was killed by railway hands who carelessly let a circus train back into the herd of elephants at a level crossing. The tragic death of the most widely known quadruped of any species in the world caused a great sensation, and Wilkinson sent stories of the catastrophe to a score of important newspapers. Next morning the world learned that Jumbo had given his life in a successful effort to save that of the Baby Elephant, another famous feature of the Barnum herd. This act of altruism was a pure and harmless invention on the part of young Wilkinson, and it brought tears to the eyes of many English people who as children had ridden on Jumbo's back. "Wallie" always maintained that Jumbo was deliberately killed, because he had become dangerous, and the Barnum and Bailey management[Pg 139] did not know what to do with him; but this is hard to credit.

This, I think, was the only actual case of real "faking" in Wilkinson's career, but when he came to Toronto and showed his ability to scoop the local journalistic fraternity, his defeated rivals would bring it up and excuse themselves to their chiefs on the ground that the news which they had failed to get was just one of Wilkinson's fakes. This "Wallie" turned to advantage in getting scoops for the World. At least two big murder and conspiracy stories, which have passed into the permanent annals of crime in America were first published in the World and ignored for days by other newspapers under the impression that they were not authentic. These were the Pitzell case and the Hyams case, of which I shall write in a later chapter. Wilkinson's alleged fakes, which turned out realities, became so numerous that excuses would not hold water. Finally the Riordan interests engaged him for the News, which had fallen on evil days, and subsequently he was transferred to the Mail and Empire, whose news columns few thought of looking at except for political reports until his advent. For instance, the death of Tennyson, which had been expected for two days, was handled in the Mail with the simple heading:

One scoop of great importance, which turned out to be absolutely true, was bitterly denounced as a fake and caused W. F. Maclean in his capacity as a junior[Pg 140] Conservative member immense anxiety. Wilkinson's friends outside his own calling were nearly all sources of news, and one of the closest of them was the late Judge Hughes, of St. Thomas, who in his later years enjoyed an inside knowledge of public affairs possessed by few Canadians. Though his official position prevented his participation in politics, his counsel was frequently sought by public men and he had been one of the closest friends of Sir John Macdonald. After the death of the latter Sir John Abbott served as a stopgap, and then the party hopes fastened on Sir John Thompson, Minister of Justice, and a man of the highest character and ability. In 1894 Sir John Thompson went to England, and it was during his absence there that Wilkinson happened to go to St. Thomas to visit his relatives. He paid his usual call on Judge Hughes, and during the course of a long gossip the judge let fall information known to very few that the Prime Minister was a very sick man, that one of the reasons for his visit to England had been to obtain medical advice, and that as a result of this advice he would so soon as he returned to Canada ask the Conservative party to name a successor, and resign his post. How Judge Hughes got this information I never learned, and he had not the slightest thought that he was giving out news for publication, though he exacted no pledge of secrecy. He simply dropped it as a bit of gossip. Wilkinson was too shrewd to press for details, but when he came back to Toronto wrote the story, making me his sole confidant, I believe, since W. F. Maclean was absent on parliamentary duties in Ottawa.

It was news of the highest importance to the country, but very embarrassing to Conservative partizans, and[Pg 141] I do not think Wilkinson gave a thought to the chief's political fortunes, so intent was his mind on the main issue. But when the World came out with the story it hit Toronto, Ottawa, and all other Canadian cities like a bomb-shell. Canadian party politics at that time being rife with conspiracy and suspicion, it was assumed that W. F. Maclean had deliberately connived at the publication of a fake in order to ruin his own party. The Empire next morning made the charge openly in a vicious leader entitled, "The Man with the Knife". Maclean's immediate action was to take a day train to Toronto. I have never seen him so rattled and perturbed. The story was as much news to him as to anyone else, and he asked where it had come from in agitated tones. When given the source, he murmured several times: "It may be true, but if it isn't true it's my finish. They'll never forgive me."

Confirmation came, in a manner more tragic than anyone expected, shortly afterward, when Sir John Thompson died suddenly at Windsor Castle, after an audience with Queen Victoria; and medical men whom the Prime Minister had consulted in Ottawa disclosed the fact that for some time he had suffered from acute heart trouble. But I do not think W. F. Maclean was forgiven. Politicians unfamiliar with newspaper routine did not credit the truth that he was innocent as a babe unborn of any connection with the disclosure; and the newspapers which had proclaimed the untruthfulness of the World's story without taking the trouble to investigate, accused him of indecency in prematurely publishing intelligence so distressing. All this was particularly unjust to Maclean who, so far from desiring to knife Sir John Thompson, had the highest respect[Pg 142] for him and saw little hope for party success after he was removed from the scene.

Memories of the old World staff would be incomplete without a reference to a most interesting individual, the late Henry Taylor Howard, a Yorkshire newspaper man who had been trained in the soundest methods of British provincial journalism, and who was a pillar of strength in teaching young lads how to write copy without tautology and undue verbiage. Howard was a native of York, and as a boy had been a soprano in York Minster. He had served his apprenticeship on the Newcastle Chronicle, whose famous editor, Joseph Hume, he regarded as the greatest of English journalists, and he had been the personal friend and associate of W. T. Stead, a fact of which he was very proud. He had adopted as his pen-name "Ebor", the ancient Roman name of his native city. He had an immense knowledge of all schools of theology and was a born "sermon-taster", as the Scots say. No other man could report a sermon with half the gusto and knowledge that he displayed. In the Sunday World he wrote articles on religious topics which were of interest to the entire community, and his capacity for apt poetical quotation was unlimited. He was a little rotund man with a very rubicund countenance, and bore a considerable resemblance to Seymour's pictures of the elder Weller. I trust that I who loved Mr. Howard for his greatness of heart may speak of his known failings without disrespect to his memory. He would no doubt have been as big a man in British journalism as some of his youthful associates, if it had not been that he was a dipsomaniac. He was not a steady drinker, but periodically he would have an outbreak. Warnings to[Pg 143] hotel-keepers not to serve him liquor were of little avail; indeed, when he was drinking, very few hotels would sell him a drink, for his personality and failings were well-known; but he got what he wanted in illicit dives, and would pawn his clothes to satisfy the craving. The only course to pursue was to let matters run to a certain length and then ask the police authorities to take him in. He had a staunch friend in the Governor of the Jail, who liked his company, and would nurse him back to sobriety and months of usefulness, until the next attack seized him. But it did not do to place him in confinement too soon. That only meant another outbreak so soon as he was at liberty. Neither prohibition nor any other legal remedy will meet such cases. He himself did not know where the appetite came from; it was not hereditary, he told me, and his early associations were of the best. Drunk or sober he was clean of mind; when sober, he was the typical cold-water Englishman who could not do without his morning douche; and he was deeply religious as well. When Dwight L. Moody gave his last series of revival meetings in Canada he took a deep interest in Howard and "converted" him, though just what that meant in a man already devout I cannot say. We rather feared that the emotional feelings Moody aroused in him would have a reaction—and so the event proved.

His end was a sad one, though not directly caused by liquor. He turned up at a public function at which W. F. was present in his capacity as member of parliament, and made such a scene that his exasperated chief dismissed him on the spot. Of course every newspaper man knew that the dismissal was not permanent, but Howard took the humiliation so much to heart that he went home to bed, and never got up again.

An instance of his kindness was the case of a friendless girl employed in the proof room, who was deceived by a callous ruffian. Out of his slender means, Howard paid for her retirement to a nursing home, and helped her to get on her feet after her child was born. In truth, not one father in a hundred would have been so kind. On many occasions he shielded young reporters for neglect of duty—so that his religion was no mere lip-service.

We used to have a good deal of fun with "Ebor". The World office was full of his Bibles. He never went to report a sermon without bringing one back; and instead of simply writing the text he would clip it out and paste it on his sheet of copy, a much more laborious process. This habit was akin to many of the modern labour-saving devices which entail extra effort. One of the practical jokers on the staff used to hide his book of familiar quotations, for he never wrote an article without the apt use of poesy. The old chap would say nothing but go mousing about until he found it, sighing out a phrase all his own, "O Rum-pum-pum".

During the first campaign for Sunday street cars in the early 'nineties, Howard came in for a good deal of platform abuse in common with all other members of the World staff, for that newspaper stood alone against all other daily papers in demanding the convenience. Sunday cars were more needed then, even than now, for motor cars and taxi-cabs were unknown. The inconveniences suffered by poor working women, who could get to the cemeteries on no other day, was but one of the many abuses which fanatical Sabbatarianism inflicted on the poor. A large part of the clergy maintained that the opportunities for family intercourse[Pg 145] which Sunday street cars would unquestionably provide would be destructive of religion. They managed to bring such pressure on all newspapers except the World that the innovation was almost unanimously opposed by the press. Men who habitually drove to church in their carriages took the platform against the cause and predicted the coming of the continental Sabbath and a carnival of vice. World reporters who covered these meetings became known and were insulted from the platform. I more than once retorted from the press table in language far from courteous; and the most shameful episode was when a well-known pietistic layman viciously ridiculed the personal appearance of Mr. Howard and spoke of him as the type of "bum" who was trying to destroy the Sabbath.

The most splendid protagonist of the liberal movement was the Rev. William Clark, D.D., Professor of Philosophy at Trinity University, and a man whose Life of Savonarola and services as editor of Ranke's Lives of the Popes had won him international fame. In fact it was known that if Dr. Clark had been ambitious and remained in England he would have died a Bishop of one of the historic sees. The opponents of Sunday cars could not break down his imperturbable good humour, nor was the whole host of them a match for him in theological argument; for from the standpoint of Christian doctrine, Sabbatarianism, like prohibition, has not a leg to stand on.

Nevertheless, on that occasion Sunday street cars were beaten, and the city had to wait until 1897 for their establishment. The arguments which carried the day were chiefly that the innovation would help to enrich the capitalists who owned the Toronto Railway Company; and further that some of these capitalists[Pg 146] were "Papists". Then, as now, large bodies of the electorate were easily swayed by any outcry against capital and could not recognize the truth that what benefits capital not infrequently benefits the community.

CHAPTER X

HOBBLED JOURNALISM

In a later chapter I shall speak of my connection with dramatic criticism which became active during my early days with the World. It was the local celebrity which I had acquired in this field, through articles signed by the pen-name "Touchstone", which led to an offer to join the staff of the Empire newspaper shortly before my twenty-first birthday in September, 1893. Though all the daily newspapers covered theatrical performances spasmodically, as ordinary newspaper assignments, only one indulged in the luxury of continuous criticism by a single individual. This was the Mail on which the late E. R. Parkhurst had been critic since the early seventies. Finally the Empire in the sixth year of its existence decided to adopt a similar policy. The volume of work involved was so light that I combined reportorial duties with critical work—as I continued to do for many years.

The Empire was, as far as I know, the first Canadian newspaper to be, in the completest sense, party-owned and party-controlled—and it was certainly the last. Other journals had been the personal organs of political leaders, like the Globe under the Hon. George Brown, or the Montreal Gazette under Hon. Thomas White. With the Mail Sir John Macdonald had enjoyed close personal relations from its foundation in 1872 until in the mid-eighties its owners quarrelled[Pg 148] with him and it became violently independent. Sir John then resolved to have an organ so hobbled and tied that it could not bolt; and appealed to prominent followers to supply the funds. The Empire was launched with an able staff in 1887 and my affiliations with it begun at the very outset in a peculiar way.

The accountancy firm to which I was articled had for rental a building on Grand Opera House lane, which became the first premises of the new Conservative organ. As a boy it had been my duty to take David Creighton, M.P.P., its managing director, and two of the provisional directors, Thomas Cowan, M.P., and Frank Turner, C.E., "the Squire of Bracondale" and one of the most eminent of the older Tory stalwarts, over these premises. I also wrote on the typewriter the agreement of lease and witnessed the signatures; so in a sense I was in at the very beginnings of the Empire, though at the time I had not the slightest anticipation of ever becoming a newspaper man or a member of its staff. Six years later, when I entered its offices as dramatic critic, the newspaper had removed to a warehouse on Adelaide street west, very near to the spot where William Lyon Mackenzie had conducted his newspaper in opposition to the "Family Compact" sixty years previously.

The Empire office, having strong financial backing and close personal connections with many of the leading public men of Canada, was a very different place from the bohemian World office. It had an ample and able staff, and had it been conducted independently of interference from party chiefs would undoubtedly in the end have out-stripped all its rivals. But a newspaper established and conducted primarily by an official partizan junta has in its system the seeds[Pg 149] of death from the outset. The internal condition of the Conservative party in 1893 was chaotic and was becoming more so every day, owing to the sudden removal in 1891 of the chieftain who had ruled its destinies for half a century. These internal dissensions and jealousies affected the conditions in the office of the party organ. No editor—not even the chief, David Creighton himself—and no reporter, felt safe from incurring the dislike of some politician with a personal axe to grind, who thought his stock subscription or his prominence in the party gave him the right of interference.

During my sojourn of less than thirteen months two able and conscientious city editors were deposed, solely because one faction or another was displeased with some story that had been published. Non-political news of an important character was constantly suppressed at the request of some party magnate or other, a fatal policy in a field in which so many newspapers were competing.

There was a tendency among the younger men on the staff to regard David Creighton as weak, but in the light of experience I now see how helpless he was. The attempt to please the rapidly disintegrating Conservative party headed by a gentleman whose good looks and beautiful silver beard disguised his weakness—Sir Mackenzie Bowell—was like trying to conduct a Sunday school picnic in a jungle. Mr. Creighton was a most kindly and lovable man who wanted to do right by everybody, and I wonder that the politicians did not hound him into his grave. In personal attire and bearing he was as simple and rustic as Horace Greeley is said to have been. He was the first man I ever saw who wore what George Ade calls[Pg 150] "Texas evening dress" at public functions—a very low cut waistcoat with a black string tie and a frock coat instead of the conventional swallow-tail. That was before the era of the dinner-jacket. For years he had conducted a Conservative weekly paper at Owen Sound, Ont., and had been member for North Grey in the Ontario Legislature. His popularity in that riding was such that he once said that his election expenses in each campaign were about $70, whereas it used to cost his colleague, who represented the same constituency in the House of Commons, $7,000. As a country editor he had acquired the habit of walking about the office in his socks. The Empire establishment, business office, editorial rooms, and composing room occupied four floors, and it used to be an amusing sight to see the chief paddling up and down the stairs bootless, for he had a habit of being all over the place. On wet and muddy nights the habit must have been uncomfortable. Often he must have overheard conversations which were critical of himself and of the general conduct of the newspaper, but I never knew him to show resentment or take any revenges. Prior to my joining the staff some of the men used to play upon his kindness, by tendering resignations which they had no desire to see accepted; merely to enjoy Mr. Creighton's tender appeals to them to remain. One day, to the surprise of the staff, Mr. Creighton accepted a resignation without comment, and that ended the practice.

In my day Mr. Creighton's chief aide, bearing the title of managing editor, was Arthur H. U. Colquhoun, who did not then boast the honour of "LL.D." and is now Deputy Minister of Education of the Province of Ontario. Mr. Colquhoun was a contrast to Mr.[Pg 151] Creighton in many ways, since he was the most immaculately dressed man in the newspaper fraternity, impeccably neat and a good though ever-courteous disciplinarian. He was a young man in his thirties, and had had a distinguished career in Montreal before the Conservative party sent him to Toronto. He was a type of the complete Tory gentleman of the old school, proud as Lucifer of his Highland ancestry, and with a great fund of political acumen under an exterior that in no way suggested the politician. Together Creighton and Colquhoun would have made a strong combination had they been let alone. The latter was a typical city and university man, whereas Creighton had a profound knowledge of rural politics and side-line sentiment, and was a whirlwind with a blue-book on the stump.

Another of the Empire's long list of retired city editors was H. J. P. Good. Harry Good, who still lives, had the distinction of actually being the first sporting editor in America. T. C. Patteson, a gifted Englishman of wealth, who was editor of the Mail in the mid-seventies and afterward postmaster of Toronto, took a deep interest in racing and cricket. One of his younger reporters made a very bad blunder in recording an international cricket match. It occurred to Patteson to instruct Good, who had a complete knowledge of sports and who was his revising proof-reader, to oversee all sporting news in order to avoid blunders. For his own convenience Good grouped together all the matter of this character that came to his desk and the result was the first department of assembled sporting news in North America. Within a very short time the New York and Chicago journals had copied the idea; and to-day sporting writing is[Pg 152] by far the most remunerative and least controlled branch of journalism on this continent.

Good, as Patteson's revising proof-reader, was one of those responsible for an historical blunder in connection with Sir John Macdonald's adoption of Protection as the National Policy. John Maclean, the earliest Canadian advocate of this economic measure, was at that time an editorial writer on the Mail, and had written many articles on the subject which Patteson had quietly pigeon-holed. One day Sir John who was then in opposition, walked into the office and announced that Protection was henceforth to be his policy. He asked that the Mail publish a good strong editorial defining what it meant, for Protection was not the familiar word to readers fifty years ago that it is to-day. Maclean was sent for and instructed to herald the new policy. He was so elated over the triumph of his ideas that he went out and celebrated a little, a step that, while it did not obscure his mind, did affect his handwriting. The printers had especial difficulty in making out the long, unfamiliar word beginning with "p". Finally the late Edward F. Clarke, who was chief proof-reader, thought he had found the correct solution; as an Orangeman he was sure that the word was "protestantism". Harry Good passed this interpretation, and the Mail came out the next day with a leader announcing that "Canadian interests demand more protestantism", and that Sir John would give it to them. No wonder Mr. Patteson, a few years after, gave up newspaper work because his nerves could not stand the strain.

Another able journalist was a serious-minded Scotsman, Finlay Mackenzie, who during his lifetime had a remarkable experience in half the greater cities of this[Pg 153] continent. At the time he was on the Empire he had already won fame as a reporter on the now defunct New York Press by scooping all the newspapers of the metropolis on the fatal illness of James G. Blaine, the most eminent leader in the ranks of the Republican party. The manner in which he got this "scoop" illustrates the methodical manner in which an intelligent reporter will go to work. The Press, as a Republican newspaper, had received a tip that Blaine was indisposed at the home of his son-in-law, the orchestral conductor Walter Damrosch, and Mackenzie was sent there to obtain particulars. At the Damrosch home he was politely dismissed with a statement that Mr. Blaine was not very well, but that it was a matter of little consequence. While waiting for a street car he noticed a maid-servant come out of the house and run to a near-by drug store to have a prescription filled. He waited until she had run back and then interviewed the drug clerk. He had a solemn Presbyterian manner, and with little difficulty obtained from a young clerk details of the prescription. Taking it to a doctor friend, he learned that the drugs contained therein were only administered to patients who were in extremis. Thus the Press was able to scoop all New York the next morning, and the news was but too true.

Mackenzie was a man with a wanderlust and could not stay long anywhere, although his fortunes were made with New York news editors after the Blaine episode. As a handler of copy on the city desk he was the most timorous man I ever encountered. He knew nothing of the drama, yet he would laboriously go through my theatrical criticisms for fear I had omitted to cross a "t" or make a "bad break". Once I alluded to the renowned Bessie Clayton as a[Pg 154] "seductive dancer". When Mackenzie saw the phrase there was a roar from his den: "Hector, mon, come ye here. What on airth, mon, do ye mean by yon word 'sedooctive'"?

"Mon alive, is it the Police Gazette you think you're warking for. There'll be no ondecencies in the Empire if I can help it."

His fear of indecency was an obsession. Once he sent me to report a cattle show, and gave this preliminary monition: "Remember, no jocks aboot the bulls and the hayfers." He pronounced bull to rhyme with lull. It was not Mackenzie, but a Mr. Moore, one-time editor of the Weekly Globe who effected the greatest feat in Bowdlerization of which I have ever heard. In the text of a serial story he discovered this snatch of dialogue:

Moore promptly changed the latter line to "I cannot tell". He would have made a great motion-picture censor.

Mackenzie's dread of what he called "jocks" was almost as great as of "ondecencies"; susceptibilities he had apparently acquired during his apprenticeship on that "Scotsman's Bible", the Glasgow Herald. Once in reporting one of the periodical rows which used to occur in the synagogues and were accompanied by much beard-pulling, I wrote that one of the chief aggressors was alleged to be contemplating the establishment of a mattress factory. When Mackenzie saw the allusion there was a Doric roar, "Hector, mon, what do you mean by yon?"

Mackenzie at once became the dominie. "Hector, did ye ever hear tell o' the Glawsgae Herruld. Aye, ye say! Well, it's the grandest newspaper in the warld; and ye may read the Glawsgae Herruld from year's eend to year's eend, from the first coalum to the lawst, and ye'll find nae a jock in its coalums. Hector, mon, I warked on the Glawsgae Herruld for three years, and I am thoroughly imbued wi' its principles. So ye'll kindly refrain from trying to pit your jocks over on me."

The timorousness of Mackenzie is perhaps understandable because his predecessor, James W. Curran, had been deposed, not for dereliction of duty, but because his mind was too enterprising and instinctively professional for the heavy partizan yoke imposed by politicians. Curran, now the editor of the Sault Ste. Marie Star, was cradled, like other veterans I have mentioned, in a small newspaper office in Orillia, and was a renowned authority on the early exploration of the region of the great lakes. When I first knew Jim Curran he had not developed his historical enthusiasms, but was very keen about encouraging young writers of initiative and talent. A year or so later, when he became city editor of the Montreal Herald, he was instrumental in launching Arthur Stringer in the newspaper field. Stringer is now one of the best known of Canadian novelists, but thirty years ago he was a minor poet and a first-rate football player. In after years he told me an amusing story about his early experiences under Curran. When the latter engaged him he was looking for a musical critic for the Herald and, knowing that Stringer was a University graduate of some literary distinction, asked him if he could undertake the work. The poet was so[Pg 156] anxious for a job that he said he could; although music is his blind side. He had a girl friend who was very musical, and by accepting her counsel managed to make a very respectable showing. One summer Lieut. Dan Godfrey and his British Guards Band came to Canada. The opening concert being held in the afternoon, the city editor, Curran, decided to accompany his critic to the concert. As a boy Curran had been a bandsman at Orillia and had a working knowledge of every instrument. He had not been sitting with Stringer for more than half an hour before he discovered that the latter did not know one instrument from another.

Arthur Stringer was one of several brilliant young men of about my own age who were cub reporters in the nineties and who afterwards won fame in other fields. They included Harvey J. O'Higgins, also famous as a novelist, Harry Addington Bruce, whose syndicated articles on psychological themes are famous throughout America, Claude Bryan, now a prominent capitalist in Great Britain, Sir Thomas Hamar Greenwood, who dabbled a little in newspaper work but not very deeply, and the present Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King. There was another less widely known, J. H. Cornyn, a Queen's University man, who afterwards had much to do with establishing the educational system of Mexico under President Diaz. Yet another was E. W. Beatty, K.C., President of the C. P. R., whom I first knew when he was "subbing" as a reporter on the Toronto press.

On the Empire the two ablest juniors were H. Franklin Gadsby, whose brilliant, efflorescent, and vitriolic writings are widely familiar, and Frank D. L. Smith, who specialized in financial subjects and[Pg 157] succeeded Sir John Willison as editor of the now vanished Toronto News. The most flamboyant figure of the Empire coterie was Charles T. Long, whose father, a wealthy man, was Vice-President. Owing to his father's wealth, he had enjoyed the opportunities of travel, and had visited Japan at a time when it was not nearly so modernized as it is to-day. He was a wanderer by nature, but shrewd in a business way, and when he died in Calcutta, India, a few years ago, had personally amassed considerable wealth. Charley Long was capital company, but the most irresponsible newspaper reporter I have ever known. His vivid imagination impelled him to exaggerate. When I knew him first he was rather under a cloud, owing to one of his indiscretions. In the eighties he had served as a reporter in Chicago on one of the many vanished sheets that anticipated the sensational faking that afterwards became systematized under William Randolph Hearst. This was a bad training for anyone, especially a man of Long's temperament. After the Empire was founded in 1887 his father, anxious to have him back in Canada, induced him to come home and join its staff.

In 1888, while the Parnell enquiry was in progress in London, the world was startled by the disappearance of Dr. Cronin, a prominent Irish physician, resident in Chicago. Sometime later his body was found in a sewer, and the murder was traced to the local "triangle" of the Clan-na-gael, a Fenian organization. Among his murderers was one Coughlin, a prominent member of the Chicago detective force, who in his official capacity had helped to delay the solution of the mystery. The reason for Cronin's murder was[Pg 158] the belief of his brothers in the Clan-na-gael that he was an informer.

A day or so after his disappearance, despatches appeared in all the leading papers of the United States that Dr. Cronin had been seen at the Walker House, Toronto, by Charles T. Long, who, as a reporter in Chicago, had known Cronin well. The despatches contained lengthy disclosures that the doctor's purpose in leaving Chicago was to proceed to London and testify in the Parnell enquiry as to the Irish leader's connection with American Fenian organizations. (It will be remembered that the Parnell enquiry arose through an allegation by the London Times that Parnell had been privy to the Phoenix Park murders five years earlier.) Long continued sending out stories of Cronin's plans for two or three days; and in the meantime detectives came from Chicago to interview him. Long was taken to the offices of Blake, Lash, and Cassels and asked to make an affidavit as to having seen Cronin; but somehow he evaded the actual commission of perjury. Early one morning just after the leading newspapers of America had received a despatch from the Toronto newspaper making further disclosures, word came that Cronin's body had been found in a Chicago sewer. One prominent New York newspaper published a heading "Reporter Long a Liar". Another obtained his photograph and published it with the underline, "Charles T. Long, the Toronto Liar".

Though bitterly humiliated, Long was of such mercurial temperament that it did not take him long to live down the Cronin affair. All this occurred five years before I became his associate on the Empire staff, and I, in common with many, was under the impression that he had victimized his own newspaper as well as the[Pg 159] New York Herald, the New York Sun, and leading Chicago dailies. After his death in Calcutta, there were allusions to the Cronin case, and David Creighton sent me a note explaining that he had refused to publish Long's alleged interview with Cronin and had distrusted its bona fides from the outset. The other Canadian papers naturally took up the story, however, and Long's life for a time was not happy. He was a man of such quick temper that no one alluded to it in his presence. Seven or eight years afterward J. H. Woods, now publisher of the Calgary Herald, who at the time of the Cronin affair was in the West, and quite ignorant of Long's connection with it, was sitting with a group of us who were yarning away about newspaper experiences. Long told some interesting stories of his early days in Chicago, when Woods quite innocently said "Did you know anything of the Cronin murder?" The rest of us were appalled. Long turned white, gave a very dark look, and without a word reached for his hat and left us.

To my surprise, he one day opened up his heart to me on the subject. In the eighties, before Associated Press services were so fully organized as they are to-day, reporters made a good deal of money sending despatches to American newspapers which were not always particular whether the information was true so long as it was interesting. Long had been in the habit of making extra money in this way. When the news came from Chicago that Dr. Cronin had disappeared, he was morally satisfied that the cause of the disappearance was as stated in his interviews. He said that when he lived in Chicago he had been certain that the doctor was not what he seemed, but a British agent. In inventing a meeting at Toronto he assumed that[Pg 160] within ten days Cronin would turn up in London, and that if he did deny having passed through Toronto and talking with Long, no one would believe him. He justified himself on the ground that he had merely made a wrong guess and that, if Cronin's comrades in the Clan-na-gael had not killed him, he would have testified against Parnell.

Young as I was, it seemed to me that the Empire could not continue very long under the conditions of political espionage which hampered the work of its staff. If the original President, D'Alton McCarthy, a sane and able man, had continued on the Board there might have been a different tale to tell; but he severed his connection with the party. In the autumn of 1894 I was first dismissed to placate a disgruntled politician, and privately informed that this meant only a lay-off for three weeks. I laid the facts before the politician himself, who was at once eager for my reinstatement, but I had had enough of machine-controlled journalism and went back to work for W. F. Maclean. It was to my good fortune that I did so, for in five months all my old colleagues were walking the streets, in dead of winter, jobless.

The newspaper men who knew the circumstances under which the Empire was allowed to die never forgave the late Sir Mackenzie Bowell, then Prime Minister of Canada, for the callousness with which he killed his party organ, and refused to make the slightest provision for any employee save David Creighton. I suspect that as a country editor of not very brilliant powers he looked with rather jealous eyes on city newspaper men. Moreover, though he had a very distinguished personal appearance, he was, as I have said, a weakling. The letters of Sir John Macdonald,[Pg 161] published by Sir Joseph Pope a few years ago, show that his stability was always questionable. At a time when it was nip and tuck whether the Canadian Pacific Railway should go into the hands of a receiver, a course which would have been ruinous to the whole country, his weakness was a serious embarrassment to his leader, for he favoured letting the great enterprise collapse. And he showed the same willingness to scuttle a ship he supposed to be sinking, in the case of the Empire.

There was much exaggeration as to the losses suffered by the shareholders. It was supposed that they totalled over half a million dollars. Some time afterward, Robert Birmingham, for many years Conservative organizer, who had helped to raise subscriptions for its establishment and had a private contempt for the men who let it die, showed me the exact figures. The losses in the seven years or more of its existence were between $145,000 and $150,000. If it had not been for outside interference, they would have been nil; and most of the subscribers had been amply compensated by governmental favours.

The amalgamation by which the Empire was turned over to the Mail and the combined newspapers became the official organ, but freed from political control in management, was a triumph of the late Christopher Bunting's diplomacy. In this way he retrieved political and journalistic adventures which had almost run the Mail into the ground. If he had not succeeded in bluffing the owners of the Empire into an amalgamation, early in 1895, the Mail would have gone into liquidation the following week. The cabinet ministers who took a personal hand in the negotiations therefore had all the cards in their own hands, but had not[Pg 162] sense enough to know it. Then, as a final stroke, Mr. Bunting specified in the agreement that every employee of the Mail was to be retained in his position. The only change to which he consented was that T. P. Healy (now provincial librarian of Manitoba), who had been Ottawa correspondent of the Mail and had annoyed the government by his pungent exposures of its weaknesses, should be recalled to Toronto, and Fred Cook, the Empire correspondent, engaged as his successor. The Prime Minister and his friends made no provision for the Empire employees who had served them so well. Sir Mackenzie Bowell even refused to take care of them until the end of winter with temporary clerkships at Ottawa, as he easily might have done, for the House of Commons was about to convene. Sir Oliver Mowat, the then Premier of Ontario, despite the fact that the Empire had bitterly opposed him, was kinder and found places for a few to tide them over until spring.

I covered the whole story of the negotiations for the World, which was naturally keenly interested in the removal of a rival from the crowded newspaper field. David Creighton's last speech to his staff was touching and dignified. The Government had given no intimation that it intended to provide for him, though he was subsequently appointed Collector of Inland Revenue. He asked the boys to let the ship go down with honour; there was one more issue to be gotten out, and he trusted that on this the last day of their employment they would be as industrious and careful as though nothing had happened. There were, he said, important assignments to be covered that day, and he trusted the last issue of the Empire, of which he had always been proud, would do justice to its record.

The staff cheered him; and observed his admonition to the letter. Another city editor, Patrick F. Cronin, had by this time been appointed, and without a wink of an eye-lash he reminded his reporters that a great Liberal rally was to be held at Massey Hall that night, at which Sir Wilfrid Laurier was to speak. He assigned six reporters to cover it and told them that they need not economize in the matter of space. Never did reporters go more willingly to work; and the last issue of the Empire, founded by the Conservatives, contained as fine a "send-off" for their Liberal opponents as had ever appeared in a Canadian newspaper.

It is interesting to add that professional relations between the Empire and the Globe, the Liberal organ, were always courteous and friendly. During my year with the former, the Globe office was gutted by fire, and David Creighton offered Robert Jaffray and J. S. Willison the accommodations of the Empire office and plant to publish the Liberal organ. Thus for a month we had the Globe staff as our guests. The two staffs worked side by side harmoniously without trying to pry into each other's business, and lifelong friendships were cemented.

This would have been shocking to many rural partizans if they had realized it. In trips to smaller towns I have often noted the surprise of local inhabitants at the sight of rival reporters fraternizing. On one occasion, in covering the Murray Hill railway wreck near Trenton, I asked a coroner who came from a village in the next county for the names of the jury he had empanelled. When he learned that I represented the Conservative organ, he peremptorily refused them. My old pal, Victor Ross, then of the Globe appeared on the scene, and I said: "Hurry up[Pg 164] and nail that coroner! He's going home and he won't give me the names of the jury." Victor approached him and made the same request. The coroner looked at him sternly and searchingly, "Honestly, now, are you really a Globe reporter?" "Cross my heart!" said Victor, "Why, sir, do you doubt me?" "Well, I saw you talking to that Mail reporter, a minute ago," said the official. "Oh, well," said Victor, "I didn't like to snub the poor fellow, though I try to avoid him as much as possible." The placated coroner gave him the names.

CHAPTER XI

POLITICS OF THE NINETIES

My first five years in newspaper work had given me a pretty thorough grounding in political affairs, and from 1896 until 1910 I was entrusted with a supervision of political news, especially at election time, on the various journals by which I was employed. I began this work on the News in 1896; and continued it on the Mail and Empire in 1898. For the first year of Sir Joseph Flavelle's idealistic attempt to make the News a cultural institution under the editorship of Mr. (later Sir) John Willison (1903), I was also thus employed. It was usually my task to write the introductory summaries at all great political rallies and to interview political leaders on ticklish points of policy. I attribute some of my success in making reluctant politicians talk to the fact that I never used a note-book, and did not try to do the talking myself, the fatal mistake of some interviewers. The politician confronted with a note-book and pencil is at once put on his guard; and gratuitous advice offends him.

The first political interview I ever undertook was also the first reportorial assignment. Shortly after I joined the World in 1892, the news was cabled that the great Liberal leader, the Hon. Edward Blake, had received an invitation from Justin McCarthy and other leaders of the Irish Nationalist party to leave Canada and contest the safe seat of Longford for the British[Pg 166] House of Commons. Blake was a sphinx toward the evening newspapers, and John Ewan told me to go to his house and get him to talk if I could. I was aghast, for I was entirely without experience and the name of Blake, the most austere of political leaders, was a very august one in those days. I really think Ewan's reason for selecting me was that I was wearing a rather good morning-coat, and my juvenile appearance might disarm the great man. Frightened as I was I got on swimmingly with Mr. Blake, whose courtesy banished my nervousness. He would not commit himself, but walked out to the porch with me and chatted in such a pleasant unbending mood, that I made up my mind that he was very happy over the offer, and intended to accept it. I went back and told Ewan so. The latter wrote the story himself, and added that there was little doubt of Blake's acceptance. The other newspapers were less convinced, but when in a day or two Blake announced his intention of leaving Canada, Ewan laid flattering unction to my soul by saying, "You sized that gentleman up right, my boy!"

It was as a result of this that W. F. Maclean, not long after, gave me a list containing the names of half a score of well-known citizens and told me to go to them and ask certain questions which he drilled into me as to their connection with the Annexation movement. He told me not to use a note-book, but remember what they said, and write it out immediately after each interview. They "hedged" in every instance, but by the end of the day I had quite an accumulation of notes. Maclean took them and made a brilliant story headed, "Crawled into the hole and pulled the hole in after them". Sir John Macdonald had so shattered the Annexation movement by his[Pg 167] single speech in 1891 that a year after his death there was but one man who would openly avow his convictions. He was a municipal politician, Ernest Albert Macdonald, who had made and lost a fortune in the real estate boom of the eighties, a promoter bubbling over with schemes, who afterwards, while Mayor of Toronto, went insane. More prominent Toronto men than is realized to-day dallied with Annexation about the period of 1890, when times were growing hard after a real estate boom, and when the exodus to the United States was more appalling. Hare-brained schemes to turn over the country to Washington were hatched by some of these dreamers. There is still living in Toronto, a promoter who had a plan forty years ago to turn over the Northwest Territories to the United States for two million dollars. Erastus Wiman, a New York millionaire, who afterwards wrecked himself by speculation, and who had been at one time a newsboy in Toronto, was busy with plans of this kind. I once interviewed Wiman before the days of his downfall and arrest. He was a stout little man of the John Bull type with mutton chop whiskers, and quite open in his avowals that Canada should be brought into the United States, not by force, but by reason.

My father-in-law, Peter Ryan, one of the most brilliant of the many fine Liberal orators of forty years ago, knew many of the annexationists, and told me in after years of an episode which convinced him of the ludicrousness of the whole movement. A party of well-known Torontonians went to New York and Washington to arrange terms for handing over Canada. They had a glorious time of it, and spent so much money that they drew on him for $400 to pay their hotel bill at the Gilsey House (I think). The predicament[Pg 168] of men who proposed to dispose of a vast section of the British Empire, yet lacked money to get home, appealed so to his sense of humour that the Annexation movement seemed to him a colossal joke ever after.

While with the Empire I covered the Ontario elections of 1894, the last political campaign of Sir Oliver Mowat who had been Premier since 1873, and also of his formidable opponent, Sir William Ralph Meredith, afterwards Chief Justice of Ontario. The wiliness of Mowat as a politician was only equalled by that of Sir John Macdonald, in whose law office at Kingston he had been articled as a student. Though nominally a Liberal leader he was even more of a Tory than Sir John, and much more so than Sir William Meredith, a most progressive man. He was a great municipal lawyer, and in his early days as corporation counsel for Toronto reformed the constitution of the city on modern lines. At the Confederation conference of 1864, the result of which took form in the British North America Act, he led the legal fight for the federal system, whereas Sir John Macdonald advocated a general parliamentary system on the lines that prevailed in Great Britain. Sir John Macdonald was once asked what kind of a lad Mowat was when he was his law student, and jocularly replied, "He was a very good pen-man." This was a jest, for both men respected each other, and there were in Ontario, when I was a boy, thousands of men who were Mowat Liberals in provincial affairs and Macdonald Conservatives in federal issues.

I shall not forget the pathos of my last interview with Sir Oliver. This was on the occasion of the death of Queen Victoria, while he was Lieutenant-Governor[Pg 169] of Ontario. He had been active in public affairs throughout most of her reign, and an interview with him would have been most interesting. Commander Law, his secretary, took me up to the library to see him, and the old gentleman said he was flattered that I should ask for a tribute to a Queen he had always revered. He said that if I would come back in three hours' time he would have decided on what he wished to say. When I returned he told me sorrowfully that he had not been able to collect his ideas and requested that I make no mention of having sought an interview. It was touching to hear this admission from the lips of a man who had won so many political battles; and he did not survive very long thereafter. I fancy I was the last reporter he ever talked to.

In his last campaign, in 1894, Sir Oliver had matters very much in his own hands; and he had whip-sawed Meredith very skilfully, by accepting any progressive and popular measures his rival proposed. Ten years previously Meredith had been placed in a very difficult position in the Manitoba boundary issue, which involved possession of the natural resources of Northern Ontario, claimed by the Federal Government. I have always thought Sir John Macdonald's policy, which would have placed the Manitoba boundary forty miles east of Fort William, and given the prairie provinces an outlet on the Great Lakes, a wise one. There would be less ill feeling between East and West if it had come to pass. But Meredith, as Conservative leader in Ontario, had been placed in a false position in the rivalries between the Federal and Provincial governments, though he actually suggested the legal solutions by which the deadlock was solved. Many Ontario men, greedy for "all that was coming" to the[Pg 170] province, thought he had tried to sacrifice their interests, especially after Mowat had won his great victory before the Privy Council in London.

By 1894 Mowat had manoeuvred matters to a point where his opponents had nothing but trivialities to talk about. I reported Meredith's opening speech of the campaign and was filled with boyish disgust at the paltriness of the discussions by himself and his chief lieutenant George F. Marter, who had been a general storekeeper in Bracebridge, Muskoka, and was then contesting a Toronto constituency. It seemed to me an outrage that a man of really big mind like Meredith should be wasting his energies on a scandal which consisted in the fact that the Minister of Agriculture, the Hon. John Dryden, had recommended a silver medal bull, owned by one of his constituents, for purchase by the Ontario College of Agriculture. Mr. Marter raised another issue which he regarded as stupendous; it was that too much money was spent on luxuries like eggs, raspberries, and strawberries for patients in the insane asylums of Ontario. Mr. Marter was a very stout man, and when he began to gurgle in his ample tenement we always knew the same old joke was coming. After enumerating the costs of various small fruits he would say, "But the poor fellows didn't get any huckleberries." As an Empire reporter I was expected to write in "Laughter and applause" at this point. The third issue was the fact that Sir Oliver had appointed his son Sheriff of Toronto. Inasmuch as the appointment would have gone to some more aggressive Liberal henchman anyway, it was impossible to excite the electorate over this accusation. I think from his attitude that Sir William Meredith was himself disgusted with the issues, for he shortly afterward[Pg 171] resigned the leadership to Mr. Marter and went ultimately to the bench. I was present at Mr. Marter's first meeting as leader, at London, Ont., and heard the same speech that I had heard a dozen times before, with one addition. He announced that he was going to abolish separate schools in Ontario. The next morning, on the way home to Toronto, J. E. Atkinson, who had been reporting the meeting for the Globe, sat down beside him on the train, and asked him where he had gotten the idea that he could abolish separate schools. He said he had gathered as much from D'Alton McCarthy. Atkinson then informed him that separate schools were guaranteed by the British North America Act and could only be abolished by the British parliament. Marter was greatly surprised, and when he got home gave out an interview announcing that he was not going to abolish separate schools after all. What D'Alton McCarthy had been advocating for years was a check to the encroachment of the French language in separate schools; but Mr. Marter had never really grasped what he was talking about.

The most tedious experience in all my career as political reporter was a joint debate between Marter and his opponent in the constituency of North Toronto, Joseph Tait, on the issues above outlined. It lasted five hours. Both orators were local preachers of the Methodist persuasion and could talk forever on the slightest provocation. Both took extreme enjoyment in their own quips. It was horrible, but we may assume that Marter was adjudged winner in this oratorical Marathon, for he was elected by 900 votes. It was a sore blow to Tait, for Marter was a stranger, whereas he had been a popular baker in the constituency all his adult life, and had made a close personal canvass. On[Pg 172] the night of the voting he was asked what he thought of the result and said: "All I can say is that there are nine hundred monumental lee-ars in North Toronto."

Tait as a lad in Scotland had been reared a Presbyterian and joined the Methodist Church after he came to Canada. Peter Ryan once asked him why he had changed, and he said, "I realized in my earliest youth that I had a rare talent for exegesis and exposeetion. But in Scotlan' the meenistry like to do all the talking themsels and discourage discourse by the laity. When I came to Canada I found that the Presbyterian meenisters had the same perneecious prejudice, so I joined Methodism, which gave me scope for my natural gifts."

Tait sat in the Ontario Legislature from 1890 to 1894, and once Mr. Ryan perpetrated a famous practical joke on him. It had been arranged between the whips that the debate on the address should close with speeches by the two leaders, Meredith and Premier Mowat. Greatly to the annoyance of Sir Oliver, Tait arose in his seat to continue the debate, a gross breach of courtesy. An adjournment until evening was arranged, and Mr. Ryan, who happened to be a visitor on the floor of the house, told his friend, the Hon. A. S. Hardy, that he would arrange matters. At eight o'clock Tait arose to present his ideas, which he assumed were of "no small value", and in a moment or two a page handed him a note. He gave a startled pause. "I must apologize to the Speaker for bringing my remarks to an abrupt conclusion, but I have just learned that my bakery is on fire." In his absence the division was called, and when Tait came back and tried to resume he was told that he was out of order.

George F. Marter's tenure as Conservative leader was short. Sir Oliver Mowat's last campaign had left that party short of followers. The Legislature mainly consisted of Liberals and Patrons of Industry, the early name of the party which subsequently became the United Farmers of Ontario and of whose really delightful leader, Joe Haycock, I have spoken in an earlier chapter. There were twenty-two Patrons; and I still have the picture of them sitting in the house in warm spring weather with weather-beaten fur-caps on their heads. One farmer member, who afterwards developed ability and sat in the House of Commons, put up at a down-town hotel, and after a night or two approached the hotel clerk with the words: "Up our way we usually give a fellow a lamp when he's going to bed." "Isn't there a light in your room?" asked the clerk. "No," said the politician. The clerk called a bell-boy and told him to go up and see about it. The boy found an overcoat hanging on the electric light bulb. This member had actually never seen an electric light before, though he had been warden of a Western Ontario county.

The retirement of Sir Oliver Mowat in 1896 to become Minister of Justice in the first Laurier administration at Ottawa changed the situation in Ontario. His successor was his brilliant, aggressive colleague, the Hon. Arthur Sturgis Hardy, who had as chief associate the Hon. George W. (afterward Sir George) Ross, a man whose oratory was admired in Great Britain as well as in the United States. It was clear that George F. Marter would be helpless against such a combination and the only man of real political talent in the Conservative group was a scholarly lawyer, James Pliny Whitney, who had been modestly keeping in the[Pg 174] background. Without effort on his own part, Whitney automatically became leader, though Marter always cherished a grievance against him.

Privately, Whitney was a personal friend and admirer of the new Premier. Two or three years after, when ill-health compelled Mr. Hardy's retirement, Mr. Whitney said to me, "I never had the heart to really fight Arthur Hardy, but now I'm going in to win." And he did, though it took longer than he expected. Nevertheless Whitney's showing in his first campaign was amazing. Mowat had been triumphant in 1894, and the Liberals were jubilant over their great federal victory with Laurier in 1896. Yet on March 1st, 1898, Whitney, with whose name very few electors had been acquainted two years before, came within seven seats of capturing the province against opponents of high political stature and long popularity. As I have said, Whitney had a very inferior following to build on. Once from a seat just above him in the press gallery I saw him put down his head and audibly swear. He had, as he thought, closed a debate on the agricultural estimates with a fine speech demanding an extension of the already admirable educational work established by the Hon. John Dryden, one of the most useful statesmen Canada ever possessed. As he sat down a follower behind him got up and raised a question about an item of $16 for repairs to a chicken house on the Government farm. The drop from the sublime to the ridiculous was appalling.

Whitney did not win recognition all at once. Owing to the manner in which he had remained in the background, his abilities were unrecognized. For instance, John R. Robinson, the vitriolic editor of the Toronto Telegram, who later became one of his most[Pg 175] emotionally enthusiastic supporters, wrote, "You can throw a brick through the window of any country law office and hit a J. P. Whitney." Would that this were so! Two more honourable and more courageous gentlemen than Arthur Sturgis Hardy and his opponent, this province has never possessed. Though he did not know it, the seeds of the malady which made his career as Premier so brief, were already in Mr. Hardy's system, and he was sometimes irascible. He would say cutting things for which he would be sorry afterward. Once a rural member, who was an undertaker by trade was pestering him on the subject of law reform, and he shouted: "Let us hear something new; let us hear from the honourable gentleman on the subject of funeral reform." When he saw that he had wounded his opponent he was deeply sorry. In other days his volatile oratory had earned him the name of "Little Thunder", and he had a gift for electrifying audiences by apparently unconscious repetitions of a telling phrase. There was one reporter who could give a perfect imitation of his style and would begin "My name is Arthur Sturgis Hardy—Sturgis Hardy." The Premier heard of this imitation and got him to repeat it in his presence. He was in no wise displeased with the burlesque, but highly diverted.

Unlike most politicians Mr. Hardy was deeply interested in music, the theatre, and poetry, and when I had occasion to go and see him would often turn to those subjects. He used to comment on my musical criticisms. "Where do you get your musical vocabulary, boy?" he once asked. "Oh, they're in every musical dictionary," I replied, "but I always try to avoid technical terms. I only use them when no other words will do." "Oh! I don't know, I don't know," he said.[Pg 176] "Words like arpeggio and cantabile sound very well, even if the reader doesn't know what they mean."

After his retirement he had leisure to indulge his taste for music, and if I saw him in an audience at a concert, the earlier part of which I had missed, I could always obtain from him a very sane and discerning criticism, safe to follow. He once thought I had misrepresented him about a certain matter, and when I quoted his words, and convinced him that if there had been misrepresentation I was blameless, he apologized. This from a noted statesman to a reporter on an opposition paper illustrated the profound chivalry of his nature. We became such friends that if he gave an item to the Globe which he had forgotten to give me, he would say: "You must call up Charlesworth and let him know," which used to annoy the Globe sometimes, in those days of news rivalries.

It is not realized how much Hardy did in his long term as Commissioner of Crown Lands toward the effective and profitable administration of the forest resources of this province. He was keen about conservation, and there were certain tracts that he flatly refused to sell because he thought them essential to the national rainfall. He was always looking to the future, and fearful of the day when white pine, Ontario's most splendid resource at that time, might be exhausted. Nor is it realized how much he did during his brief term as Premier to force power development at Niagara Falls. When he took office, American capital had for years kept certain sites for power development on the Canadian side tied up under old concessions. Hardy forced the capitalists to commence development on threat of cancellation, so that within a few years the present stupendous development, non-existent[Pg 177] in 1898, was under way. I had an amusing experience in connection with this. He sent for me one night and outlined what he intended to do. I then, on his suggestion, went to the Canadian counsel for the American interests whom he was forcing to action, and asked what they proposed to do. The lawyer, still a very distinguished man, was very genial. "So far as we are concerned," he said, "we know our rights; we shall start development when we please; and the Ontario Government can go to hell. That's our position, but don't put it quite so crudely."

I amended the statement to read that the American interests were more or less indifferent as to what course the Hardy administration chose to adopt. My own impression was that they felt sure of a Federal Government veto. The Premier's eagle eye fell on the statement, and he told his secretary to telephone the lawyer to come to his office immediately. The lawyer wanted to excuse himself, but the message was so peremptory that he decided to drop other affairs and attend. Shown the interview and asked what it meant he was ready with an answer: "Oh, the reporter misunderstood me," he said, "I just told him to go to hell and he must have assumed that I meant the Government could go to hell." "I am glad to accept your explanation," said Mr. Hardy, "but understand we mean business. Tell your clients that." This was the end of defiance, and the development work proceeded.

CHAPTER XII

GREAT THINGS UNFORESEEN

I do not think anyone foresaw the immense economic consequences that were to ensue from the initial effort of Arthur Sturgis Hardy to compel development of the power resources of the Niagara River, or that it was one of the things that was going to lift the Ontario Legislature from the position of a partly comatose county council—the position in which Mowat left it—to a body dealing with issues of enormous economic importance. Niagara development, and the construction of the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, initiated three years later by the Hon. G. W. Ross, were the beginnings of movements and transitions which have in twenty years changed the entire economic position of central Canada. Few grasped this fact at the time; but the contrast between the subjects that were discussed in the Ontario elections of 1894 and those which had become issues ten years later, was remarkable.

Even then their importance was obscured by the public excitement arising from political scandals of a sensational and often grotesque order. Whitney's fine showing at the Ontario elections of 1898 was a surprise to both Liberals and Conservatives. At that time Liberals were in power not only throughout Canada, but in every province from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I was closely in touch with the central Conservative organization at that time, and on the day after the polling[Pg 179] I never saw a man more exasperated than the chief organizer, Robert Birmingham. In the closing days of the campaign the organization had been so desperate for money that it could not find funds to send speakers to assist candidates appealing for oratorical help. It had been obliged to pinch and economize in the mere matter of posters and campaign literature. There were plenty of wealthy men in the party, but they had not supposed that Whitney's chances were so good, and refused, as they put it, to throw good money after bad. The day after, $30,000 was voluntarily tendered Birmingham to assist in fighting unseatment petitions, at that time an aftermath of every general election. Birmingham said to me, "That $30,000 if offered two weeks ago would have put Whitney in office."

Arthur Sturgis Hardy himself clearly discerned the handwriting on the wall, sick man though he was. He openly told his friends that seven was not in his opinion a safe majority on which to try and carry on the affairs of the province. The Liberal reverses in Western Ontario, which had all his life been his political stamping ground, distressed him deeply. The policy he advocated was that he should again go to the people and ask for a real mandate and stand or fall by the result. He predicted that an attempt to hang on by the skin of their teeth would result in permanent disaster to the Liberal party throughout Ontario—and, since Ontario is one third of Canada, both geographically and in population, this should be by every means avoided.

Hardy's advice was disregarded, and as a result it is now more than twenty-seven years since the Liberal party obtained a majority in Ontario, either in[Pg 180] provincial or federal elections. It had nominally a majority of one or two in the general elections for the Legislature in 1902, but events showed that this was corruptly obtained. Hardy's party followers were, however, all for a "fighting policy" and these militant tactics took a form analogous to poison gas and stink bombs. An era of ballot-stuffing, ballot-burning, ballot-switching, impersonation, and vote-buying on a very extensive scale, was inaugurated, and finally Whitney was swept into power on a wave of public indignation. If it were worth while I could write several chapters on the impudently criminal incidents of those bad old days. But as I look back on the political history of Canada I realize that this eruption of electoral crime was but the final stage of a disease which had prevailed for many years, and to which the consciences of the most honourable public men were blind. The attitude of most political leaders from 1850 to 1900 toward the election laws, was much like that of the celebrated baseball magnate, Mr. "Muggsy" McGraw, toward baseball regulations. He is reported to have said to his team after certain new regulations were promulgated: "These are the new rules, boys, now we must try and find a way to beat them." So with the politicians. Prominent men of both parties used to delight, when in social intercourse, to boast of the hair-raising tricks they had played to thwart the will of the electorate. An instance or two will suffice. One day a newspaper published a portrait and short biography of a well-known citizen, and one of the flattering things it said was that he had been entrusted with many important private missions for the Conservative party in days gone by. "Rot," said an acquaintance,[Pg 181] "the only private mission he was ever entrusted with was to steal a ballot box, and then he got cold feet."

I was living in East York when W. F. Maclean first ran against the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie and pulled the latter's majority down to 25. The returning officer was a neighbour, and in the middle of the night two cabinet ministers of the Ottawa administration drove to his house, one a very old friend. The visitors requested that they be locked up alone with the ballot boxes for an hour or so. But the returning officer, stout Tory though he was, peremptorily refused. In the last few months of his premiership Mr. Hardy was made the unconscious bearer of "boodle" into the riding of Lennox where a bye-election was in progress. W. T. R. Preston was the organizer in charge for the Liberals, and had secretly sent word that he wanted a large sum in five dollar bills as sinews of war. He issued a warning against sending it by express or mail, as both sources were watched. A quick-witted Liberal stuffed a club-bag full of currency and knowing that the Premier was billed to speak at Napanee, the county town of Lennox, that night, took it to the station and handed it to Mr. Hardy with the words: "Do you mind giving this to Preston? It's his laundry. He's all out of clean shirts and collars." The Premier said, "Why, certainly," and to his dying day never knew of the trick played on him.

Personation was a game party workers played with the same zest as they would poker; and this had been the practice for decades. Whitney was almost the first active politician to realize seriously that this sort of thing was ruinous, not merely in destroying public morale, but to the financial resources of the country. Elections grew more and more costly, and[Pg 182] the men who supplied the campaign funds had to be recompensed one hundred or two hundred-fold out of the public resources. In addition, governments which retained power so long as those of Sir Oliver Mowat and Sir John Macdonald had raised up around them a veritable host of hangers-on who had to be "kept". Whitney wiped out corruption in Ontario by making penalties so severe that it was impossible to find henchmen to take the inevitable risks.

While the "atrocities", as Whitney in thunderous tones described them, were in full swing in Ontario, the Hon. G. W. Ross, who had succeeded Hardy as Premier, came in for a great deal of public recrimination; and as I look back I must admit that the younger journalists like myself, who were disgusted with what we saw going on around us, were cruel in our lampoons of him. I have learned since, on the most unimpeachable authority, that Ross was in reality a singularly guileless man, and did not sense the unscrupulousness of some of those around him. When the facts came out he at first refused to believe them, and when he did protest, too late, he was treated as an ingrate, because, it was argued, he had been the chief beneficiary. He was more or less broken-hearted over the whole business to the end of his days, though, because of his great oratorical abilities and studious mind, he was later knighted, and became Liberal leader in the Senate.

It certainly could not be charged against either Hardy or Ross that either ever used public office to enrich himself. Indeed, throughout the régime when electoral crime was rife, the public services of the province were singularly pure. I was for seven years as a reporter, in very close touch with the civil service[Pg 183] of Ontario and not in all that time did I hear of the misappropriation of one dollar. I really think Sir George Ross would have been tempted to suicide if revelations of malfeasance such as disgraced a later and recent régime had transpired under him. Even the cabinet minister who was chiefly responsible for the electoral crimes, was rigid and exacting in the conduct of his own department.

Ross had a gift of Celtic oratory that enthralled every listener, and had been a member of the House of Commons before he entered Ontario politics as Minister of Education. The late John Ross Robertson in his old age told me that of all the orators he had listened to in his long life the two most eloquent were Hon. William Macdougall and my own father-in-law, Peter Ryan, but both of them would have admitted the supreme excellence of Ross in this respect. Forty years ago the Liberal party was, by all accounts, amazingly endowed with talented speakers, but the unfortunate fact about their addresses was that much of their eloquence was so belied by subsequent events that it would be cruel to reprint them. There was more first-rate oratory wasted in the effort to show that the Canadian Pacific Railway could never become a practicable proposition than was ever bestowed on a good cause, save Confederation. Sir George Ross was a most charming man in his social relations, and got his training as a public speaker in the same way as did Sir George Foster—addressing temperance meetings in the days when hard drinking was the order of the day in all parts of Canada except Quebec. He was also a didactic poet of some skill, and his ambitions in this respect once got him into a rather embarrassing literary controversy.

Every man of literary tastes stores in the subconscious chambers of his mind quotations and allusions which he frequently gives forth after a lapse of years under the impression that they are his own. For instance, I myself not long ago in a rather "highbrow" discussion on heredity recalled the humble origin of men of great genius like Shakespeare and Turner, and said, "Genius, after all, springs up inexplicably like the flower in the cranny of the rock." I thought it original, until a lady told me that she had found the image that very day in a poem by Wordsworth. In Sir George Ross's youth there was a popular didactic poet, Dr. J. G. Holland, editor of Scribner's Magazine, whose verses were widely recited. Years after Holland's death Sir George Ross published a volume of verse, and one poem, "Canada Wants Men", contained an almost exact paraphrase of half a dozen lines by Holland. It was a clear case of that unconscious plagiarism of which every writer is guilty occasionally, but of course it looked queer to the non-literary multitude when some busy investigator exposed it. Sir George wisely ignored a charge difficult to explain. Some years later I was present at a banquet of the Canadian Club in Hamilton, at which the chief speakers were Adam Brown, ex-M.P., still flourishing at the age of 99, Sir George Ross, and Sir James Whitney. Mr. Brown, a sweet and guileless soul incapable of mischief, wound up his remarks thus: "In closing I cannot do better than recite the noble lines of the statesman who sits at my right," and proceeded to quote the Holland paraphrase. I was sitting directly opposite all three speakers and could see the embarrassment in Sir George Ross's countenance. So soon as he had[Pg 185] concluded Adam Brown leaned across to me and said: "If you would care to include those lines in your report, here is the copy." Sir George fixed his gaze on me, and I explained that space would not permit. If ever there was gratitude in a man's eyes, it gleamed in his when I refused those lines. As only two or three of those present were aware of the controversy over Mr. Brown's quotation, no harm was done.

The old battling days in the Legislature, when Whitney and Ross had their horns locked in desperate encounter, brought me in contact with a number of men of remarkable ability and personality. Two men of similar personality and attainments, though opposed in politics, were the Attorney General, the Hon. J. M. (afterwards Sir John) Gibson of Hamilton, and J. J. Foy, K.C., of Toronto, who later filled that office. Both were lawyers of very high attainments and fine philosophic minds; but strangely enough very hesitant speakers (and for that reason easy to report). When the orators were through with the fireworks it was usually their task to present the legal arguments. Though the listeners in the public galleries were perhaps bored, every reporter was on the alert when either man arose, for neither spoke unless he had something to say, and in print the remarks of each were noted for distinction and fine analysis. Above all, both were kindly, whole-souled men, instinctively kind to any youth seeking information. Mr. Foy died beloved by all who had known him. Sir John Gibson still lives and the length of his public service may be judged from the fact that I possess a book won by my mother as a school-prize when she was a girl at the Central School, Hamilton, in the sixties, and it is signed "John Morrison Gibson, Inspector". Sir John[Pg 186] and the grand old man of the Canadian bench, Chief Justice Sir William Mulock, were students in residence at the University of Toronto in the first years of the American Civil War and the military ardour of each was fired by the Trent Affair. How long ago that seems even to men of middle age like myself!

Another man who came into the legislature with the wave of sentiment aroused by Whitney was the late Hon. W. J. Hanna, of West Lambton, a man for whom I cherished a profound affection. He had much to do with Whitney's ultimate victory. While a lawyer at Sarnia he had undertaken the task of organizing Western Ontario and inducing candidates of real influence to accept nominations. Among the men whom Whitney and Hanna succeeded in bringing into the legislative arena was the young Mayor of London, who later became that remarkable and world-famous figure, Sir Adam Beck. Hanna himself was destined to widespread fame, through his connection with that vastly potential and essentially modern force, the oil industry, with which, at the time of which I speak, he had but recently become connected. The wonderful epic of the petroleum industry, of which I have written much elsewhere, is not for these pages.

The chance that led to its establishment in Canada and the association of W. J. Hanna therewith is, however, worth mentioning, for it is both ludicrous and romantic. In the mid-nineties the town of Sarnia advanced a large cash bonus to an adventurer of the rain-maker variety to establish a plant by which he claimed that he could extract oil from the waters of Lake St. Clair. The faker ultimately fled and the plant was left idle, until in 1897 Charles O. Stillman who, like his father before him, had been an expert oil man[Pg 187] in New Jersey, acquired it for $10,000. This was the beginning of the Imperial Oil Company, now linked up with the whole world, and W. J. Hanna was the young lawyer engaged to put through the legal transfers.

The reason Hanna found such favour with the Standard Oil Company, of which the Canadian enterprise became a subsidiary, was that he never let actions get into court; he was one of those rare lawyers who, both in his large neighbourhood practice as well as his corporate activities, always avoided litigation. For many years he paid a great deal more attention to politics than he did to his private interests. Occasionally absurd whispers of "Standard Oil" used to be whispered about him, doubly nonsensical because that company has been one of the greatest benefactors of Canadian industry, and because it could desire no favours that the Ontario Government was in a position to bestow.

He was a wonderful politician in establishing contacts with rural voters, for he was originally a farm lad himself. Once while on a campaign he was invited to dinner at a farm house and the good wife asked him if he would like to step into the "spare room" and wash his hands. "No," said he, "I was raised on a farm and used to wash my face and hands under the pump and I'd like to do it now." That story went all over the rural districts of Ontario and was of immense political value.

Once he was at some function in New York at which many executives of the great corporation were assembled. It was one of those banquets which are organized to celebrate the retirement of an eminent officer and herald his successor. The speeches were rather heavy; speaker after speaker told of the long[Pg 188] line of remarkable men who had presided over the destinies of the company, and how providentially new men of equal or greater ability arose to fill vacancies. Finally "Judge" Hanna, as he was called in the Wall Street district, was incited to speak; and he commenced with a racy recital of conditions in the community in which he was reared. He said that when a Methodist minister was going to another station a "social" was held to bid godspeed to the departing minister and welcome the new. The retiring cleric would invariably say that though his heart ached at leaving his friends he was consoled by the thought that Providence was sending them an abler and better man to take his place. At one of these functions an old lady burst into bitter tears, and sobbed so loudly that the retiring minister said, "I must leave the platform to try and console our distressed sister." He sat beside her and patted her hand, saying that she would find that all was for the best, but she, through her sobs, murmured: "I've been going to this church for fifty years, and I've been hearing that speech you just made every three years. They all say the next man will be better. But it ain't true. They get worse and worse." Needless to say "Judge" Hanna's anecdote relieved the tension of the occasion and for a month it was repeated all over the Wall Street district.

W. J. Hanna could have been Premier of Ontario when Sir James Whitney died, but declined. Later, at personal sacrifice, he accepted a more onerous and ungrateful post, that of Food Controller in the darkest days of the war. I wrote at the time that he, probably the most popular man in Canadian politics, was voluntarily taking a step that would make him unpopular. I knew that the people were expecting a Food[Pg 189] Controller who would make rations cheaper for those at home, and thus increase consumption; whereas the real purpose of the appointment was to reduce consumption of food staples so that there would be ampler supplies for the army in the field. The event proved that there were countless people who would rather prove their patriotism by denouncing the Germans than by doing without bacon at breakfast. Perhaps the most extraordinary remark I heard at that time was by a Toronto lady who said sorrowfully: "Isn't the war terrible, I can't get those lovely French face powders any more." This may seem unbelievable, but it is literally true.

Mr. Hanna died suddenly early in 1919, partly of overwork and partly of private grief. His only son, Neil Hanna, a lovable and able young lawyer, came safely through the war as an aviator, only to be killed in an accident two weeks after the armistice. Such a blow, when the hopes of everyone had been restored, was ten-fold more wounding than if it had occurred during the conflict when the hearts of all fathers and mothers were steeled for the worst. I was Mr. Hanna's guest at Sarnia two months before he died, and spent a day with him in the great industrial works of which he was the head. It was his first visit since the death of his son, who, like the father, had been beloved by many. As he walked about I saw hundreds of people looking at him with mute sympathy in their eyes. At night he said to me, "Well, I've kept up pretty well, don't you think, but it's been a hard day. Everything reminded me of Neil. I could see that all those people wanted to speak to me about him, but I didn't dare let them."

Mr. Hanna had in his Sarnia home some of the most beautiful hand-carved walnut furniture I have ever[Pg 190] seen, and which he told me had been made by a brother of the former Prime Minister of Canada, the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, a Scottish cabinet-maker with an absolute genius for his craft. When I spoke of it enthusiastically, he sighed and said, "Yes, it's beautiful, but I have no heart for it now, it was to have been Neil's when he married."

As I have said, the Niagara development forced into being by the Hon. A. S. Hardy was destined to have a great deal to do with the subsequent fortunes of public men. I saw much of it in its beginnings. One of my most thrilling experiences was a trip through the tunnel which was to form a vent for the water of the first great plant, that of the Canadian Niagara Power Company. It was then completed almost to its outlet in the middle of the Horse Shoe Falls. It was uncanny to feel that above me was the whole weight of the Niagara River, and just beyond a thin wall of rock the thundering cataract. Still more thrilling was it to walk out on a coffer dam erected to protect the initial work of the Ontario Power Company near Dufferin Islands, the cribs for which were being sunk far out in the middle of the rapids above the falls. I have always enjoyed the sensation of danger, and the sense that if one of the cribs loosened I would be swept over the cataract by the swirling waters at my feet, was enchanting.

As a correspondent I took an active part in the agitation for government control of power distribution, which was the germ of the Hydro-Electric Commission, now the greatest electrical development institution in the world. Several men whose fame has been eclipsed by the deserved eminence of Sir Adam Beck merit recognition[Pg 191] in the movement for public control. They included the late W. K. McNaught, and P. W. Ellis, of Toronto, who as manufacturing jewelers knew of the value to Switzerland of so clean and stable a source of power as electricity; Controller Frank Spence, of Toronto, whose labours in behalf of electric development were much more important than all his agitation for prohibition; and eminent men of the Swiss-German district, Waterloo county, like the late E. W. B. Snider of St. Jacobs, the real father of the Ontario Hydro System.

The policy of hydro-development under public ownership grew out of the agitation for a government transmission line, a plan sponsored by Sir Joseph Flavelle and Sir John Willison when they purchased the News. In their first issue, early in 1903, this policy was enunciated, and I, who had just joined the staff, was turned loose to work up the agitation through interviews. Not only in Toronto, but throughout Western Ontario I encountered "commercial shell-backs" who told me that the "white coal" would never supersede steam plants. And that was only twenty-two years ago. I first met Sir Adam Beck at a conference on the subject in the Walper House, at Kitchener (then known as Berlin). He was Mayor of London, and he said that he had not hitherto paid much attention to the subject, but was there to learn. The effect of his conversion that day was stupendous. When Premier Ross did grant the demand for a government-owned transmission line it was a single-handed triumph for the News. Journals which have since taken hydro-development under their wing were, during the initial agitation, skeptical and satirical.

In the magnificently worded preface to the King James version of the Bible the translators speak of certain critics who "give liking unto nothing but what is framed by themselves, and hammered on their own anvil". There is an over-abundance of that spirit in journalism, and that is why at the outset we fought alone on the hydro issue. The wonderful dynamic personality and business mind of Sir Adam Beck rectified the situation, and brought everyone into camp. When Whitney came to power twenty years ago Beck literally forced his ideas on the new Premier, for the latter was naturally conservative, and, as I have said, there was little popular conviction that "white coal" would ever supersede steam as an industrial proposition. The abilities and personality of Adam Beck won my whole-hearted admiration many years ago—his rise from humble beginnings no less than his equestrian tastes, for when I first saw him he was a brilliant steeple-chaser, riding his own mounts. His skill as a business organizer he proved in his own manufacturing industry while still young. I thought him, and still think him, a superman in capacity, and long believed that he was the inevitable successor for Sir James Whitney as Premier of Ontario. But his was not the temperament for practical politics, and as Chairman of the Hydro-Electric Commission he performed a greater work than he could have accomplished in a purely political capacity.

The contrast between what was initiated in Ontario in the eight years between 1898 and 1908 and certain events in the Ottawa arena, is tragic, for that was also the period of reckless railway construction which has laid a frightful burden on the country. Before bidding adieu to the transition period of Ontario politics,[Pg 193] a quarter of a century ago, I should mention another work initiated by Sir George Ross, at the instance of his colleague, the Hon. Frank (now Chief Justice) Latchford. This was the construction of the Timiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, which has had its aftermath in making Canada one of the great silver and gold producing countries of the world. Latchford, alone among all public men of the time realized the potentialities of that area; and his policy paved the way for the services of the world-famous geologist, the late Willet G. Miller, whose name will be forever held in honour in that region.

It is strange to look back and realize that in the public excitement over ballot-stuffing, ballot-burning and bribery of members, hardly anyone visualized the future of the vast economic potentialities of those natural forces which these men were developing for industrial uses.

CHAPTER XIII

LAURIER AND TUPPER

In the Federal arena the cardinal episode of the nineties was the rise to international fame of the late Sir Wilfrid Laurier. In 1892 when I first entered daily newspaper work he was but vaguely known to the multitude. In 1897, at Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, he, as Richard Harding Davis wrote in Harper's Magazine, divided honours with Lord Roberts as a figure of popular interest in that great demonstration of the might and glory of the British Empire.

Though I am not old, it is strange to think that I have seen or known every Prime Minister in the history of the Canadian Dominion, save one, Sir John Abbott, who filled the post for a brief term in 1891. Sir John Macdonald I recall as a grim sphinx-like figure in grey top hat and grey frock coat sitting with his hands gripping the top of his cane as his carriage stood to let traffic pass on a Toronto thoroughfare. The reserved Mackenzie, much beloved by his few intimates, I often saw in the office building where I worked as a youth, which housed an insurance company of which he was President. I have spoken of Sir John Thompson and Sir Mackenzie Bowell, and I was thrown into close contact with Sir Charles Tupper throughout his five years' career as Conservative leader. Sir Robert Borden I also saw frequently during the eleven years when he was leader of the Opposition,[Pg 195] and often the object of irritating conspiracies among his own followers—conspiracies of which the authors must have been ashamed in the days of his triumph and superb war service. And in passing I should say that Canadian politics has known no more courteous or grateful man. He never came to Toronto without visiting the Mail and Empire office and thanking every member of the staff for the assistance rendered him. Such recognition by public men, who have usually nothing but complaints to make even of staunch journalistic friends, is as rare as angels' visits. Arthur Meighen and William Lyon Mackenzie King are of course contemporaries. But Mr. King and I covered many assignments together in the old days when he was a most enthusiastic journalist, but already aiming at higher flights. In his youth "Billy" King, as we called him, was not only a brilliant speaker but keenly interested in the theatre. I remember Tom Gregg once saying to me, "Do you know a young man named King on the Globe?" I said I knew him well, and asked the reason of Gregg's enquiry. "Well," he said, "I was walking along the street yesterday with Lewis Morrison, the actor, and he stopped and shook hands with him. Morrison says he is a most idealistic lad. Goes in for social reform and things like that. Morrison says he is sure he will be a great man some day. A reporter who goes in for social reform must be an oddity!" Actors have curious intuitions. It was the brilliant Canadian actor, Franklin McLeay, who first told me he was sure Hamar Greenwood was destined for "big things".

To return to Laurier, who long before his death selected King as his Heir Apparent. I recall as a boy reading a description, by the veteran Canadian[Pg 196] humourist "The Khan", of the French-Canadian statesman's first reception in Ontario after he became leader. Cobourg was I think the scene, and "The Khan" recorded the fact that nearly all the stalwarts introduced, addressed him as though his name rhymed with "tarrier". Before the rise of Laurier in the federal arena, the Liberal party had been cursed by literary indiscretions as serious for them as was the cry of "rum, Romanism, and rebellion" for James G. Blaine in the U.S. Presidential campaign of 1884. In 1891, when Laurier fought his first campaign, he did not escape the curse, which came back in the form of the Farrer Annexation pamphlet. In the two previous campaigns the Liberals, and his predecessor as leader, Edward Blake, had been equally unfortunate in their literary allies. In the general election of 1882 Blake's chances were ruined by a campaign song, "Ontario, Ontario," which ran in part as follows:

The individual being thus proclaimed both traitor and tyrant was the French-Canadian voter. The song was sprung as a surprise at a great Liberal rally in Toronto, where Blake was the chief speaker. My father-in-law, Peter Ryan, was sitting by his side, and when E. W. Schuch, a well known baritone singer rose and sang it, the Liberal leader turned and whispered to Mr. Ryan, "Who is responsible for this damned rubbish?" Mr. Ryan, who had been on tour, was ignorant of its origin and was equally appalled. "Well, these smart gentlemen have cost us the province of Quebec,"[Pg 197] said Blake, as the singer finished. He desired to leave the platform, but was dissuaded, and in the course of his speech he made a hopeless effort to smooth matters over by eulogies of the French Canadians.

The damage was done, however. The Toronto Liberal group were seemingly proud of their achievement, and sent Mr. Schuch on tour to sing "Ontario, Ontario" (to the tune of Maryland). At St. Thomas Mr. Blake encountered him on the platform before the meeting opened. "Either you leave this hall, or I will," was his dictum. The authorship remained for forty years a mystery, though the culprit was John W. Bengough, the noted cartoonist and humourist. One rainy afternoon a committee meeting of Toronto Liberals was held in the grocery store of one John Macmillan, a local stalwart. Schuch, who had some months previously filled an engagement as a campaign singer in an election in Ohio, suggested that they should adopt similar methods in Canada, if the lyrics could be produced. Bengough, who was present, went into retirement behind the counter and penned "Ontario, Ontario" in less than half an hour.

After it became public property, the late Martin Griffin, afterward Parliamentary librarian at Ottawa, and then an editorial writer on the Mail, wrote a learned discourse, in which by internal evidence he showed that the lyric must be the work of J. D. Edgar, K.C., afterwards Sir James Edgar, Speaker of the House of Commons. Mr. Edgar had in his salad days published a volume of verse, which Griffin used as circumstantial evidence against him. The editorial was intended as a hoax, but the public took it seriously, and to the end of his life Sir James could not live it down. I personally disclosed the real authorship after[Pg 198] Mr. Bengough's death in 1923, and several prominent men told me that they had always believed Edgar to be the author. I fancy the clearing of his father's name in connection with this doggerel must have been a relief to Prof. Pelham Edgar, our leading Canadian authority on the art of poesy.

The Liberals also suffered grotesquely from another literary effusion in the campaign of 1882. At that time the Globe had on its staff the late J. Gordon Mowat (Moses Oates), founder of the Canadian Magazine. Mowat was sent on tour in Eastern Ontario writing up the industrial situation and from one town on the St. Lawrence mailed a story denouncing factories as hot beds of immorality and undesirable institutions for a country so young and chaste as Canada. The night editor of the Globe was a Mr. J. E. Collins and finding some difficulty in reading Mowat's copy sent it to the composing room unread. Protection and factories had been an issue in every campaign since 1878 and when the article appeared the fat was in the fire. Gordon Brown, the managing editor of the Globe, at once discerned the mischief that would ensue and dismissed Collins, but the damage was done.

On its appearance the Tories at once raised an outcry that the morality of decent factory girls had been assailed by the Liberal organ, and it did irreparable damage to Liberal candidates among the working classes of every town in Eastern Canada. As Arthur Wallis ironically put it, the morality of factory operatives was not regarded as truly vindicated until the Conservatives were returned to power.

Certainly a literary "jinx" pursued Blake, and Laurier might well have thought himself subject to the same curse when the Farrer pamphlet, written by[Pg 199] an editorial supporter, was revealed in 1891. But by 1896 matters had changed. The selection of a French-Canadian leader had proven an antidote to the old anti-French cry voiced in "Ontario, Ontario"; and the Conservatives were making hay for Laurier by their own quarrels. Moreover, "that great gentleman", as Lady Minto truly termed him, revealed qualities of oratory that could charm the birds out of the trees.

Sir John Willison in his memories has told us of the grave difficulties which were at first encountered in reconciling Ontario Liberalism to a French Catholic leader. In 1896 not the least of them was the timidity of Laurier himself in the face of the decree of the Quebec hierarchy favouring Sir Charles Tupper's policy of remedial legislation for Manitoba Catholics following the local Legislature's action in abolishing separate schools. It was quite certain that if Laurier was to capture Ontario he must fight the hierarchy, but since the Bishops of Quebec had once defeated him when he became a cabinet minister under Mackenzie in the seventies, he was "twice shy". In 1896 Peter Ryan was the chief oratorical representative of the Irish Catholics of Ontario, a very important factor since they had for many years voted solidly Liberal under his shepherding and Mowat's tolerant policies. My father-in-law was asked whether he thought he could hold his group to their Liberal allegiance if Laurier fought the Quebec hierarchy, and he said he believed he could. I was told on the best of authority that it was this assurance, together with one from J. Israel Tarte, who had become Laurier's organizer in Quebec, that he could deliver the French-Canadian voters to his new chief in spite of the Bishops, which decided[Pg 200] the course of the Liberal leader—a course which elected him. To the day of his death Sir Wilfrid remained grateful to Mr. Ryan, and in the latter years of his life, when he was deeply depressed over his eclipse, never came to Toronto without paying him a visit. The task of holding Irish Catholic Liberals of Ontario against their conviction that Manitoba Catholics were entitled to redress, was rendered the easier by the fact that certain Conservatives of the lower rank had two years previously been mixed up in a despicable organization known as the Protestant Protective Association, which pledged its members to dismiss Catholic servant girls and factory hands from their employ. In Quebec, parish priests read from their pulpits the hierarchy's condemnation of Laurier and after mass told their parishioners to vote for a leader of their own race as probably their only chance to elect a French-Canadian Premier of Canada.

Some years afterwards Mr. Tarte spoke to me of Sir Charles Tupper's hard luck. "Poor Sir Charles," he said, "he was a great man, but he was 'in wrong' both in '96 and 1900. He did not know, and Laurier did not know until I told him, that in 1896 nearly every habitant was down on the Bishops, because times had been very hard and the Church had been exacting in the matter of tithes. Some could not buy new farm machinery because of tithes, and it was their chance to get even with the Bishops. Then in 1900, Sir Charles appointed as chief organizer Henry Dalby of the Montreal Star. Now Henry Dalby is a nice old man. I dare say he knows a lot about the Byzantine Empire, but he knows nothing of French Canada, and if I wanted to carry the province of Quebec I should[Pg 201] certainly try and bribe the Montreal Star to oppose me."

After Laurier's death in 1919, most Canadian editorial writers of all shades of opinion were rather gravelled, in scanning his career, to discern what of constructive statesmanship its events revealed. Only one, Prof. Archibald McMechan, of Halifax, had the temerity to mention this. It seemed hardly fair to review his disastrous railway policies, embarked on against the advice of his saner advisers. So in the obituary articles we dwelt strongly on his personality. In that we had ample material, for he was a man of essentially social nature, who appealed to the eye and imagination, and fired the appreciation of those with whom he came in contact. No Canadian who ever filled high office possessed in a greater degree personal distinction, enriched with magnetism. The princeliness of his bearing impressed the public in every country he visited, and his oratory, invariably humane and charming rather than flamboyant, impressed all listeners. When he first went to England in 1897 he appealed to the British public as an essentially romantic figure, typical of what British Imperial prestige stood for—a man of foreign race in a conquered land whom Britain's wise colonial policy had made a distinguished servant of the Crown.

During the Royal tour of 1901 and the Quebec Tercentenary of 1908, I frequently saw him in contact with the many distinguished men whom the present King brought with him to Canada on both occasions. To Canadians, whatever their politics, it gave a deep sense of satisfaction to recognize in their own Prime Minister a man on whom knighthood, the order of chivalry, sat so fittingly.

The Royal tour of 1901 put Sir Wilfrid's savoir faire to a severe test at times. He was a man who enjoyed manifestations of popular good-will as well as anybody; and as a politician was not oblivious to the necessity of avoiding offence toward well-meaning supporters. He accompanied Their Majesties across the continent, and was sometimes embarrassed by indiscreet coteries in remote settlements who tried to play the political game by making him the hero of the occasion. On one occasion, a Liberal association, learning that the Royal train was to lie at a siding for half an hour, sought to improve the occasion by presenting him with an address. The annoyance of Sir Wilfrid at so gross a breach of etiquette was great, but he managed to send the deputation home without ruffling their feelings, though preserving the decorum of his position as official host to his future sovereign.

Political leaders, though they receive a great deal of honour while custodians of power, have also much to endure from indiscreet followers. In such cases they must display unfailing tact, for they never know but that the gad-fly may have sufficient influence in his own bailiwick to swing an entire township to the opposite party. In 1899 in the old station dining-room at Palmerston, Ont., I witnessed Laurier's ability to deal with such importunities. It was at a time when there was a great hullabaloo about the supposed opposition of the Hon. Israel Tarte to sending a Canadian contingent from Canada to assist Great Britain in the South African war. The room was thronged with yokels anxious to see whether a Prime Minister ate like ordinary mortals; and a local Liberal magnate seated himself at the table and proceeded to inform Sir Wilfrid that "the boys around there" did not like his[Pg 203] colleague, Mr. Tarte. He demanded to know what the Prime Minister was going to do about Tarte. I was sitting at a near-by table with the late Rudolph Boudreau, afterwards Clerk of the Privy Council, and at that time Sir Wilfrid's chief secretary; and I have never seen a man more indignant with our Ontario "boors", as he called them. Sir Wilfrid tried to change the subject, but the interloper did not take the hint. However, the statesman showed no annoyance. "Oh, you don't understand Mr. Tarte," he said, and bethought himself of a humorous anecdote about misunderstandings. Nevertheless, he was much relieved when the whistle blew, and the brakeman cried, "All aboard".

It is realized now that on the South African question Mr. Tarte was perfectly right. The sending of a contingent to South Africa was a constitutional departure of the gravest character, because under no method of hair-splitting could it be described as an operation for the defence of Canada. Tarte held that the Government should immediately call parliament together and submit the question to the representatives of the people—the course pursued by Borden in 1914 with reference to the Great War. The eminent Imperialist, Col. George Taylor Denison, whom I interviewed at that time, said he was at one with Tarte on this point. Though he refused to say so for publication, he thought that such aid, coming as a parliamentary measure instead of an arbitrary act of government would be much more impressive as an imperial gesture.

I heard what is said to have been the only financial speech Sir Wilfrid ever delivered on the stump. His great power lay in elucidating and adorning questions[Pg 204] of general policy; but just as the comedian longs to play Hamlet (and vice versa) Sir Wilfrid aspired to shine in a field in which men like Sir George Foster and the Hon. W. S. Fielding were past masters. He spent a part of his vacation in the summer of 1899 preparing notes from blue books for such an effort; an unnecessary effort, be it said, for it had been arranged that Mr. Fielding should accompany him in the speaking tour projected for the autumn. The speech was made at Paisley, in the heart of Bruce county, Ont., the occasion being Sir Wilfrid's first visit to that region of Scottish Liberal stalwarts.

Sir Wilfrid thought it particularly fitting that he should address a Scottish audience in terms of dollars and cents, and genially announced his intention of making a financial address, though disclaiming that he was a man of figures. It was magnificent, but it was not war. It sounded well, but Mr. Fielding sitting at his side was driven almost to profanity in his efforts to make whispered corrections of the errors with which it bristled. The Scots listeners were frankly puzzled, but woke up to enthusiasm when Sir Wilfrid got back to his true oratorical métier.

After the meeting, which was held in the afternoon on the fair grounds, Sir Wilfrid announced that he was going to call on a friend or two, and entrusted his bag to Alexander Smith, the well-known Ottawa lawyer, at that time Liberal organizer, to carry to the hotel. This was Mr. Fielding's chance. "Get rid of that speech," he whispered to Smith. The organizer fell in with the suggestion and, as he crossed the picturesque bridge of Paisley, extracted the precious notes and scattered them on the bosom of the Saugeen River. Presumably they ultimately reached Lake[Pg 205] Huron, and Sir Wilfrid never knew what became of the fruits of his summer's browsing among the blue books.

Perhaps the best example of his quiet, and at times caustic wit, was a rebuke he administered to an overzealous reporter at Ottawa. The Prime Minister had requested the gallery correspondents to meet him in his office at a certain hour, but his arrival was slightly delayed. Among them was an able shorthand man, who had been as noted for his intense Toryism while employed on the opposition press as for his militant Liberalism after he became attached to journals of that stripe. His ambition was to secure a civil service post. Sir Wilfrid entered the room quietly, and this correspondent, affecting ignorance of his arrival, commenced a vehement tirade against a colleague who represented a Conservative newspaper, for alleged unfair treatment of Sir Wilfrid. "Mr. X," interposed the Prime Minister with meaning in his voice, "were you born a Liberal, or are you an Opportunist, as they say I am?" The shot was effective and the reporter blushed to the roots of his hair. A long preachment could not have more effectively conveyed the leader's contempt for time-servers.

Sir Wilfrid never made a speech in Ontario without the declaration, "I am above all things a Canadian!" This had a double meaning. To the habitant the word "Canadian" signifies a man of French origin, and in Quebec it was a common saying, "Laurier is not afraid to tell the Orangemen he is a Canadian."

I think that the plain records of Canadian history justify me in holding Sir Charles Tupper to have been the greater man,—one of the greatest and most far-seeing statesmen this continent has produced. But[Pg 206] when he resigned the office of High Commissioner in London in the spring of 1896, and came back to Canada to take the post of Prime Minister, he was attempting a hopeless task. Though he was originally a doctor by profession it would have required greater skill than his to restore to active life an organism so shot to pieces with internal dissensions as the Conservative following to which he fell heir. The group denounced by Sir Mackenzie Bowell as a "Nest of traitors", who brought him back from London, were the ablest men in the government, and the well-wishers of their country, but their action came too late. They should have taken this course after the death of Sir John Thompson, or better still have chosen the High Commissioner's son, Sir Hibbert Tupper, a man of very high ability, who would in time have made a Prime Minister of much distinction. Frankly, Sir Charles was too old and had been too long out of touch with the politics of his country to succeed, even had the task been less impossible. But the exhibition he gave of first-class fighting skill in 1896, and the diplomacy he showed in inducing men of eminence to enter public life in 1900, proved his mettle.

The Liberals had reason to fear Sir Charles's fighting powers on the stump, for he had worsted them in many an ancient fray. So they devised a system of continuous interruption. He was reputed to be an egotist who used the first personal pronoun too abundantly in reviewing his notable past. So soon as he would open his mouth on the platform a gang would start shouting, "I, I, I," and keep it up all evening. In Orange centres also the populace was greatly inflamed against him for his willingness to impose separate schools in Manitoba, and heartily joined in the[Pg 207] chorus. I shall never forget the sight of the grand old stalwart on the platform of Massey Hall, Toronto, for two hours declaming the speech he had set himself to deliver against a constant din of meaningless interruptions, for the Liberals had their "Cheer-leaders" to drown him out in every part of the hall. It was almost impossible to hear him, even at a distance of less than ten feet.

That was a tragic night for him. He had dined with a very old friend, the Hon. John Beverley Robinson, like himself a doughty, splendid type of old-fashioned Tory gentleman, who had been Mayor of Toronto and Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario. They had come to the meeting together. As the party were being ushered through the basement of Massey Hall to take their places on the platform, Mr. Robinson dropped behind and, leaning against the wall, said he felt ill. In a moment or two he was dead. Sir Charles knew nothing of this until after he sat down exhausted, when a friend whispered it to him. He braced himself, and left the scene giving no sign of emotion. The reporters knew of the incident, however; and it was horrible to think of the unseemly riot going on above, while the body of one of Toronto's most distinguished sons lay stark below.

As a reaction after battle, Sir Charles subsequently became very popular in Ontario, and in 1900 turned what had been an adverse majority of twenty-two into a majority of twelve. On the eve of his second defeat at the polls I saw him in his private car, and brought him the news that our correspondents from all parts of Ontario left no doubt of a Conservative victory in that province. He shook his head. "The Maritime Provinces, my own native country, will vote against[Pg 208] me to-morrow," he said. "I have not had time to give them much attention, and I cannot win without them." His advices were correct. Nova Scotia especially was offended that its most eminent native son should have failed to come and ask for its support.

During the interim Sir Charles was in popular demand at political picnics and non-partizan functions. Once I saw him savagely annoyed at one of his own followers. It was at Woodbridge Fair, near Toronto, where thousands of people of all parties used to gather, and where the Hon. N. Clarke Wallace, member for West York, was master of ceremonies. Sir Charles was a great stickler for the proprieties and would never introduce political controversy where it was out of place. An aggressive orator who had been drinking more than was good for him was called on to speak and commenced to abuse the Grits. "Shameful, shameful," exclaimed Sir Charles loudly, "Pull him down, Wallace!" Mr. Wallace succeeded in suppressing the offender, and Sir Charles restored good feeling with a most gracious non-partisan address. Though he lacked the charm of Laurier on the platform, his gallantry made him very popular with the ladies in private discourse. Once we were coming home in a private car from a political picnic in Haldimand, at which several noted party leaders had been guests. The late J. G. H. Bergeron of Montreal had been monopolizing a very pretty woman, wife of one of the guests. On the return journey, Sir Charles, who was fit as a fighting cock despite the fact that he had spoken for over an hour in a temperature of ninety in the shade, came down the aisle and said: "Get up and move along, Bergeron; I'm not going to let you monopolize the most beautiful woman in the party." The[Pg 209] lady was visibly pleased, and Sir Charles kept her delighted with anecdotes for the rest of the journey.

Another great fighter in the 1896 campaign was Sir George Foster, the man chiefly instrumental in bringing Tupper back to Canada, and leader of the so-called "Nest of traitors". He was more suave in handling interruptions, especially those of a Liberal stalwart named Jardine, who had the loudest voice in Canada save that of the noted bibliophile Albert Britnell, an adoring worshipper of Laurier. Jardine was later sent to South Africa on a mission for the Canadian Government; and it was said that at Umbala he heard lions roaring and went out and roared them into quietude. At one meeting he rose and chanted in stentorian tones, "Mr. Foster, will you answer me this question: Why did you leave the cabinet and why did you return to it?" (The rumour was that he had first disapproved remedial legislation for Manitoba and then assented to it on securing Sir Mackenzie Bowell's promise to resign.) Foster politely replied that he would answer the question at the close of his speech. Several times Jardine repeated the query, always with the same result. The speaker finally concluded, and started to leave, but Jardine was at him again. Then Sir George quite suavely said: "I have given my reasons to the representative of Her Majesty, and it would be disrespectful to her, to disclose them here." And the audience had to be content with that.

Whenever I read of Sir George Foster being received with honour in Geneva or South Africa or the many places where his gift of speech and high ideals have reflected honour on Canada, I think of poor J. A. Macdonald, the clergyman who, as editor of the Globe,[Pg 210] did much to injure the prestige of that journal despite the efforts of fine and able subordinates like Stewart Lyon to maintain it. Macdonald's idea of editorship was to select each month some victim to "drive out of public life" as he put it. He knew no scruple in the matter of slanderous invective, though probably the mental disturbances which finally wrecked him were even then active. Macdonald solemnly assured many others as well as myself that he was going to drive Foster from public life; and we know now how far he succeeded! He did not go to the lengths of one Liberal orator at fall fairs who used to call Foster "a slimy eel of Hell", but he went pretty far. He launched a campaign against Foster in the latter's riding of North Toronto which resulted in an enormous majority for the selected victim. In the heat of the campaign I went to a meeting in a small hall to hear what Macdonald had to say. He started off by putting the question, "Why am I a Liberal?" and answered it thus, "Because it has made me a Keng (Scottish for King); it has made you a Keng; it has made us all Kengs." The assembled monarchs seemed a rather rummy lot to me, and I suddenly laughed out loud. Macdonald looked in my direction, saw me standing against the back wall, and his exposition of the audience's royal derivation came to an abrupt end.

Another public man he assured me he would drive from public life was Sir James Whitney. He got an opportunity when Sir James, going to his hotel in a small town tired after speaking in an icy hall, while suffering from a cold, ordered a "night cap" five minutes after closing time. Macdonald argued that such a law-breaker was unfit to be entrusted with public affairs and a disgrace to the nation. Whitney[Pg 211] forthwith obtained an enormous majority to which Macdonald's attack materially contributed.

We resembled each other physically, and I was frequently mistaken for him and complimented on my sermons. Often I was tempted to pretend that I really was he and shock my flatterer with some unorthodox expression, but I refrained. About the time of the episode of Whitney and the "doc-and-doris", I was coming with a friend out of a bar-room almost adjacent to the Globe office. A passing stranger with a valise in his hand stopped and stared. He went from one side of me to the other and took a good look. Then with a look of grim determination he hurried on toward the depot. "What's that fellow staring at!" asked my friend. "Is he crazy?" "No!" said I. "He only takes me for the Rev. J. A. Macdonald. I'll bet everyone in his home town knows the scandal by to-morrow."

CHAPTER XIV

B. B. OSLER AND THE HYAMS CASE

In the nineties the man who really dominated the Canadian scene as facile princeps in his calling was the late Britton Bath Osler, Q.C., by many regarded as the most brilliant of the four eminent sons of Canon Featherstone Osler—his brothers being the great physician, Sir William Osler, at that time a Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and his junior by ten years; the financier, Sir Edmund Osler; and the Hon. Featherstone Osler, afterwards Chief Justice of Ontario, the eldest of the four. They were all tall, stalwart men, and took their physique from their mother, a Cornish lady who lived to be upwards of one hundred years old. The two missionary clergymen who founded the Osler family in America, Canon Featherstone Osler and Canon Henry Bath Osler, were very energetic men.

On occasions when I have spoken to student bodies on the ethics of journalism I have cited as perhaps the famous instance of the evils of garbled reporting, the newspaper fake by which Sir William Osler was credited with having suggested that men and women should commit suicide at sixty. The spread of the "Oslerization" story is evidence that words have wings and that it is almost impossible to overtake an interesting lie. Though Sir William and the members of his family took the utmost pains to promulgate in Canada an accurate report of his words, they never[Pg 213] really succeeded in doing so. To-day after nearly twenty years I frequently encounter allusions in plays and novels in which the word "Oslerization" is used as a synonym for suicide. As a matter of fact there was nothing in the speech to justify such a misconception. At one time I had the gist of what Sir William said in his own handwriting, and the matter is dealt with at length in Dr. Harvey Cushing's recently published biography.

The speech was made in 1905 on the occasion of Osler's retirement from Johns Hopkins University; and the most serious part of it was the assertion that most ideas for the progress of the world originated with men under forty, and most of the serious mistakes with men over sixty. He touched jocularly on a fantastic story by Anthony Trollope which suggested a chloroform club for those reaching the age of sixty; and as an alternative suggested that teachers (like himself) should be pensioned with double salary at sixty. Another suggestion was that no man should be permitted to write a book until he was over forty. A Baltimore reporter made the sensational charge that Dr. Osler had advocated the chloroforming of men at the age of sixty, and this stupid misrepresentation immediately went around the world. Its survival proves that journalistic lies are as vigorous as weeds.

To the Osler family this falsehood was deeply distressing because the great physician's mother was well over ninety and he had other relatives of advanced years. At that time I was city editor of the Mail and Empire, of which Sir Edmund Osler was a courtesy director through the Empire connection, and at his instance we did everything possible to nail the lie so far as the Canadian public was concerned. But letters[Pg 214] continued, to arrive at the office for weeks which showed that the reading public paid little or no attention to the denials. The most preposterous was written by an eminent Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Langtry, an energetic propagandist for the dogma of apostolic succession and a man entirely devoid of humour. He denounced Dr. Osler in extravagant terms, and wanted to know whether he had forgotten the teachings of his father's church that suicide was a crime against his Maker, and whether he was aware that murder, the only alternative, was illegal. Of course the letter was not published.

Yet Dr. Osler's brother, Britton Bath Osler, did commit suicide at sixty, but in a way that great lawyers not infrequently shorten their lives—by overwork. Before his death he was internationally recognized as the peer of any pleader in the world. For several years I saw much of him in connection with many celebrated cases—because in every important crime an attempt was made to secure his services on one side or the other. He also was frequently sent for in connection with litigations in the United States, where, because of his transcendent abilities, he was permitted to practise in the courts of several States. Before I knew him his fame had already been established in England by two events—his speech at Regina in 1885 in pressing the indictment against Louis Riel, and his address for the Crown at Woodstock, Ont., in 1890 on the trial of Reginald Birchall for the murder of a young Englishman named Benwell. The Riel brief came to him when he was still a young lawyer practising at the small village of Dundas, Ont., and was the result of the connoisseur's delight Sir John Macdonald[Pg 215] took in first-rate legal talent wherever he discovered it.

The trial of Reginald Birchall excited even more interest in England than in Canada, for Birchall was a graduate of Oxford of sporting tastes, who had spent a year of two in this country and had devised a novel form of criminal activity: that of luring young Englishmen of means to Canada to learn farming, and then killing them in order to pocket their capital. On his first trip after formulating this plan he brought two such selected victims with him, named Benwell and Pelly. Pelly he left seeing the sights of Niagara Falls, while, on the pretence of showing Benwell a farm, he took the latter to a lonely swamp near Woodstock and shot him dead. He then went back to the Falls and took Pelly for a lonely walk along the Niagara Gorge with the clear intention of shoving him over the cliff at a hidden spot he had previously selected. When they got to this spot an unknown stranger was found observing the scenery, and the murder was "off" for that day. Later the Crown tried to find that stranger without success. Before Birchall could devise other means of getting rid of Pelly, the newspapers came out with a description of the unknown man found in Blenheim swamp near Woodstock, and Pelly recognized it as that of his companion Benwell. The evidence against Birchall was purely circumstantial, and the prisoner, because of his good looks and education, excited the admiration of women and sentimentalists generally; but so skilfully did Osler weave the chain of circumstance around the murderer that he was convicted and hanged. So intense was the interest in the case in Great Britain that the London Times commanded that a verbatim report of the address be cabled. It filled[Pg 216] at least seven broad "blanket sheet" columns; and is said to have been the lengthiest report of a legal address ever published by the "Thunderer".

Though the Birchall trial was over before my entry into journalism, I later came to know the final actor in the tragedy, the hangman, Radclive, whose skill in despatching the criminal led to his permanent appointment as official executioner for Canada—a most merciful dispensation, for, prior to the revelation of his lethal technique, there had been gross butcheries. Radclive had been a sailor, and at the time of the Birchall case was steward for a rowing club in Toronto. He took the job under an assumed name, and when his identity was accidentally disclosed, it became impossible for him to earn a livelihood in any other way. I once had occasion to interview Radclive on a matter unconnected with his profession and found him a very genial Englishman, who regarded himself as a public benefactor. He said: "If there 'as to be 'angin's the only merciful thing is to do 'em right!" Asked where he learned his trade he said, "I used to be a sailor on the China seas, and we common seamen was often detailed to 'ang Chinese pirates from the yard-arm. I was sorry for the poor blighters, they used to struggle and suffer so, so I figured out 'ow to do it quick and mercifullike. When I took the Birchall job I was 'ard-up. He seemed a pleasant sort of man, and I figured that it was kinder for me to do the job than to 'ave it bungled by one of them farm 'ands up there, like lots of cases that used to 'appen."

All the time he was talking he was busy packing tools and ropes; and apologized for the discourtesy, by saying that he had to catch a train to go and hang an Indian in the West. He explained his technique.[Pg 217] "If they're heavy I drops 'em; if they're light I jerks 'em up." I was very slender at the time, and he added, "Now if I was 'angin' you I would jerk you up," and he indicated the spot on my neck where he would place the knot. It was rather an uncanny sensation. Radclive used to read criminal cases and had a great respect for B. B. Osler (whom he had never seen) because he was fair and square. "When 'e's on the case," he said, "I know that I won't be given the job of 'angin' an innocent man."

Of the many cases at which I saw Osler as Crown Prosecutor the most important was that of the two Hyams brothers at Toronto, which excited interest throughout America at the two trials involved, in the autumn of 1895 and winter of 1896. All the senior men connected with that case are dead, except Francis L. Wellman, former district attorney of New York, who was chief advisory counsel for the defence. In his book, Gentlemen of the Jury, Mr. Wellman has presented a misleading version of the proceedings which reflects on the methods of Canadian justice. Canadian justice was indeed flouted in the Hyams case, but not in the way Mr. Wellman indicates. I knew much of the inside of the case, because I was at the outset responsible for the publication of the original story, the greatest newspaper "scoop" in the history of the World newspaper.

The case was briefly this: The Hyams brothers were twins, Harry and Dallas, and were commission merchants from New Orleans who had come to Toronto in the early nineties. In 1893 they hired an empty warehouse on Colborne street and installed a little furniture, though it remained for the most part empty as a disused barn. They had in their employ a 16-year-old[Pg 218] lad named Willie Wells, hailing from the village of Pickering, and also his elder sister, who was employed as stenographer and who was engaged to Harry Hyams. Harry was a heavy coarse type, but fine-looking in his way; Dallas, whom I knew personally long before his indictment, was a little sallow fellow. One day at the noon hour Willie Wells was found in the cellar at the foot of an old-fashioned hoist shaft, with a two hundred and fifty pound lead weight, used to operate the hoist, beside his shattered head. A physician was called in and the surroundings were so disgusting that he was nauseated, and did not make a very close examination of the skull. He, however, took the precaution of summoning the police and a coroner, who gave a cursory glance at the remains and issued a death certificate. If an inquest had been ordered as should be done in all cases of accident, however apparently trivial, the matter would have been cleared up then and there. It subsequently transpired that Wells's life had been insured by the Hyams brothers for $35,000, and the policies made payable to his sister, the stenographer. The insurance companies were suspicious, but did not like to take the risk of making a charge of murder, since the coroner and the police were sure it was an accident. Wells's body had been taken to Pickering and buried in the cemetery there. After the policies were paid, Harry married the sister; and placated another sister, whose husband was suspicious, by handing her $5,000. This was in 1893; and not a word appeared in the newspapers except a brief paragraph chronicling the death of Wells, through an elevator weight falling on his head.

One evening in 1895 I was wending my way to the World office after a roving assignment which had[Pg 219] yielded no news, when I met a young lawyer whom I had known since childhood. "Look here," I said, "can you give me an item? I haven't struck anything for days and will be losing my job soon." "I know a big story," he said, "insurance conspiracy; come and see me to-morrow."

I confided the secret to Walter Wilkinson, the news editor, who told me to stick on the trail, and say nothing to anybody, not even a member of the staff. I went to see my friend the lawyer next day and found that he had suddenly cooled off. However, Wilkinson told me to stick to him and to drop in every day. What had happened was this, though we did not know it until later. Mrs. Harry Hyams had discovered that her husband and her brother-in-law had tried to place policies on her life in various insurance companies totalling the colossal figure of $250,000, the premiums on which they were in no position to maintain permanently; and were trying to induce her to sleep in a newfangled folding bed which snapped up against the wall. She had become frightened and had gone to my lawyer friend to secure a separation allowance. She had not the proof of crime, but had become suspicious about her brother Willie's death two years previously. At the time the lawyer threw out a hint of the story to me, it was no part of his purpose to let me have the particulars, merely to use the threat of exposure in the World to enforce a settlement, for the Hyams brothers had very wealthy relatives in New Orleans on whom they could draw. Prospects of settlement having taken an optimistic turn, he tried to fob me off. With the penetrating Wilkinson to goad me on, this was not so easy!

On my second or third call at the law office, I saw a well-known private detective, John Hodgins, in the ante-room. I knew him well through the fact that while I was engaged in accountancy our firm had employed him occasionally to trail dishonest insolvents. To draw him out I whispered, "I guess we're both on this insurance case." He gave a slight start that was an admission, and then changed the subject. I told this to Wilkinson, and he then took a hand. He lived not far from Hodgins, and the following Sunday took one of his boys out for a walk. Hodgins was a pigeon fancier and he asked him to show the youngster his birds.

Having disarmed Hodgins by playing on his hobby, Wilkinson said, "By the way, Charlesworth tells me you are on that insurance conspiracy case he is working up. He thinks he's got a big story, but it all looks crazy to me. I told him to do his assignments and not bother me with junk of that kind." The professional zeal of the detective was stirred and he said, "It's not such a fake as you think." "Well, who are the fellows anyway?" said Wilkinson. "Charlesworth wrote the story, but I didn't pay much attention." Hodgins then mentioned the Hyams brothers, and suddenly realizing that he had no right to talk, turned the subject back to pigeons. He had said little, but he had said enough.

The next step was easier. W. F. Maclean himself was taken into confidence, and he sent for a life insurance agent named J. B. Carlile, who knew all the ins and outs of the insurance business in Toronto. Carlile, under pledges of secrecy, was instructed to find out all he could without rousing suspicion. In three days he had full particulars not only of the attempts to insure Mrs. Hyams, but of the policies on the[Pg 221] boy who had been killed in 1893. The insurance companies were glad enough, as it turned out, to have the whole matter exposed.

The next step was to collect all the information we could as to the circumstances surrounding the death of Wells: and for this purpose another reporter, E. Norman Smith, now editor of the Ottawa Journal-Press, was called in. I remember Smith and myself going after midnight to see a gigantic expressman named Fox, who, it transpired, had called at the warehouse to get a box from the cellar just about the time Wells must have been killed, and was sent away by one of the brothers, who was in a very disturbed state. This was an important circumstance. Fox first spoke to us from an upper window, and at last consented to come down. After a long delay he opened the door and covered us with an enormous revolver; though he was so colossal that he could easily have knocked our heads together, for we were both young and slender. We calmed his fears and got his story. This was but one of many incidents.

One night when it was nearing the day when we could publish the story, the police reporter, George Peart, since dead, sent a chill down the spines of both Wilkinson and myself by saying, "Say, I was down on Sunday to see my mother at Pickering. There's been some strangers down there talking to the undertaker about a boy named Will Wells, whom I went to school with; his folks always thought he was murdered."

Wilkinson beckoned me to follow him out, and then turned on me fiercely: "Dammit, you've been talking," he said. I swore I had not. "Well, how did Peart get next?" he asked, and after consideration we agreed it must be a coincidence. Wilkinson then conceived the[Pg 222] happy thought of sending Peart away to Pickering to get a story at that end. This served the double purpose of keeping him out of the way, so that he would not gossip to other reporters, and would add interest to the revelations that were to be made in a day of two. Peart was not told that we had been working on the scoop for two weeks, and believed that the Hyams story was a stroke of enterprise on his part.

On the night prior to publication I went to my lawyer friend, who by this time had, we knew, become on friendly terms with the Hyams brothers, and told him the whole story was to be disclosed next day. Dallas Hyams happened to walk in the office, and after some preliminaries, I was asked to convey a message to Mr. Maclean that $5,000 cash would he paid him if the story was suppressed. I did not carry the message. I kept it to myself until the story appeared in print, because there is a divine mandate against leading anybody into temptation.

The effect of the World's disclosures was an immediate order for the exhumation of the remains of young Wells at Pickering. An examination of the skull showed that it had been smashed by one or two blows of some blunt instrument—probably the haft of a hatchet that evidence showed lay in the cellar on Colborne Street, though after more than two years it was impossible to obtain conclusive testimony on points like these. The physical testimony from the corpus clearly demonstrated the utter preposterousness of the theory that Wells could have been killed by a 250-pound weight falling on his head, a process which would have smashed it to a pulp. The late Dr. Harrison, of Selkirk, long known as "the Nestor of the Canadian Medical Association," said to me of the[Pg 223] "expert" evidence called by the defence in the Hyams case: "If they can prove to me that you can drop a five-pound weight on a mosquito, and that the weight will bounce off without smashing the mosquito—only hurting it so to speak—then I'll say that Wells was not murdered." This was the best short summary of the medical arguments in the case that could be conceived. B. B. Osler was appointed Crown Prosecutor and was coached by his brother Dr. Osler on the scientific phases, as he was in most murder cases. That is to say, though William Osler did not leave his post at Baltimore, he would put "B. B." on the track of scientific knowledge which made his handling of murder cases wonderfully simple and lucid. In this case it became the aim of the Crown to make everything clear; and that of the defence to confuse everything as much as possible in order to create the "reasonable doubt" which, if established, justifies a jury in bringing in a verdict of "Not guilty".

I have been anticipating a little. Examination of the skull at once led to the arrest of the Hyams brothers on a charge of murdering Wells. They had a millionaire uncle in New Orleans, and he was not satisfied that any Canadian lawyer was competent to handle their defence. Apparently he had not much confidence that his nephews were innocent, but he did not wish any hangings in the family. So he engaged Francis L. Wellman, the leading criminal lawyer of New York, who had just closed a brilliant term as District Attorney, under the Croker-Tammany régime. Wellman and his partner, a Mr. Gooch, came to Toronto, and engaged as Canadian associates the late E. F. B. Johnston, K.C., whose fame was established by this case, the late William Lount, K.C., a veteran orator of[Pg 224] the bar, and quite a coterie of junior counsel. Wellman already had friends in Canada through his marriage to the beautiful prima donna, Emma Juch, a general favourite here, who had been chief soloist at a great musical festival held in connection with the opening of Massey Hall in the previous year (1894). Though he was not permitted to plead in court, since he was not a member of the Ontario Bar, Mr. Wellman was granted the courtesy of sitting inside the bar as advisory counsel. Nearly every question asked in behalf of the defence was at his prompting. It soon became evident to observers that he was depending more and more on the younger counsel, E. F. B. Johnston, than on Mr. Lount, who was the senior and at that time a man of much greater fame.

The two trials—for the first ended in a disagreement, and the second in an acquittal—were great battles of wits with legal talent of the highest order pitted against each other. Mr. Osler had no associate counsel, but was assisted in the constructive details of the case by the two Crown Attorneys of York County, the late Hartley H. Dewart and the late J. Walter Curry. In addition to his own studies under the guidance of Dr. William Osler, he had the assistance of a noted expert in medical jurisprudence, the late Arthur Jukes Johnson, M.D., afterwards Chief Coroner for Toronto. On the face of it the Crown's case looked clear enough; motive could be proven up to the hilt, and to any clear-headed man it was obvious that the death of Wells was caused by a blow and not by the falling of the weight, which would have inflicted far greater injuries than the body showed. The technical argument set up by the defence through the mouths of a host of "experts" was that the weight glanced off the side of[Pg 225] Wells head, without hitting his shoulder. In other words it was assumed that lead would bounce. The defence counsel were shrewd enough to see that this theory if argued in cold blood would not hold water, so the method was adopted of creating confusion with regard to every detail of the Crown's case. The defence also had a strong plea in that the doctor, coroner, and police summoned to the scene immediately after the crime, accepted the explanation given by the Hyams brothers as true.

I can still see the majestic Osler, talking to the jury with the shattered skull held aloft in his hand, tracing for them the technical causes of death; and the nervous, ingenious Johnston confusing the issue with all the resources of a Scottish metaphysical mind. And confusion triumphed. After their acquittal the Hyamses made the extraordinary request that they be kept in jail until they could make arrangements to leave Canada. A few days later a special train was secretly sent to a siding near the prison. They were taken aboard and sped away to New York. They were on board a steamer bound for South America before the authorities disclosed the fact of their departure. They have never been heard of since. Ten or twelve years later I read in the London Times of certain insurance conspiracies in Uruguay, grave-yard insurance cases as they were then called, and privately set an enquiry on foot. I learned, however, that the principals were Spaniards, and there was no evidence that my old acquaintances, the Hyams brothers, were connected with them.

In his book, Gentlemen of the Jury, Francis L. Wellman makes the cynical admission that he did not rely entirely on legal processes to secure the acquittal[Pg 226] of his clients. He says that finding public sentiment strong against them in Canada he paid the expenses of a New York Herald reporter to come to Toronto, and "moulded" the reports of evidence wired nightly by that individual. These reports stressed the idea that the "two American boys", as he calls them, were being "railroaded", and he instructed the reporter to flatter the judge as the embodiment of "British fair play", and procured a picture of him in his robes which he induced the Herald to publish. These reports he took pains to have sent to the judge's chambers; and he adds: "If the judge at the start of the trial, actually did share in the general prejudice against the prisoners, I was sure that it had all been removed when I heard his summing up to the jury. He gave us the benefit of every doubt, and there was not a single incident in our favour during the long trial that he failed to call to the attention of the jury."

Mr. Wellman's narrative is somewhat confused because there were two trials, at both of which reporters from the Herald and other New York newspapers were present. The jurist to whom he alludes is, however, the late Mr. Justice Thomas Ferguson, who presided at the second trial. But the inference he makes that the latter was moved by flattery, and the publication of his portrait, is an insult to his memory. Mr. Justice Ferguson was a man of remarkably breezy personality, who had been a miner's judge in the days of the California gold rush, in which he had participated as an adventurous young Canadian. He was of enormous bulk, and he sometimes joked to me when out on circuit about his personal appearance. "I'm one of the handsomest men living," he would say, and then laugh a Gargantuan laugh at the absurdity of the boast.[Pg 227] But he had an exaggerated sense of fair play, especially when dealing with aliens, which I knew him to manifest on many occasions. Mr. Wellman was probably "tipped off" on this when he instructed his journalistic henchman to talk of "American boys" being "railroaded".

Mr. Justice Ferguson did exclude much new evidence, greatly to the annoyance of Mr. Osler. I myself was one of the witnesses he told to step down from the witness box, greatly to my relief, for I resented the action of the Crown in calling me. I have spoken of the offer of Dallas Hyams to bribe the World through me to suppress the original story—an offer I kept to myself until after publication. This remained an office secret. Once, before the opening of the first trial, Walter Wilkinson discussed with me whether I should go on the stand and relate this damaging circumstance. But I was utterly opposed to it. It would undoubtedly have injured the lawyer who had put me on the track of the original "scoop", and I argued that if World reporters got the reputation of disclosing private conversations with their legal friends it would be an end of our getting scoops at all. Wilkinson thoroughly agreed with me, and the first trial passed without the incident being ventilated.

Just before the second trial Wilkinson left the World, and a successor to whom I had told the story in confidence was appointed. Saying nothing to me, he gave the information to Walter Curry, one of the juniors for the Crown. A day or so after the trial opened the late County Constable Boyd, afterwards killed by the Chicago bank robber, Frank Lee Rice, came to me and placed me under detention. I was taken to a private room in the Court House and[Pg 228] "sweated" by Curry in the presence of my new chief. Curry, since he had known me from childhood, thought himself at liberty to bully me; and would not listen to my objections that I would be injuring a man who had treated me with confidence throughout the case, and had done me kindnesses in other matters. My story was taken down, and I left the office in high dudgeon. I learned afterward that I was trailed by plain clothes men. Through the lawyer's father I sent word that he must meet me at a quiet rendezvous that night. There I told him what had happened. "Well, Hector," he said, "I'm sorry, but if you tell that story in the witness box, I shall be obliged to take the stand and swear that you are a liar. I have too much at stake to do otherwise." To the amazement of both of us we learned next day that our meeting had been reported to the Crown by detectives, but fortunately for the lawyer the conversation was not overheard. On the night before I was to give evidence, a law student from Mr. Osler's office came to me, and said that the latter wanted to see me before court opened. It was my first meeting with him, and I never met a man more kind. He had the copy of my story in his hand and he asked me if I were going to tell the truth in the witness box. "Of course," I replied, but renewed my protests. He said he knew my feelings and appreciated them profoundly, but there were times when duty to the community must over-ride private feelings. When I was called, the defence at once rose to object, and a long private conference took place between the judge and the whole group of counsel. Mr. Justice Ferguson was shown the précis of my evidence, and the defence while not admitting its truth held that even if it were true the bribe was easily explained by the injury and[Pg 229] humiliation the publication of the story would cause the Hyams brothers, assuming them to be innocent. Mr. Justice Ferguson agreed with this view, and I was ordered to step down, greatly to my relief. Had the evidence been taken, the defence would have proclaimed me a particularly ruthless perjurer, and I would have had small chance of being trusted with confidences by any member of the legal profession thereafter.

This same lawyer, after the trial was over and the Hyams gone, gave his opinion of the case quite candidly. "Of course Harry was guilty," he said, "but nobody will ever convince me that Dallas would hit anybody with an axe. If anyone accused Dallas of slipping poison in his tea, I would believe that, but he was too yellow to do anything violent." This was their own confidential solicitor.

I am satisfied that the Hyams defence did not stop at bringing reporters from New York, and "moulding" their reports, to use Mr. Wellman's polite phrase. After the jury panel for the assize at which the second trial was to take place was announced, a group of strangers visited their homes in the guise of book agents, photo-enlargers, and sewing-machine salesmen, and discussed the case, presenting the arguments for the defence. The captain of this gang was an old sportsman named Col. Foster, who had at one time been manager of the Boston Ideal Opera Company. Foster was much in evidence in Toronto hotels before and during the second trial. A theatrical man who knew him happened to come to town and asked me if any important trial were coming off. I said there was, and he told me that Col. Foster had gone down hill and had become one of the most notorious jury-fixers of the[Pg 230] Tammany organization. Before he had come to Toronto Foster had boasted around "the Rialto" of the "job he was going to pull off in Canada". In addition to jury-fixing, Foster was notorious for two other means of subsistence. He was an expert poker player, and was always willing to teach "tenderfeet" the game. He was also an expert billiard player given to betting on points when he had a less expert opponent.

I had a most amusing experience with him during the Hyams affair. My theatrical friend was associated with the management of a beautiful young actress who was making an unsuccessful attempt to star. She had much talent, but shortly afterward retired and became the wife of one of the most eminent of Western millionaires,—a marriage which has turned out very happily. Col. Foster, like most old theatrical managers, who have become failures, had not a good word to say for the younger generation. On the evening I was introduced to him he turned to my friend and said, "You're star isn't worth a curse. Just a silly amateur." I interposed with the view that she was a lovely and talented girl. "Who is this young cub?" asked Col. Foster, with a whisper about as quiet as a brick going through a window. "Miss W.'s backer," said the theatrical man in an exaggerated stage whisper. Col. Foster at once became geniality itself. "Of course, I want you to understand, I was just kidding, boy," he said, putting his arm around me. "You may be losing a little money now, but you will get it back and plenty more. She's a 'comer' all right." I said that this was my own belief. Then he became affectionate. "Like to play a game of billiards, boy?" he suggested insinuatingly. "No," I said. "Well, let's[Pg 231] get up a little game of poker—I'm sort o' lonesome to-night," he continued. "No," I said, "I must get over and see how the show's going." My total wealth at that time was $2 and a few car-tickets, insufficient for the backer of a theatrical venture. Personally I think the insinuating Foster had as much to do with the acquittal of the Hyams brothers as anybody.

CHAPTER XV

LAWYERS AND CAUSES

The sober but thrilling oratory of B. B. Osler; the penetrating shrewdness of his cross-examinations, in which he was never the forensic bully; the cogency of his arguments; and the scientific care with which his cases were prepared—all these elements were largely lost on the kind of persons which constitute the average jury in a Canadian criminal trial. But they were extremely valuable to the country in cases where it was necessary to speak to a vast public beyond the court-room. They were also a great intellectual stimulus and an education to his rivals at the bar. In the last decade of Mr. Osler's life the late E. F. B. Johnston, K.C., whose fame was established through the Hyams acquittal, was frequently pitted against him and in the public mind they were rivals. But though Mr. Johnston was a man of very acute intellect, he lacked the personal authority and distinction of Osler, and he was less suave and fair in cross-examination. Personally Johnston looked to Osler as his master, a fact he himself revealed to me after the death of the great pleader. In argument Osler was complete master of the Socratic method. His case was unfolded to the jury in a lengthy series of questions, which he insisted that the jurors must answer to themselves before rejecting the view for which he stood. In criminal practice this type of argument is usually met by ex parte appeals to the[Pg 233] emotions, or by attempts to confuse issues—the time-honoured method of the political platform. The task of creating confusion is not difficult to a resourceful pleader, given a jury of average fumbling mentality. After Mr. Osler's death it fell to the lot of Mr. Johnston to act as Crown Prosecutor in another case of international importance, the Clan-Na-Gael attempt to dynamite the Welland Canal, nearly a quarter of a century ago. In his address to the jury he pursued the Socratic method in a long sequence of questions, and asked me afterwards whether I did not think he had presented the case precisely as B. B. Osler would have done. When I said that the very thought was in my mind, he told me that he regarded this as the highest compliment that could conceivably be paid him as a lawyer.

Nevertheless Johnston used to irritate Osler extremely by expressing admiration under conditions when it was likely to benefit his own side rather than that of his great opponent. In addressing a jury he would pay glowing tribute to the superlative abilities of the Crown Prosecutor; and plead sympathy for his client on the ground that his own humble abilities were, he feared, inadequate to secure justice. This used to make Osler furious, for it was the kind of plea he could not answer except by growls of deprecation. Never, except on such occasions, was he ruffled in court. On several occasions in civil actions I saw the Hon. S. H. Blake try to anger him in order to upset his line of questioning or argument, but never with success. This was a favourite trick of Blake's, especially when he had a weak case. He would sit grinning at the counsel's table, and just when an opponent was making a good point either in argument or cross-examination[Pg 234] break into a rasping laugh. This was too much for the nerves of many lawyers, but Osler would remain unruffled. After court adjourned he would take a sarcastic fling at "Brother" Blake, as he called him in allusion to the latter's penchant for lay preaching.

Once I saw the aggressive Blake hit between wind and water and left speechless, by a quiet remark from another able lawyer, Sir John Gibson. The latter was then Attorney General and was acting as Chairman of the Municipal Committee of the Ontario Legislature. A small provincial town had issued a bond of $15,000 for some small local improvement, and the bond had been bought by one of its aged citizens whose total means were thus invested, the interest being his sole means of subsistence. A burglar stole the bond, and after waiting six months to see if it could be traced, the municipality came to the Legislature to secure a permit to cancel the earlier bond and issue a new one. It was assumed that the bill would go through without opposition, but on the day it came before the Municipal Committee, the Hon. S. H. Blake turned up on the scene to oppose its adoption. He launched into a lengthy speech showing that the credit of Canada would be destroyed in all the money markets of the world, if this $15,000 bond turned up somewhere and was found to be cancelled.

"Just a minute, Mr. Blake," said Sir John Gibson, when he managed to get a word in, "who is your client? What do you represent?"

"I represent the vested interests of Canada and the bond buying public of the world!" was the grandiloquent reply.

"That is very interesting," said the Chairman quietly. "I was under the impression that you represented the thief."

Speechless with rage, Mr. Blake left the committee room, and the bill went through amid laughter. It is more probable that he represented some financial corporation which had bought the bond at a ridiculous discount.

The quickness of B. B. Osler to catch a point in cross-examination I saw demonstrated in a famous bank robbery case in Eastern Ontario. A band of crooks and yeggmen had been "caught with the goods," in other words some of the stolen money, a year or so after the occurrence. They admitted their guilt, but claimed that it was an "inside job"—that they had acted in collusion with a teller already under suspicion. The crooks said they had buried most of the bank officer's share at a certain spot by the railway tracks, two miles out of town, selected by the young man himself. When, months after the robbery, the detectives went to this spot to verify the confession, they found a hole, and an old tin biscuit box with muddy paper still adhering to it, in which the money was alleged to have been buried. At the trial the defence put into the witness box a travelling umbrella mender, who swore that he had been "walking the ties" and had thrown the box there shortly before its recovery. I was sitting in court near Mr. Osler and noted that when he rose to cross-examine he quietly shoved the box under the counsel table, took a different position from that habitual with him, and held out his silk gown in a way that entirely screened the exhibit from the eyes of the witness. Then he gently asked the latter what he had used the box for. The umbrella[Pg 236] mender, deceived by his pleasant manner, told quite a rigmarole about using it to make soup in; and under the leading of counsel related the numerous occasions when it had been in contact with fire. Suddenly Osler wheeled around, whipped the exhibit from under the table and thundered, "Is that your box?" There was not a mark of fire on it! I have never seen a judge more infuriated than was Mr. Justice Ferguson at what he termed the impudence of the defence counsel in daring to put such a witness on the stand.

Osler's private hobby was botany; and I once heard him make use of his knowledge of the subject in defending a Polish farmer in Waterloo county charged with murdering a poor neighbour whom he had caught poaching in his berry patch. Among the incriminating circumstances were scratches on the forehead of the accused, supposedly made by the victim in his death struggle. The prisoner claimed that he had incurred them in brushing against the bough of an apple-tree; and Osler in addressing the jury gave quite a learned discourse on the apple tree, explaining that it was one of the rose family and that on rare occasions it bore thorns. His acceptance of the brief for the defence in this case was an interesting illustration of his legal conscience. He had a standing brief from the Crown to act as Prosecutor in all murder cases; but he had made the proviso that unless he himself were satisfied that there was evidence to justify conviction, he had the right to refuse a brief. In this case he was not satisfied of the guilt of the Polish farmer and declined to act; the Attorney General therefore retained Mr. Johnston. Mr. Osler took the defence, and rumour had it that he wished to show his rival, who had won several victories as defence counsel, what he could do in that[Pg 237] line. So skilful was he in smashing what seemed to be a strong case for the Crown that Johnston came over to him before he commenced his address for the prosecution and said: "Look here, Osler; I'm ready to withdraw the charge of murder and change it to manslaughter."

"No," said Osler, "murder or nothing." And it took the jury only twenty minutes to find a verdict of "Not guilty". Though the public is not aware of the fact, the task of defence is much easier than that of prosecution, because there is practically no limit to the license a lawyer may employ to free a client, whereas the Crown is held down to strict rules.

One morning about a year before his death I was breakfasting with Mr. Osler at Napanee and he told me that of all the cases he had handled the only one in which it gave him genuine satisfaction to send a man to the gallows was that of a young wife-murderer named William Hammond. Insurance was the motive as in the Hyams case, and singularly enough one of the persons who was involved in that conspiracy was also a friend of Hammond. The latter was a drug clerk at Gravenhurst, Muskoka, who had secretly married a girl friend named Katie Tough. The pair came to Toronto, the girl entering domestic service and Hammond securing employment in a drug store. Clandestinely he placed a policy for $10,000 on her life; and prepared a solution of hydrocyanic or prussic acid, sufficiently weak to enable the victim to survive an hour or two after taking. This he instructed her to take on a certain date as a birth-control specific. Mr. Osler was of opinion that wives were not infrequently murdered in that way, and the guilt undetected. Hammond's position as a drug clerk would have made the[Pg 238] tracing of the poison impossible if his original plan had gone through. The insurance policy, however, was in an American company, and its issuance was held up at Buffalo. He went there to see about it; and fearing that she might take the poison in his absence, wired her, "Don't take medicine." This telegram was his undoing. By this time the young wife had returned to Gravenhurst and having arranged matters to his satisfaction he prepared another phial, and took it to her there. He had not intended that she should take it until he went back to Toronto, but the impulsive girl, in fear of her condition, took it the same evening while out walking, and was found dying in the snow. Those who picked her up noticed the smell of peach blossoms on her breath, the sure sign of prussic acid; and after a thaw the phial was found where it had been thrown in a snow bank. Among the other circumstances was Hammond's peculiar behaviour at the girl's home when she was brought in dying. Gravenhurst is a small place and everyone knew of the occurrence in ten minutes. The murderer came in with others and sneaked upstairs to her bedroom to search for the earlier phial, but was detected while feeling under her mattress. He claimed that he was looking for the marriage certificate, but this was false since he had had it in his possession in connection with the insurance applications. Through a friend, who had been connected with Hyams case, he sought to secure possession of the girl's trunk which was still at the Union Station, Toronto, and which contained the insurance policies. But detectives arrived simultaneously on the scene and seized it. Thus a motive was established.

E. F. B. Johnston made a wonderful fight for Hammond, and twice secured disagreements of the jury,[Pg 239] but at the third trial he was convicted, and he was subsequently hanged. I saw him in the prisoner's box at one of these trials; and while I do not take stock in all the theories of Lombroso, the youth certainly bore the criminal stigmata described by that authority, notably the ape-like ears.

The cruelty of Hammond's murder of a good-hearted, faithful wife who had given him all her earnings, revolted the innate chivalry of Mr. Osler's nature, and he told me that in no other case had he exerted himself so fully to obtain a conviction. This chivalry was a notable factor in his family life. When he was a young lawyer in Dundas his home was burned; and at risk of his own life he saved his wife. He bore permanent scars on his face thereafter and Mrs. Osler remained a lifelong invalid. Her shattered nerves found little relief, and she suffered from sleeplessness. After a long and wearing day in court he would go home and read to her far into the night. After her death his practice had become so enormous that he was compelled to burn the candle at both ends. The first symptoms of his collapse came in the form of an attack of amnesia at Philadelphia whither he had gone in connection with some important litigation. He returned to the hotel where he always stayed one afternoon, and asked the clerk his name and address. His mind was blank as to his own identity. He was put to bed, and Dr. William Osler was hurriedly summoned from Baltimore. With the help of the best specialists in the United States he was restored to health, and resumed practice. After a few cases in which he showed undiminished powers, he broke down again and passed away a few months later. The last time I saw him was when a seemingly aged man with a grey beard leaned[Pg 240] out of the window of his carriage and smiled at me. I returned the salute, but did not recognize him. Then it suddenly struck me that it was B. B. Osler, changed and shrunken.

The firm of McCarthy & Osler was assuredly a wonderful combination; for his partner D'Alton McCarthy, though not at his best as a jury lawyer, was a marvellous man in technical argument, and an expert in corporation and contract law. There were several lawyers of the nineties who were remarkably gifted in this respect (great "term lawyers", in legal cant) and who, like McCarthy, shone in the various appeal courts. Edward Blake was of course the greatest celebrity, but there was also Christopher Robinson, K.C., the delight of judges in Canada and Great Britain, because he could state in half an hour an intricate case on which an ordinary counsel would expend hours. The fame of the incisive Sir Allen Aylesworth was also made in this branch at a comparatively early age. One of the most interesting personalities among the appeal lawyers was the late Aemilius Irving, K.C., who had a most singular habit of thinking aloud, of which judges were well aware, though they ignored it. A judge, for instance, would interrupt his argument with a remark that a precedent he had quoted was faulty. Irving with great deference would say, "Just as you say, my Lord, I defer to your opinion," and then, as he stooped to pick up another law-book, murmur hoarsely to himself, "You damned old fool, a whale of a lot you know about it."

One of the most remarkable instances of the fairness and detachment of D'Alton McCarthy's mind was shown in the case of Fraser vs. Ryan, involving an intricate question of contract law arising from a large[Pg 241] timber transaction. The plaintiff was a noted lumberman, Alexander Fraser, and the defendant my father-in-law, Peter Ryan. It was agreed that in order to expedite matters the dispute should be decided on a constructive question submitted to a full bench of judges. On the day before the hearing Mr. Ryan's counsel, James Haverson, K.C., himself a legal technician of remarkable abilities, found that he would be unable to attend, and it was too late to instruct other competent counsel on so intricate a case. A request for a postponement was contemplated when Mr. Ryan suggested that D'Alton McCarthy who was acting for Fraser and fully conversant with the case in all its phases be also entrusted with the task of arguing the case for the defence. With the permission of the court Mr. McCarthy accepted both briefs, and so fairly did he present both sides of the case that the result was a victory for Ryan against the lawyer's own client Fraser. I am told that this legal incident is almost without parallel.

How D'Alton McCarthy managed to carry on a great practice with the highest efficiency and at the same time mix in politics in their most contentious aspects was always a mystery; but he maintained his health through his devotion to horsemanship. For so fine an equestrian he met his death in a singular way. His mount was ambling slowly along a city street, when something caused it to veer and stumble, and Mr. McCarthy, who had been a daring rider in the hunting field, was thrown and fatally injured.

It was in connection with a celebrated local murder, in which Osler and Johnston were pitted against each other, that I first came in contact with the famous writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This was the case of[Pg 242] Frank Westwood, a very fine young man whom I had known since childhood and who was wantonly murdered by a mulatto girl, Clara Ford. Young Westwood lived with his parents in a villa overlooking Humber Bay, in the western part of Toronto. The girl, who had worked as a seamstress in the neighbourhood, had become enamoured of his good looks and pestered him with attentions at which he naturally revolted. Clara Ford was a constant patron of the cheap melodramas then popular, in which the heroine often dressed in boy's clothes and shot the villain. She procured a suit of male attire and one night watched Westwood enter his home toward midnight. She then rang the doorbell and hid in a shadow. As he opened the door she shot him and fled along the water front, making her way undetected to her room above a negro restaurant in the heart of the city. Nobody who saw her identified her as a woman; Westwood, who lingered for some days, died without knowing who his assailant was. He described the assassin as a dark slender young man indistinguishable in the shadows. The family in panic after the attack did some peculiar things like shooting revolvers in the air to give an alarm and the shots and movements were heard in a schooner anchored out in the lake, which had some rough characters on board. For some months the case remained a most extraordinary mystery. Sherlock Holmes had but recently come into fame as a hero of fiction, and in the World office we collected all details of the Westwood murder and sent them to Conan Doyle with a request for an opinion. We did not expect anything tangible, but at the time it was a first-class publicity "stunt". Doyle refused to suggest a clue, but wrote that he was deeply interested, and his letter, reproduced photographically,[Pg 243] was a valuable feature, as he was at that time the most popular of living fiction writers. Some months later he came to Toronto on a lecture tour and asked that a reporter be sent to him who could tell him all subsequent developments. When I talked with him he laughingly said that he was the last man in the world to offer solutions in murder mysteries, because in the Sherlock Holmes stories he always had his solutions ready-made before he started to write and constructed his narratives backward from that point. He also said that fiction writers were not very good judges of evidence, because they were accustomed to create facts to suit themselves, whereas detectives had to take them as they were. His latter-day credulity in the matter of spirit mediums indicates that he spoke better than he knew as to the abilities of novelists to weigh evidence.

Clara Ford solved the mystery herself; for like all stage-struck persons she could not help boasting of her exploits. She took into her confidence a pickpocket who was wanted by the police; and to curry favour with them he betrayed her. When arrested, the suit of clothes she had worn was located in her room, and she made a full confession. I personally heard her plead guilty in a very low whisper when arraigned in the police court. But a group of sentimentalists who imagined her "wronged" got around her and engaged Mr. Johnston as counsel. At her trial she denied the truth of her confession, though admitting having made it. She claimed that the detectives had told her that if she confessed she would immediately be set free; and had therefore made up a story. Incidentally, she falsely traduced her victim. Mr. Osler, the Crown Prosecutor, was obliged by the death of his first wife to drop the case and entrust it to a junior on the night[Pg 244] before the addresses were made to the jury. The jurors accepted her tale, and she was freed. I saw her proceed in a carriage through the streets followed by a cheering throng, and in gratitude she asked the jurors to supper at the negro restaurant where she had boarded. The invitation was accepted; and the presiding judge, Chancellor Sir John Boyd, told me subsequently that it was the most disgusting example of the weakness of the jury system he recalled in a long experience.

Once free she was unabashed in admission of her guilt. Her first step was to arrange for her appearance in a dime museum in the clothes she had worn when she killed young Westwood. This was too much for her counsel, Mr. Johnston. He sent for her and told her that but for him she would be facing the gallows; and that if there were any remnants of decency left in her she would immediately leave Canada. She took his advice and joined "Sam T. Jack's Creoles", a coloured burlesque show, and was advertised in the Western States as a damsel who had killed a man in pursuance of "The unwritten law."

Clara Ford was probably the only one among the many criminals he defended that Mr. Johnston ever consented to converse with. When he accepted the defence of a murderer he refused to see his client or any of his near relatives. All his instructions were conveyed through solicitors. He would take the facts of the case and with the coolness of a mathematician work out a theory of possible innocence, on which he would frame a defence, and direct every question toward that end. Sometimes questions which seemed trivial and irrelevant would take on significance in the final argument. The minutiae of his defences were amazing. He[Pg 245] feared that a meeting with his client would disturb the impartial direction of his thoughts. Once the wife of a farmer of means who was tried on a fratricidal charge at London, Ont., forced herself upon him after the jury had disagreed, and demanded to know what he thought her husband's chances of ultimate acquittal were: "Well," he said, "since you insist, I would suggest that if my application for bail succeeds, your husband at once depart and bury himself in some obscure part of the globe, and never again communicate with you or anyone else in Canada." The woman left the room sobbing, but the bail application did not succeed, and at the next trial the accused was acquitted.

Mr. Johnston was Crown Prosecutor in the two trials of one Brennan, a half-crazy farmer, who murdered in cold blood Mr. Strathy, a bank manager of Barrie, because the latter would not assist him to induce his wife to live with him, she having deserted him because she could not endure his eccentricities. Brennan was convicted at the first trial, and obtained a new hearing on the ground that Chief Justice Armour had improperly told the jury that it was not their prerogative to exercise mercy. Brennan's counsel, William Lount, K.C., who loved poetry, had quoted Portia's address from The Merchant of Venice. Chief Justice Armour mordantly told the jury that their business was not with Shakespeare, but with the plain fact that Brennan had killed Strathy without reason. The appeal court held that this unfairly prejudiced the minds of the jury and a re-trial was ordered, with the same outcome, although Brennan was afterwards reprieved. A year or so later Mr. Johnston, who had secured the two convictions, showed me how he would have conducted the[Pg 246] defence; and the constructive plan he sketched would have undoubtedly led to acquittal.

There was a grotesque incident at one of the Brennan trials. Certain reporters like to fraternize with murderers, and in small country court houses where lawyers, officials, reporters, and prisoners are often huddled together in close quarters, they get an opportunity to gratify their tastes. There was one newspaper man who used to give Brennan a cigar every day. At the first trial, when he was sentenced to be hanged on a date which I do not recall, but which we will say was March 15th, this reporter was very sympathetic with the dejected and bewildered prisoner: "Too bad, old man,—hard luck, I call it," he said, and then shaking the condemned man's limp hand, "Well, good-bye for the present; I'll see you on March 15th."

Undoubtedly Johnston's finest effort in all his career was his speech at Welland a quarter of a century ago in prosecution of the Fenian dynamiters, Luke Dillon alias Karl Dullman, a real estate man of Newark, N.J., and two "physical force men" named Kelly and Walsh, who had been sent from Dublin to aid him in an attempt to blow up the Welland Canal. Dillon's identity as one of the most active members of the Clan-na-gael was not revealed until years after he had been convicted under the name of Dullman. In that case I had the good luck to "scoop" all the leading newspapers of the United States and Canada as to the character of the attempt. At sunset one Saturday night in summer two strangers were observed by a little girl on the embankment of the key lock of the canal near Thorold, sinking two large canvas bags into the water. They immediately fled, and a great explosion ensued. But they had done their work so[Pg 247] badly that only slight damage was done to the gates; otherwise the whole surrounding country would have been flooded and many drowned, for the point of attack had been selected with scientific care.

The two dynamiters fled by the roads of the Niagara peninsula, and the alarm having been given, were arrested as soon as they reached Niagara Falls, Ont., three hours later. They gave the names of Kelly and Walsh, and were quickly identified as visitors who had been seen in association with a stranger who had been staying at a hotel on the Canadian side and throwing around a good deal of money. Suspected of being engaged in a smuggling plot, this stranger had been under constant surveillance by the frontier police on both sides of the river, although he was quite unaware of this fact. He was registered as "Karl Dullman, New York." He claimed to be a tourist and was packing up his bags to depart when arrested; and he stuck to it that Dullman was his real name.

Buffalo was the nearest large city to the scene of the crime, and the Buffalo newspapers, whose reporters were first on the scene, at once assumed that it had to do with a great strike of "grain-scoopers" (elevator hands and longshoremen) then in progress in that city. The chief of the elevator and shipping interests was one "Fingy" Conners, a millionaire who had at one time been a grain-scooper himself and had risen to great wealth, and the ownership of two newspapers, the Buffalo Enquirer and the Buffalo Courier. He had thousands of employees on the Buffalo docks and when they went on strike, he announced his intention of transferring his elevator interests to the city of Montreal, and formed a Canadian company to use the Welland Canal route. This would have meant ruin to[Pg 248] thousands in Buffalo; so that when the attempt to blow up the Canal took place it was immediately assumed that it was the work of the strikers. Conners firmly believed this, and the Sunday issues of his newspapers played up the theory strongly.

I arrived at Niagara Falls early on Monday morning to write up the developments of the case, with instructions to proceed to Buffalo if I thought wise, and was in time to see the prisoners arraigned. A sorry trio they looked after two nights in a veritable dog-kennel, as the town lock-up was at that time. Dullman was a mystery, certainly not a grain-scooper, and sitting near the prisoner's box I could hear Kelly and Walsh whispering in very thick Irish accents. Walsh was silent and morose, but Kelly, a smiling, bullet-headed little man, wanted to talk, though silenced by the magistrate. Somehow I was not convinced that they had anything to do with the Buffalo strike. The men were committed to Welland county jail, and most of the great bevy of reporters went with them to see the fun, for mobs were waiting to give them a warm reception at every village en route. We had an occasional correspondent at the Falls, and I said to him, "Do you know where these men were stopping during the week they were around here,—Kelly and Walsh, I mean." "Yes," he said. "They stayed at a little shebang over near the railway yards on the American side." I suggested that we go over there and find out something about them. The proprietor of the dirty little hotel was a purple-faced man, a stupid and besotted being who drank whisky copiously with porter as a "chaser". By buying drinks freely I led him to talk. He had been so drunk the day before that he knew little of what had happened to his late guests. Finally he said,[Pg 249] "Them fellows came from Dublin." "How do you know that?" I asked. "Well, they told me so themselves. I was in Dublin last year and we used to talk about the city every night." "How long have they been out?" I asked. "Only about a week," he said. "They don't know anything about America at all. A big fellow met them at the dock and brought them on here. He was in to see them once or twice."

With my local friend I spent a very interesting afternoon around Niagara Falls, N. Y., and picked up several interesting circumstances afterwards used by the Crown. One was that they had checked the canvass grips containing dynamite in the New York Central station in the heart of the tourist region. A porter in one of the hotels thereabout had seen Kelly accidentally drop one of the bags in the middle of the leading intersection, while dodging a trolley car, and both men jump away in fear. No explosion happened and the porter was puzzled at their fright; but at Niagara Falls so many curious people are always coming and going that unusual incidents excite little attention.

When I got back to the Canadian side I ran into Inspector John Murray, Chief of the Provincial Detective Department, and Chief Young, of the Frontier Police, who had come back from depositing their prisoners at Welland. I asked them their opinion of the case, and they replied, "Oh, just grain-scoopers, as the papers say."

"Well, John," I said to Murray, a close friend of mine, "that may be your real opinion or it may not; but I know better. Those chaps were Fenians from Dublin."

Murray and Young took me into a back room, and I could tell from the way Murray took down in the[Pg 250] minutest detail everything I had to tell him about my enquiries on the American side that I was on the right track. Nevertheless he said: "If you quote me at all, say it's my belief that the grain-scoopers planned it."

As a matter of fact it was known to the police that they were Fenian physical force men from the moment of the arrest. Dullman or Dillon had destroyed his papers, but the pockets of Walsh and Kelly were full of inflammatory Irish literature. Walsh was a verse writer himself, and had a printed copy of one of his effusions, which concluded:

More important still, their papers included a green-covered booklet containing rules of "The Engineers' Club", clearly camouflage for some Eastern "triangle" of the Clan-na-Gael. So soon as these papers were taken away from the prisoners Chief Young was shrewd enough to see the advisability of keeping their nature secret; and letting the impression go out that the plot was connected with the Buffalo strikers. In that way the Crown hoped that the New York principals of the attempted outrage would be trapped. But though the British intelligence department made close enquiries, nothing was revealed. Luke Dillon kept his secrets well, and his real name was not discovered until long after, when his friends sought his release.

As I say, all this was known afterwards, but on the day I made my investigations, the press of many cities was exploiting the strike theory, and the enterprising[Pg 251] millionaire "Fingy" Conners gave out interviews that he had positive proof of that fact.

I wired the Mail and Empire that I was coming home to write my story, and when I got into the office late in the evening, I had to face a strong argument with my chief. He could not believe that my theory could be right against that of all the other newspaper men. I was insistent that the "grain-scooper" theory should be dismissed as a fairy tale; and that I should be permitted to write up the story as a Fenian conspiracy. What turned the tide was a three-line despatch from Washington, which ran about as follows: "The State Department having made enquiries is disposed to think that the attempt to blow up the Welland canal was of Irish origin." That was all the confirmation needed, and we literally plastered the Fenian theory all over the front page of the Mail and Empire. This was the best scoop I ever got single-handed, in all the adventures of my career as a reporter.

When the case came to trial the evidence was so clear that it was not necessary to introduce the Fenian phase at all. Kelly and Walsh had been seen in the act. Customs officers shadowing Dullman's or Dillon's every movement had tied him up tight to the pair, and he had been seen to hand them money. However, for international reasons it was necessary to make the case as water-tight as possible, and the suppression of the Fenian evidence showed conclusively that they had had an absolutely fair trial. Sir John Boyd sentenced all three to imprisonment for life. Walsh, the verse-writer and dreamer, died of consumption in the infirmary of Kingston penitentiary, and after serving fifteen years or more the others were released. After[Pg 252] the trial Mr. Johnston showed me the papers to which I have above alluded which established the nature of the crime,—the last Fenian attempt against Canada. Next morning I rode to Toronto on the same train with the prisoners, and as we ran alongside the key-lock they had sought to destroy all three recognized it. "I wish I was at the bottom of it," was Dillon's only comment throughout the trip.

CHAPTER XVI

KING GEORGE V. IN CANADA

One of the most interesting of all the assignments I covered while a reporter, was the Royal tour of Canada in September and October, 1901, when the present King and Queen were known as the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York. After the accession of Edward the Seventh it was decided that the Heir Apparent and the future Queen should, so soon as was convenient, make a tour of all parts of the Empire except India, which was reserved for a separate visit. The ocean stretches of the voyage were covered in a beautiful ship, the Ophir, and Canada and Newfoundland were to witness the concluding stages of the voyage. It was arranged that their Majesties should arrive at Quebec directly from Capetown, South Africa, on Sept. 16th, 1901, and proceed across Canada to Victoria, B.C., taking in the Maritime Provinces on the return voyage.

Prince George, as he had been known while an officer in the Navy, was no stranger to Canada, but all his visits had been unofficial, and at a period of his life when he had no expectation of becoming King of England. He had been simply a distinguished young officer who sometimes took a furlough in inland cities when his ship happened to call at a Canadian port. A complete change in his fortunes ensued when his elder brother, the Duke of Clarence, died after a brief illness. He was ordered to leave the Navy, marry and[Pg 254] prepare for sovereignty, and it was rumoured to have been not at all to his liking; for he loved the sea, and his profession; and his mind had a peculiar fascination for technical and mechanical problems, which the manifold responsibilities of his new position gave him small opportunity to indulge.

His Royal Highness's return was the most momentous event of its kind that had occurred in Canada since the visit of his father as Prince of Wales in 1860. In a sense it was more momentous, because "Baron Renfrew" was a youth who came alone, whereas in 1901 the Heir Apparent brought with him the future Queen, the first and only occasion on which a princess destined to such supreme honours has visited our shores. Peculiar interest attached to the coming of the Duchess, for it was known that she had been chosen to be the future Queen, by Queen Victoria, long before there seemed a chance that Prince George would be King. That a woman so wise as the aged Queen should have chosen Princess Mary of Teck, while a mere girl, from among a great multitude of relatives and connections, for the greatest honour that could be borne by one of her sex, gave a profoundly romantic interest to her personality.

The last vestiges of the theory of the divine right of kings have in our time disappeared among the white nations, and became dissipated in Britain before Canada was a part of the Empire; but there is no gainsaying the immense fascination that the idea of royalty exercises over the average man and woman. Democracies are not more immune than people living under other forms of government. The Canadian people are heart and soul democratic in feeling, but the prospect of meeting royalty has always set their[Pg 255] emotions seething. The late Col. George Taylor Denison, who commanded the Guard of Honour for King Edward the Seventh on his visit to Toronto in 1860, recalled that the event disturbed local society for months previously. The first visit to Canada of the Duke of Connaught, nearly a decade later, when he was known as Prince Arthur, also caused considerable excitement. A few years ago when engaged in delving into the history of the Canadian Bank Act I came across an amusing reference to it. I had in my possession the letters written by one of the original members of the Senate of Canada, with reference to a bank charter in which he was heavily interested; and in one of them he complained that business was interrupted by the visit of Prince Arthur. He had been at the reception in Rideau Hall the night before, and as a religious man reprobated the amount of champagne drunk, and the dancing in honour of royalty. "Do these people realize," he wrote, "that there are thousands of Canadians still living in log cabins?" In the next paragraph, however, he had forgotten about the people in log cabins, for he informed his board of directors that he had managed to slip through committee a clause in the charter he had in hand, which he had fully expected would be struck out; a clause of which the Senators, in a rather sleepy and amiable mood, had evidently failed to realize the purport.

I vividly recall the furore over the coming of the Princess Louise as consort of the Marquis of Lorne, afterwards Duke of Argyle, when he became Governor General in 1878. My mother and aunts were openly disappointed because she was not more beautiful—for, never having seen a princess, they had apparently cherished a theory that beauty was part of the[Pg 256] inheritance of such an exalted being. I was taken at night to see the "illuminations" in their honour,—gas flares showing crowns, and maple leaves, and scrolls of "L. & L.", sometimes extended to "Lorne and Louise". Paltry indeed were those illuminations, for that was before the age of electric light; but forty-seven years ago they seemed very grand. Even in 1901 the illuminations for the present King and Queen were much less dazzling than those now seen nightly in the central sections of leading northern cities.

In the matter of "staging", the Royal Tour of 1901 discounted anything previously attempted; and its significance was unique, for it was part of a world journey in which their Royal Highnesses had almost circled the globe, without once having set foot on soil other than British. I was at Quebec with a host of other correspondents two or three days before the arrival of the Ophir on Monday, Sept. 16th, and one of my most interesting experiences was going out on a small tug with three or four other reporters to look for her, on the day previous. On the morning of Sunday the 15th the little torpedo boat destroyer Quail of the North Atlantic squadron, ran up into Quebec harbour, took soundings and sped away again without communicating with anybody. She was of course seen by the thousands of visitors on Dufferin Terrace, and presently the rumour spread all over Quebec that the royal ship with her naval escorts had already arrived and was anchored a few miles below Quebec. Since wireless did not then exist, there was no means of confirming this rumour. The Ophir had come direct from South Africa and it was quite possible that she might have steamed ahead of her schedule. The only course open to correspondents was to go out and see for[Pg 257] ourselves, and the only craft available was a small tug which happened to be rather fast. So we started off through drizzle and mist, and about ten miles down the river ran across the Quail anchored near shore, and the probable cause of the rumour. It was then that I obtained my first knowledge of naval etiquette. We hailed some sailors on deck and asked if it was true that the Ophir was down stream a mile or two. They paid not the slightest attention to us, but one went below, and presently there emerged amidships a very handsome young officer in full dress uniform who advanced to the side of his little vessel and saluted majestically. Such honours to our dirty little craft were ludicrous, and he seemed to preserve a solemn countenance with difficulty. We told him our mission, and he, with great formality, replied that he had no information to convey. We were rather annoyed and not at all displeased when the French Canadian who ran the tug swung her around so quickly that he scraped a full twenty feet of fresh paint off the side of the Quail. Nevertheless the young officer preserved his poise under what must have been trying circumstances. Later his men must have gotten busy with paint and brushes for the streak had disappeared when I saw the Quail next day. He may be a famous admiral to-day, for aught I know.

Five miles farther down we gave up our mission as hopeless; and being cold and wet started on another quest—for some kind of stimulant. The tide was out, and we had to climb up a long ladder to get upon the wharf of a near-by settlement. We found that it was a temperance village with no hotel, but the telegraph operator on the wharf told us we could get a drink by applying at the hardware store. Though it was Sunday[Pg 258] afternoon the store was open, for the habitants in the back country could only shop on that day, after mass. The purse-bearer of our party, who was no Iscariot, was secretly escorted to a loft back of the store, where hay was stored, and came back grinning with a parcel, which he had been enjoined not to open until we disembarked. Once unwrapped it proved to be a bottle with a garish label, "Sir Wilfrid Laurier Scotch Whiskey". It had a picture of Laurier evidently "after taking", judging by the expression of his countenance, for the stuff was as vile and fiery as any I have ever tasted. But it fortified us for a cold run home through the rain.

On our way back we encountered a Government vessel steaming down the river, and seated side by side on the deck, looking very gloomy and uncomfortable, were Lord Minto and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. They too had heard that the Ophir had arrived and considered it only civil to go out and meet her. When we shouted that the story was apparently groundless they lost no time in putting about. We were destined to be good Samaritans to others that day. Five miles from port we encountered two yachts becalmed and to these we gave a tow. Both were manned by prominent citizens and military officers of Quebec who insisted on our visiting their cabins alternately; and the hospitality they had to offer obliterated the fiery taste of the whiskey which dishonoured the name of Laurier.

When the Ophir did arrive at her anchorage next day the weather was better; and a beautiful effect transpired. Just as the handsome white vessel with attendant warships rounded Indian Cove, and became visible to the waiting throngs on the mighty palisades[Pg 259] of the old city, the sun burst from the clouds and made her iridescent as a jewel. Propitious as this omen should have been, it may, after nearly a quarter of a century, be confessed that the Royal tour of 1901 was not so successful from a sentimental standpoint as it should have been. The first news that was conveyed to the Duke, as I shall for the sake of convenience call His Majesty in this chapter, was that the President of the United States, the Hon. William McKinley, had fallen before the bullet of an assassin at Buffalo a fortnight previously and had died on Sept. 13th. The funeral was to take place at Canton, Ohio, in a day or so, and out of respect for his memory His Royal Highness at once decided that all purely social functions should in connection with his visit be cancelled until Ottawa was reached. Since the ladies of both Quebec and Montreal had spent vast sums on toilettes for display at these functions, the feminine heart-burnings involved may be imagined, and the husbands and fathers who had to foot the bills for expenditures thus rendered unnecessary, were in no amiable mood.

Worse still, the assassination of McKinley had produced one of those anarchist scares which used to arise periodically a quarter of a century ago, when assassinations or attempts thereat were more common than they are to-day. The Canadian Department of State was in a condition of panic, and insisted on surrounding the Heir Apparent with a vast body of detectives in all sorts of disguises, a condition which he detested. Some of these men I recognized at many points and no one could have regarded them as other than farmers dressed in their Sunday clothes in town to see the sights. Their make-up was perfect; not too obtrusive or stagey,—the real thing.

A minor cause of dissension in Eastern cities was an aggressive demand in certain quarters that, while in the Province of Quebec, the Duke should use the French language. The Hon. S. N. Parent, who was both Premier of the Province and Mayor of Quebec, and consequently the most important functionary in connection with the earlier ceremonies, showed the utmost good taste, and conducted the welcoming proceedings in English, and when the Duke and Duchess visited purely French institutions like Laval University the royal replies were delivered in French. At Montreal The Hon. Raymond Préfontaine was less courteous. Despite the fact that the English-speaking element in that city was much larger than in the provincial capital, his address of welcome was in French. The Duke replied in English, and was strongly censured for this course in La Patrie, a government organ owned by The Hon. Israel Tarte.

Prior to the arrival in Canada there had been some controversy as to what Mayors should wear. The traditional garb of the Chief Magistrates of British cities is that of the masters of the trade guilds of the middle ages with gold chain of office; but it has never been generally adopted in Canada and in 1901 a silk hat and frock coat was deemed the proper wear. This simple adornment was sufficient for Mr. Parent of Quebec, but at Montreal Mayor Préfontaine blossomed forth in a robe of purple broadcloth trimmed with sables, and looked truly magnificent. The Mayor of Ottawa, a little insignificant man, who had won prosperity selling coal oil, was not to be outdone. He shone forth in a bright vermillion robe, trimmed with some kind of yellow fur, and a big gilded chain of office.[Pg 261] That evening a newspaper friend candidly informed this Mayor that his conduct made him "despair of democracy", but the little fellow was so oblivious to his meaning that he gripped him by the hand and said, "Thanks, old man, glad to hear you say so."

In 1901 the present King and Queen were both still youthful. The Duke was bronzed after his long voyage, and what struck me particularly was the leonine tinge of his beard. I have never seen coloration just like it in anyone else,—the precise tint of a lion's mane. For a full month I saw him every day in all sorts of costumes, often several different ones in a single day; and though he looked well in the blue uniform of an admiral which he wore by choice for official ceremonies, the garb which really became him best was an ordinary grey sack suit, with the grey bowler hat he favoured. This set off his trim, well-knit figure and gave him a jaunty bearing altogether attractive. The pictures of Queen Mary, either as Queen or Princess, have never done her justice. At the age of 34 as she then was, she was a blooming young matron with several babies at home in Sandringham, whom she had not seen for months and for whom I was told both she and the Duke were very lonesome. Her face was rather heavy in repose, but the loveliness of her fair complexion, the warm and almost dazzling blue of her eyes, and the elegance of her svelte figure, made her more interesting in a purely feminine sense than anyone, judging merely by old photographs, might believe. Her teeth were very beautiful also, and her smile was particularly gracious. I had occasion to experience this graciousness once under difficult circumstances. During the stay in Quebec one of the functions was a reception at Laval University, a quaint old building, full of dark, narrow [Pg 262]stairways and mysterious doors and corridors. After the ceremony I was in a hurry to get to the street from the gallery in which I had been placed. I ran down a little stairway that seemed handy for my purpose, and at the foot bumped clear into the Duchess, who was being escorted along a lower corridor by the Archbishop of Quebec. She was obviously frightened for a second, for the anarchist scare was active, but when she saw my confusion and caught the purport of my nervous apologies, she smiled most sweetly as she went on her way.

Throughout the tour her interest in what she saw seemed more animated than that of the Duke. One of the prettiest of her actions I witnessed at Poplar Plains, Manitoba, where on the return journey we were detained for four hours one sunny October day, awaiting the Duke, who had left the party earlier for a few days duck shooting. All around the railway tracks the wheat was stacked and about half a mile away a threshing machine was at work. It was not etiquette to follow Her Royal Highness about, but seeing a party of correspondents looking on at the threshing, she with her ladies strolled across the stubble to enjoy the sight also. She struck up a friendship with a bearded old pioneer who was conducting operations, and did not mind the dust and chaff she gathered in her minute inspection of the big machine. The sleeves of her gown were so contrived that they could be opened to the shoulder and unhooking one of them she plunged her beautiful white arm deep in a bag of wheat as it was filling under the separator. She seemed to revel in the sensation of the fresh wheat pouring on her snowy skin.

A very old theatrical man, E. E. Price, told me a[Pg 263] story of Queen Mary as a girl that illustrated her interest in mechanical things. Price managed the first visit to London of the famous actor, Richard Mansfield, after he became a star. This was in the late eighties, and Irving had leased him the Lyceum Theatre. Mansfield, though critics praised his Richard III., was an unknown actor from America, and naturally the public did not throng to see him. A mad egotist, he insisted that this was due to a plot hatched by Irving. He was incensed that there were no royal visits, and pestered his managers to kidnap the Prince of Wales and drag him to the Lyceum. Finally Mr. Price was told of the Duchess of Teck and her family who though of royal blood were "poor relations", so to speak, and not averse to accepting invitations of the kind. To placate Mansfield he arranged a visit to a matinée performance of Richard III. by the Duchess and the young people of the family. Among them was a fair and gracious girl in her 'teens, Princess Mary. Very tactfully, Price asked her if she would like to come behind the scenes, and like any other girl, she was delighted at the prospect. She was highly excited and enthusiastic as the mysteries of "back stage" were explained to her. Finally Mr. Price asked if she would like to meet Mr. Mansfield, and she was as eager as any lowly matinée girl for that honour. Mansfield, a really cultured man, was in one of his most gracious moods and the visit was a great success. It restored contentment to the actor's mind, for royalty had at last come to see him; and he would have been even more exalted in spirit had he known that he was receiving the future Queen of England.

The Duke himself was ill during the greater part of[Pg 264] the Canadian tour of 1901, and often seemed far from happy over the multitude of formal engagements he was obliged to fill. This was an unfortunate circumstance and began in this wise. On the day after his arrival in Quebec a large military review was arranged, to take place on the Plains of Abraham. Just as the march past was about to begin a brutal gale and rainstorm blew up from the east and everyone save the Duke himself, retreated to a temporary shelter, erected at the reviewing point. He, in his uniform of a colonel of the Grenadier Guards, sat out in the open on his horse and got the full force of the storm. At the suggestion of the Duchess, the chief equerry, the Hon. (now Sir) Derek Keppel, rode out and quietly slipped a great military cloak around his shoulders, but the Duke impatiently threw it off. He was stubborn in his determination to endure all the rigours of the storm just as the marching soldiers were obliged to do; but his condition was worse, for they were on the move and he was sitting still, soaked to the skin and freezing cold. The outcome was an attack of influenza, which he had no chance to cure by resting up until he reached Banff, nearly three weeks later. There the mountain air restored him, but during his visits to many of the leading cities his appearance was deplorable; watering eyes, nose inflamed and voice choked and hoarse,—all the consequences of refusing the cloak proffered him. At Vancouver and Victoria he was in fine form and as his next official reception after leaving Victoria was at Toronto, he had more than a week in which to do as he pleased, and that put him in good spirits. Royalty is always subject to mean slanders, and when I got back to Toronto I was amazed and indignant to learn that on all sides it was[Pg 265] alleged that he had been partially intoxicated at Montreal and Ottawa and throughout his tour of the West. This I knew to be false, for I had seen him on all public occasions throughout the tour. On King George's accession I published the facts in an article in the Canadian Magazine, but the tale did not down. It will be recalled that the Archbishop of Canterbury himself ultimately decided to issue a refutation of the alleged bibulous habits of the sovereign. In 1901 he may have taken an occasional Scotch and soda (he would have been mad to refuse considering his physical condition) but in 1908 when he visited the Quebec Tercentenary as Prince of Wales he drank only oatmeal water.

There was an amusing incident at the old Highland Scottish settlement, Alexandria in Glengarry county, the first point in Ontario at which the Royal train stopped. The local brass band was at the station to do honour to the Royal pair. A bearded old piper, who thought they should be received with Scottish honours, was also on the scene, and started a pibroch in rivalry to the band's performance of the National Anthem. He blew, and he blew, and he blew, but the brass was too much for him, so finally he tucked his pipes under his arm and marched off with offended dignity.

Of all the functions in the East, that which the Duke enjoyed most was one at the capital, arranged by the lumber magnates of the Ottawa valley. It included a run down the rapids of Chaudière in rafts, which, were then towed to a patch of primeval forest near Rockliffe. Here, French-Canadian rivermen gave a marvellous exhibition of dancing on revolving logs and other water sports; and later a demonstration in the woods of the felling, trimming, and loading of trees.[Pg 266] On most occasions we accredited correspondents were expected to wear frock coats and silk hats, but the night before this outing the Duke sent word to us that we were to wear ordinary clothes, with bowler or soft hats. His message was that if anyone appeared in a silk hat he would go home, and the whole party was to mingle without formality. Part of the entertainment offered him was a lumberman's meal in a shanty specially erected. He was not feeling well and did not wish to taste the pea soup and sea-pie provided for him, but the Duchess took the upper hand and made him eat a little, and she tackled the viands with apparent relish. Afterwards there were chansons populaires by the workers, and as a piece de résistance Senator Edwards called on his foreman, a colossal French Canadian, Bill Huissel (pronounced "whistle"), to make a speech. Most of the rivermen had but a vague idea of who the Duke was, and one was heard to say that he must have a "pull with Laurier". "Bill Whistle," a famous character, was quite unabashed in the presence of royalty, and told the story of his past life; how he had once been ambitious and started in business for himself, but had gone $14,000 in debt. "So," he said, "I go to de Church at Hull and I kneel down and I say, 'Oh, Lord, I have nothing else to give, so I give you my debts,' and den I go back and work for Mist' Edwards." His final wish was that the royal pair would live long and have plenty of money and lots of babies.

I have never seen any man so overcome with laughter as was the Duke at this speech, and his mirth had an infectious heartiness good to recall. He came up to another newspaper man, Martin Egan, and myself, almost doubled up with laughter exclaiming, "Wasn't[Pg 267] that the funniest thing you ever heard?" and under the circumstances it was. What His Royal Highness seemed to like most about "Bill Whistle" was his complete unconsciousness of the Duke's rank.

Both in 1901 and 1908 I saw many evidences of his democratic tastes. Once at the Quebec Tercentenary, when he had become Prince of Wales, he slipped in quietly at a lacrosse match and quite astonished the players by strolling out to talk to them at half-time. On that visit also he caused some heart-burning by refusing a Guard of Honour during the eight days of his stay except in connection with his arrival and final departure. The military authorities had had much difficulty beforehand in adjudicating the claims of many officers to command guards of honour, and had arranged for a full score of them, but their trouble was in vain. Quebec at that time was thronged with countless visitors from the United States who did not know the Prince by sight, and once I saw a motor car thread its way through a vast crowd on a plaza near the Château Frontenac, conveying only himself and Sir Charles Cust in addition to the chauffeur. In all the crowd only myself and the late Seymour Butler of the Pinkerton Detective Agency noted his presence. For this same detective he had a great liking. Butler had accompanied him across Canada as a personal safety agent in 1901, and the Duke said to him: "I like you because you don't look like a detective." Butler to his dying day carried in his inside pocket two tie-pins, gifts of His Royal Highness. One, given him in 1901, was a replica of the arms of the ancient Ducal house of York, a red rose with a diamond centre. The other, given in 1908, was a replica of the three feathers, arms of the Prince of Wales, with a diamond bar. Butler[Pg 268] owned a pair of race horses, and during the Royal tour of 1901, when they were often thrown together, they would talk horseflesh, I was told.

From the mere standpoint of retrospect the tour of the West was a great experience for me. I saw places which are now well-equipped modern cities with beautifully paved streets and fine buildings, in their embryonic state; though decorated and dressed-up for the occasion. It was nearly twenty years since the Manitoba land boom, but Winnipeg was still in a village state with regard to hotel and station accommodation. The depot was a wretched little building erected at the time of the original construction of the C. P. R., and in the rush of visitors it was difficult to get a decent meal. Regina was still in the pioneer stage with narrow wooden sidewalks and streets of black mud deeply rutted. Calgary had a few brick and stone buildings, but its population was only 2,500, and it was the typical Western town of the motion picture drama with cowboys in town for the royal visit, galloping wildly up and down its main street. At Calgary we saw a sight which deeply fascinated the Duke, a review of three squadrons of the Royal Mounted Police, and the sight of these plainsmen charging in column on their swift and beautiful horses was thrilling. Some of them were but recently returned from the South African War and the Duke insisted on a Guard of Honour, chosen from among them, travelling as far as the Coast. These men had humorous stories to tell of the City of London Regiment, largely composed of clerks who had never seen open country until they got to the Transvaal,—and their bravery and endurance was admitted. One "Mountie" told me of a London lad who said to him: "The beastly Boers came and shot[Pg 269] at us, while we was eatin' jam behind a kopje." "Well what do you expect; what brought you out here anyway?" asked the plainsman. "Oh! I enlisted because father wouldn't buy me a top-hat," was the reply.

The most magnificent sight of the whole tour was an assemblage of two thousand Indians in full war paint, assembled from all the tribes of the West, on a great plateau near Calgary. The chiefs made orations in their various tribal languages with much oratorical power and imperturbable dignity; and these were translated by a young Métis interpreter with a magnificent voice and command of poetic English. Of all the Indian types I saw, those which most impressed me were the Sarcees—splendid, wiry men with beautiful aquiline features, who were dressed only in loin clothes and had rubbed ochre into their skins to keep themselves warm. Their horses were fine animals, and on the tail of each, arranged with gum and chrome yellow paint, was a representation of the sun. Impressive as were the chieftains of the Bloods, Blackfoots, Crees, Stonies, and other tribes, two of them succumbed to temptation that night, and were sentenced to confinement in the Mounted Police Barracks for ten days for being drunk and disorderly. When the news of this aftermath reached our party at Banff, some of the English correspondents, who seemed to view them as of the same quality as Hindu princes, lectured Canadians severely on the folly of treating distinguished potentates with such indignity.

I need not dwell on the glorious sensations of the impressionable visitor who sees the Canadian Rockies, the Selkirks, and the Coast Range for the first time. At Vancouver we witnessed the most memorable and[Pg 270] picturesque illuminations of the whole tour. The great trees of Stanley Park, on a high bluff over Burrard Inlet, were filled with lanterns which looked like great luminous oranges; and the spectacle as our ships passed out into the Gulf of Georgia bound for Victoria was indescribably lovely. In Vancouver and Victoria were to be seen the most beautiful of the many arches built in all parts of Canada for the occasion. At Vancouver, the taste of the Japanese population revealed itself in an arch covered with gorgeous, sober-tinted silks and great vases filled with flowers. The imaginative quality of the Chinese arches was more striking. The happiest thought was an arch with a host of Chinese babies, brilliantly clad, in countless niches, located in front of the chief joss-house of the Oriental quarter of Victoria. With Victoria I fell deeply in love. I have thought I should like to end my days there if I should ever be relieved of the necessity of earning a livelihood. I conceived a liking for the Chinese, and one of the pleasantest evenings of my life was spent with an Oriental musical society composed of cooks and waiters employed in the upper city, who entertained themselves with a great variety of quaint instruments. Incidentally I learned more of Chinese musical modes in that two hours than I have ever gleaned from books.

So far as public enthusiasm was concerned, the visit to Toronto was the most successful episode of the tour, and after the return to England, Lord Wenlock, Comptroller of the Royal party, stated that in this respect Toronto outdid every city of the Empire. The part of the Ontario trip which the Duke and Duchess enjoyed most was the visit to the Niagara Peninsula. They were permitted a brief week-end holiday at[Pg 271] Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls, and some members of the party who could slip away went to see the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo. On the American side an untoward incident happened. The Hon. Mr. Odell, Governor of New York State, had come from Albany with his daughters, expecting the Royal party to cross the river, and was prepared to extend an official welcome to American soil. But to have done so would have destroyed one of the sentimental purposes of the tour—that of sending the Heir Apparent around the world without his once leaving British soil, a practical demonstration of the existence of an Empire on which the sun never sets. I doubt if the British public itself fully realized the true significance of this phase of the royal tour, because never before had an heir apparent made so extended a voyage covering every quarter of the globe. Naturally the Governor was annoyed, and some Buffalo papers were rather insulting at the failure of the Royal visitors to cross the river.

In order to convey the Royal train to Niagara-on-the-Lake a "Y" had been hurriedly constructed outside Niagara Falls, Ont., and since it was not very secure we had to wait a long while at dusk in a great field, while additional spikes were being driven. The field was filled with curious spectators from the American side, and when I went out on the steps of the press car to get a little air, I heard one girl say to another, "There's the Prince."

The other responded, "No, it ain't! He ain't good-looking enough!" Next morning one of the Buffalo newspapers had an article ridiculing the royal visit, and said that the only sight of the Duke vouchsafed[Pg 272] was that of a jaded, stupid looking man standing on the steps of the train. That was I! The same reporter claimed to have seen a homely looking woman whom he said was the Duchess, bending over to pack a trunk. She was, however, a robust maid in the service of the Countess of Minto, who accompanied the party.

The alleged resemblance of myself to the Royal Family,—a resemblance founded solely on a beard and fresh complexion,—was the subject of amusing incidents while on the prairies. There the Royal train ran in two sections with an interval of twenty minutes between. The first half contained the correspondents and officials, who would naturally be the sufferers if an accident occurred,—as was proper. The crowds in the various prairie towns were unaware of this arrangement, and many of them had waited for hours for a sight of the Royal pair. At various points we stopped to take on water or enable the second section to catch up, and if I stepped out on the station platform for a little exercise, a band or a chorus of children would strike up "God Save the King" or "The Maple Leaf". I would usually slink into the telegraph office until the mistake was discovered.

On the day of His Majesty's arrival at Quebec in 1908 to attend the Tercentenary I was down on the King's wharf, and, after the welcoming ceremonies, had to fight my way back through a surging mob of Frenchmen in the lower town. I was with a rosy Cornishman, the late Tremenheere Passingham of Montreal, and finally we sought refuge from the broiling heat in a little French-Canadian bar. As we went up and ordered beer, a crowd at the other end of the room shouted, "There he is!" and seemed highly pleased that the Prince of Wales should reveal such[Pg 273] democratic habits. They flocked around and Passingham explained in French that we were just newspaper men. "Well, he looks like King Edward anyway," they said, and on that account wished to treat me to more beer. The change in feeling among the French-Canadian populace in the seven years between 1901 and 1908 was marked. In 1901 the South African war was in progress. The attitude was pro-Boer in many quarters, and relations between England and France were strained. By 1908 the Entente had been effected, and King Edward and his son were immensely popular with the Quebec people at large.

CHAPTER XVII

CORONETS AND CORRESPONDENTS

The two visits of the present king to which I have alluded in the preceding chapter, brought contacts with many interesting and picturesque men. His personal entourage in 1901 included two men who have ever since been associated with him, Sir Derek Keppel and Sir Charles Cust, both members of old naval families, and the latter a pal of His Majesty in the days of active service at sea. Then there was the brother of the Duchess, Prince Alexander of Teck, now the Duke of Athlone, a very striking figure in the hussar uniform he habitually wore and a superb horseman. The Duke of Roxburghe, a tall Scottish nobleman, who later married Miss May Goelet of New York, was an equerry. But the handsomest and merriest man of the party was Viscount Crichton, who subsequently became Earl of Erne. Good looks seem characteristic of his family, for his sister Lady Evelyn Ward, who lived in Canada some years later, was one of the most beautiful of women. Viscount Crichton was a most charming and insouciant being. He and the Duke of Roxburghe used to ride on either side of the royal carriage in the state processions, and in their guardsmen's uniforms—high boots, doe-skin breeches, and glittering steel cuirasses and helmets, with flowing white horse-tails—they gave a marvellous effect of magnificence. The Earl of Erne went to France with the "Old Contemptibles" and was killed in the first[Pg 275] weeks of the war. His body was not recovered, but more than a year later, soldiers digging a trench, found a skeleton, and the identification disc showed it to be the Earl of Erne. I do not know anything that produced in me a deeper sense of the folly and tragedy of war than this little episode, for he was physical perfection, and a most attractive personality. I was at the Citadel, Quebec, on the night of the arrival of the party, as emissary of the press to receive the official text of the Royal replies to various addresses, when Viscount Crichton came strolling in, dressed in tweeds, and glad to relax after wearing his cuirass all afternoon. The telephone rang, and the orderly who answered the 'phone seemed puzzled at questions put him. Seeing Viscount Crichton he saluted and said: "Beg pardon, sir, but the Consul General of France wishes to know whether he should wear knee breeches at the state banquet to-night." "Tell the Consul General of France he may wear whatever he damn pleases," was the response. The orderly modified the message in this way: "His Royal Highness's equerry says your Excellency may please himself." At Ottawa an official investiture was held at which several prominent Canadians, including the late Lord Shaughnessy (newly created Sir Thomas), received the accolade. An Ottawa reporter went to Rideau Hall to get advance details of the ceremony. Viscount Crichton took him into the chapel, and showed him the paces and forms and finally made him kneel while he touched his shoulder with the sword of state. I do not know whether the Heir Apparent ever learned of this usurpation of Royal prerogative.

In the party also were Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, officially historiographer of the party, who afterwards[Pg 276] chronicled its experiences in The Web of Empire and who had been a diplomat in Spain during the Spanish-American war. He was very handsome, with a silver beard, and a man of rare simplicity. Once he asked me to write down for him the text of the Canadian song, "The Maple Leaf", and when I could not get beyond the first verse said: "Well, I don't think I know the second verse of 'God Save the King' myself." There was a pleasant meeting between Sir Donald and E. F. Knight of the London Morning Post, a famous war correspondent. During the Spanish-American war, while on the staff of The Times, Knight had tried to slip into Havana in an open boat; and had been captured and imprisoned as a spy. It was Sir Donald, who, as an official at Madrid, had obtained his release, and Knight was eternally grateful, for Havana dungeons differ somewhat from the Hotel Cecil. Still another member of the party was Sir John Anderson, representing the Colonial Office, and a noted agricultural expert, who enjoyed himself hugely among the wheat-fields of the West. There was also Lord Wenlock, a very quiet man who was kept very busy with business details, and Sir Arthur Bigge, long in the service of the Royal family as private secretary, and at all times obliging.

There was another very unobtrusive member of the party who had no official status, yet who occupied a very intimate relation to the royal couple. He was a Mr. Jones, at that time schoolmaster of the village of Sandringham, and had known Prince George from boyhood. The latter, thinking that a trip around the world would be a boon to a man of his humble means, contrived to have him travel with the secret service men.[Pg 277] Mr. Jones performed a very charming personal service for the future King and Queen. They were passionately attached to their children, but owing to their multifarious engagements had no time to write home. Each day Mr. Jones would write a lengthy letter to the royal children, describing everything their father and mother were doing and submit it to their Royal Highnesses, who would add a message of love, and send it to Sandringham. He also kept a scrap book of newspaper reports and pictures for the royal youngsters. Mr. Jones was himself, I suspect, rather lonely and uncomfortable, inasmuch as he was generally regarded as a detective; and we got on confidential terms. From him I learned much of the democratic sympathies of King George. In Sandringham, he told me, it was not etiquette to treat the Royal family with obeisance, other than the cordial respect that the British villager feels toward the family of the squire; and it was the pleasure of the future King and Queen to drop into his and other cottages, while out strolling on fine evenings, and take a cup of tea on neighbourly terms. It is my surmise that Mr. Jones fulfilled another function. He was a keen observer and probably made an independent report on everything that happened during the tour from the standpoint of the outsider. Some things were mismanaged in connection with the Canadian visit, and I gathered from Mr. Jones that His Royal Highness regretted them deeply. The chief companion of the Duchess was a sister of Earl Beauchamp, Lady Mary Lygon, who had a tie with Canada, since she was a grand-daughter of Sir Allan MacNab of "Dundurn", Hamilton, Ont., the man who suppressed the Mackenzie Rebellion in Upper[Pg 278] Canada and who was Sir John Macdonald's predecessor as leader of the Tory party.

The most interesting visitors, however, were the correspondents, all noted London journalists, some of whom had accompanied the party to all parts of the Empire. They had been too long thrown together in close quarters and were disposed to quarrel over small matters, but individually they were very attractive. The most interesting was the splendid old pagan, Melton Prior, for many years artist-correspondent of the Illustrated London News, who had seen every part of the world, and under a cynical exterior cherished a very sensitive nature. I remember he was deeply wounded by the official artist of the party, whose position gave him special privileges, and who was the only snob in the entourage. Melton Prior had befriended this man on many occasions, but when he joined the party at Quebec, the official artist, obsessed with his special prestige, elected not to notice him. However, Melton Prior in many quarters received almost as much attention as the Duke himself, for he had countless friends in every quarter of the globe. Lord Minto was especially glad to see him, for once when, as Lord Melgund, he had been an officer in Egypt, Prior had helped to save his life when he was utterly exhausted. Prior, who had campaigned with Frederic Villiers, Archibald Forbes, and all the old time war-correspondents, before censorship took the romance out of the calling, was full of humour and yarns and could make excruciatingly funny caricatures. Of the celebrated campaigners of the party the one I liked best was E. F. Knight, to whom I have already alluded. He was a born adventurer, and a man of colossal physique. A year or two previously he[Pg 279] had lost an arm in the South African war, through venturing farther into the danger zone than any man responsible to a newspaper had a right to go. The adventure at Havana had cost him his position with the London Times, but his services had at once been requisitioned by the Morning Post. He had an intense dislike for the late Moberly Bell, at that time managing director of The Times. Knight, three or four years later, went to Manchuria as correspondent in the Russo-Japanese war. One day the cable despatches announced his death near Port Arthur, through having gotten within range of fire from the forts, and I wrote a glowing obituary editorial about him in the Mail and Empire, only to learn six months later that he was safe and sound. Among the stories he told me was of having swum across the Zambesi River with a bottle of Scotch whiskey under each arm. These he had gone to procure in order really to enjoy Christmas. A tornado came up and he was nearly drowned, but he managed to reach land safely with his cargo.

The Times correspondent was a Mr. Vincent, who had enjoyed few of the exciting experiences of some of his comrades, but who was in favour with the Royal family owing to his judicious handling of an assignment in connection with the last illness and death of Queen Victoria. Vincent was a very handsome man and had been editor of Country Life, but to the other correspondents he was rather a nuisance. He had an especial pull with Major Maude, afterwards Major General Sir Aylmer Maude, the heroic conqueror of Mesopotamia. Major Maude, as Military Secretary to Lord Minto, had been placed in charge of the arrangements for the tour, and so far as the press was concerned left matters largely to Vincent. Thus if The[Pg 280] Times man decreed that the correspondents should cut certain towns, because he wanted to stay in a city he liked, the press car was detached. To Canadian correspondents, who were expected to send reports from these towns covering local celebrations, this sort of thing was a serious hindrance and exasperating. It was almost as annoying to English correspondents who resented the favouritism shown The Times.

Moberly Bell, managing director of The Times, happened to be in America when the tour commenced and came on to Quebec to see the spectacle. He was of Levantine blood, a very tall man with hawk-like features and a loud manner of attire that suited his Oriental appearance. Just previously he had gone to Buffalo to cover the assassination of President McKinley. He was a guest at the first State dinner in Quebec and, I was told, disgusted Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Arthur Guise, at that time Comptroller of the Household for Lord Minto, very much. The entire membership of the McKinley cabinet had moved from Washington to Buffalo, and were holding a cabinet meeting at the home where the President died. Bell, who had plenty of assurance, broke in on the assemblage, and was by courtesy permitted to remain. At Quebec he related the whole proceedings. Such proceedings are supposed to be of inviolate secrecy, and the verdict of his auditors was that Moberly Bell, whatever his abilities, was not a gentleman.

Among the correspondents who had been around the Empire was William Maxwell of the London Standard and afterwards of the London Daily Mail. Maxwell had been a reporter in Glasgow who had risen very rapidly and had been present as a correspondent at[Pg 281] the taking of Khartoum by Lord Kitchener. He told us of having one day entered the Madhi's Tomb and discovered a band of Egyptian soldiers looting it. Though armed only with a walking cane he commanded them to stop, and being a Britisher he was obeyed. He told of the wonderful chain mail the Tomb contained; shirts so fine that they could be held in the palm of the hand, one of which he was permitted to retain as a reward for his peremptory action.

Another Scotsman was Douglas Story, who had won much fame by his descriptive articles on the South African War, written for the London Daily Mail. The late James Gordon Bennett liked them so much that he engaged him for the New York Herald, permitting him to retain the Northcliffe connection for a time, so that he represented two great newspapers en tour. Story, a long dour Celt with a brilliant style, elected to remain in America and was for a time editor of Munsey's Magazine, and I have often wondered since what became of him.

The Canadian among the group of correspondents who had enjoyed the most adventurous career was Marc Sauvelle of La Presse, Montreal, a gigantic man, who in youth had been a member of the Garde National of France, and had, I believe, fought in the Franco-Prussian war. Later he had conducted a French newspaper in Mexico City, and had run foul of one of Mexico's many upstart governments. Instead of being placed against a wall and shot, as his knowledge of Mexican custom had led him to expect, he was deported. He finally settled in Montreal, where he was the most distinguished figure on the French-Canadian press. He still wore the "imperial" of an old soldier of Emperor Napoleon the Third, and with[Pg 282] his towering inches was the most impressive figure in the whole party.

The quietest, and as time has shown, the ablest member of the whole group of correspondents, was a young man not yet thirty, who a few years previously had been a cub reporter on the Victoria (B.C.) Colonist, and whose name was Martin Egan, now of the great banking house of J. P. Morgan & Co. Egan was a native of San Francisco and had entered newspaper work as a mere lad and served in various coast cities. In the late nineties he returned to his home city and joined the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle. On the outbreak of the Boxer troubles in China he was sent thither, and the terseness and accuracy of his news despatches led to his being engaged by Melville Stone of the Associated Press. Some of the British correspondents on the Royal tour were destined to meet Egan within three years at Tokio where he represented the A. P. in the Russo-Japanese war. I saw him at Toronto in the early autumn of 1903 when he was en route to the Far East. He said that his chief was satisfied that there was going to be war, and was sending him to Tokio to await events. If war did not eventuate, there were plenty of other matters in the East that needed attention from an American standpoint. The result of his early arrival was that the Japanese Government which had not only resolved to fight Russia, but to abolish the old-fashioned type of war correspondence by the establishment of a rigid censorship, decided that all news should be transmitted to other correspondents through him. Thus he became known as "The Mikado's press agent". It must have been a surprise to some of the august war-correspondents from London, who had known him first as a[Pg 283] modest young reporter on the Royal tour, to discover that their activities were subject to his discretion. It was at Tokio he married a young and gifted girl correspondent, Eleanor Franklin, of Leslie's Weekly, whose travel articles subsequently became known to millions of readers and whose death in January, 1925, removed the most brilliant of women news-correspondents.

I know of no other newspaper man who has been more fully on the inside of things in the present century than Martin Egan, and if he ever writes a book it will be one of first importance and brimming with humour as well. When the Japanese Government reached the conclusion that though victorious in a military sense it was financially at the end of its tether, and must make peace on the best terms possible, it was through Egan that the request for President Roosevelt's intervention was first conveyed. It was transmitted in cipher to Melville Stone, President of the A. P., who laid the situation before the great Theodore, and the Treaty of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, so bitter a disappointment to the millions of Nippon, was the ultimate result. Subsequently, when J. P. Morgan became financial representative of the European Allies in the Great War, it was Egan who stood between the great financier and the reporters, so that all important disclosures with regard to war finance from this side of the Atlantic came through him.

While we were chumming together on the Royal tour in 1901 Egan told me of having witnessed the looting of the Empress Dowager's Palace at Peking, during the Boxer troubles a few months previously. He said he had never been so much disgusted with white men in[Pg 284] his life; and he thought those few hours when an orgy of theft reigned among the troops of the intervening nations, must have had a deplorable effect on the Chinese mind. Of all the whites in China during that hectic period, those who disgusted him most were the Russians. He said that at Tien-Tsin he saw a Russian officer take away a bowl of candies from a Chinese child, who was selling sweets on the streets, and when the boy asked for payment, knock him dead with the hilt of his sword. Egan, a man of fine physique, was about to rush in and knock the murderer down, when an American officer restrained him with a sharp word; and told him he would probably be shot, if as a civilian he assaulted a European officer.

Before leaving the subject of the interesting men who girdled Canada in that most important and extensive of Royal tours in this country, I should mention a young soldier named Capt. A. C. Bell, one of the household of Lord Minto, who had been in charge of the Maxim Gun Section with the First Canadian Contingent in South Africa. He later became A. C. Morrison-Bell, M.P., whose efforts to reform the inequalities of electoral representation in the British House of Commons are known to all political students. He fought through the Great war as a major in his old regiment, the Scots Guards.

When the present King came to Quebec for the Tercentenary in 1908 there was not only an enormous influx of tourists from the United States, but a visitation of eminent Britons. Lord Grey, the then Governor General, had been particularly anxious that the celebration should be not merely a harking back to the achievements of the French régime, but a demonstration of the modern status of the British Empire.[Pg 285] Consequently military and naval displays took equal place with the historical pageants and nationalist ceremonials. The result was a spectacle that for variety and vividness will not be equalled in Canada in this century at any rate. A figure who attracted even more attention than His Royal Highness was Lord Roberts. The great soldier had one especial quality; and that was personal distinction. Most military commanders lose something of impressiveness when in mufti, but Lord Roberts's appearance was possibly even more arresting in a silk hat and frock coat than in the uniform of a Field Marshal, a fact which may perhaps be attributed to his height, which was below the average. A tour of Canada, independent of the Tercentenary, had been projected for him, and this became a sore trial for the correspondents from other parts of Canada. Quebec was overflowing with delegations from all the cities of Ontario requesting a visit from him, and as each new coterie arrived he would courteously receive them and promise to include their town in his itinerary. His willingness to oblige everybody kept Major Septimus Denison, who had been his A.D.C. in South Africa, and was again serving in that capacity, almost frantic with efforts to frame a schedule which was being almost hourly altered. I was myself in receipt of many telegrams relayed to me from the Mail and Empire office at Toronto asking for exact information as to when Lord Roberts would be in Orillia, or Sarnia, or Niagara Falls, as the case might be. Sometimes these would arrive in the middle of the night, with a demand for an immediate reply, and my news editor was anxious for an official itinerary. The heat was intense, and I surmised that it was affecting the old soldier seriously, and that he was making[Pg 286] promises in a bewildered state of mind, with small realization of the responsibilities he was incurring. One night I wired my office; "R. is mad with the heat; itinerary is useless; it won't be observed." How this message got about I know not, but before I left Quebec several persons reproached me with having wired disrespectful language about a great hero. Yet events turned out exactly as I had predicted, for after trying to fill one engagement at Montreal, Lord Roberts's health broke down, and he was ordered home by physicians.

Of the many notabilities at Quebec one of the most interesting was the late Duke of Norfolk, the leading Catholic nobleman of England, who went about with a smile and a kindly word for everyone. The Duke's clothes were a wonder to look upon, for his position in the world permitted him to please himself in the matter of attire, in which he had much wider liberty than royalty. He wore a battered old square-topped felt hat, at least five years old. I sometimes see these hats in Canadian cities, but have never found out where they may be purchased. His square-cut sack suit seemed to have been made by his housekeeper; his beard was neglected, and yet he had a very striking and rugged personality. After seeing him at Quebec I could believe the yarn told afterward that he went to the Coronation of King George, of which as hereditary Garter King of Arms he was chief functionary, in a tramcar, carrying his coronet under one arm in a newspaper parcel and his robe over the other.

In a physical sense at least the two most attractive celebrities who accompanied their future sovereign to Quebec, were the late Sir Reginald Pole-Carew, scion of two great English families of the middle ages; and[Pg 287] his Irish wife, a daughter of the Duke of Ormonde, who as Lady Beatrice Butler had been known as the most beautiful woman in England. I have never seen a more perfect embodiment of physical loveliness, with a complexion of rich apricot hue, glorious chestnut hair, eyes of warm grey tint, perfect form and features, and pearly white teeth. Even Mrs. Langtry in her prime could not approach Lady Beatrice Pole-Carew for beauty, and she looked her very best in a simple mauve muslin frock as I saw her one Sunday in a little Anglican church, the oldest of that communion in Quebec. And Sir Reginald, though not quite so tall, was a match for her in physical perfections of a masculine order. On horseback he and his mount seemed one creation.

One of the smaller disconcerting episodes which always mark great celebrations arose in connection with the coming of M. Léon Herbette, chief representative of the Republic of France. His selection was singularly tactless, for he had been one of the politicians responsible for the recent expulsion of religious orders from France; and to four hundred of the dispossessed Quebec had given shelter. The Tercentenary celebrations opened with a great open air mass, and when the Archbishop of Quebec learned of Herbette's political history he refused to invite him among the other guests of honour. As envoy of France, Herbette was the guest at Spencerwood of the late Sir Louis Jetté, the Lieutenant Governor. Sir Louis at once informed His Grace that, rather than violate the rules of hospitality by attending the open air mass without his guest, he would stay away, and so he did.

The American envoy was the Hon. Charles W. Fairbanks, Vice-President, who arrived on the U.S. Warship[Pg 288] New Hampshire. He was a popular figure in Quebec, where some years previously he had presided over a joint high commission to settle certain outstanding international disputes; and in conversation I found him a very pleasant man. But he annoyed the New York correspondents and other of the American visitors very much by standing erect in his carriage in the official procession and seeming to claim greater honours than the Prince of Wales himself. To some of his fellow-countrymen his aspiration to succeed Roosevelt as President, on which he later expended a fortune, was known. Frank Jones of the New York Herald and Sam Williams of the New York World, two of the ablest men in the metropolitan journalistic fraternity, were especially annoyed; and I have frequently noted that American newspaper correspondents are particularly sensitive with regard to any compatriot who "shows off".

On that visit I encountered another international celebrity, none other than the famous pickpocket, "The Bald-Faced Kid". With the great influx of visitors scores of pickpockets and crooks also arrived, and in their wake followed a host of detectives, who realized that gentry they had long been looking for, would probably appear at a celebration which offered unique professional opportunities.

His Royal Highness came on H.M.S. Indomitable, the great battleship cruiser which played a distinguished part in the Battle of Jutland, and in 1908 the dernier cri in naval construction. Half an hour before the time scheduled for arrival I took up my position in the octagonal room of the Château Frontenac, which I knew would command a capital view of the spectacle. A beautiful sight it was to see[Pg 289] the ships round Indian cove, for the North Atlantic squadron was supplemented by two French cruisers and an American warship. The room was filled with spectators, and beside me stood a clean-shaven man in a black lustre coat, a white tie, and the general make-up of a preacher from the Middle West. As the ships appeared he asked me which was the Indomitable and I was able to identify her by the tripod masts, which I knew had been revived when she was constructed. He continued to chat pleasantly and just as the royal convoy dropped anchor and the firing of salutes commenced, he apparently noticed for the first time a young lady with a camera. In a very polite manner, he asked her whether she would like to get up to the windows and escorted her through the crowd, his pleasant address making an easy path for her. He then made his way back to his former post at my side and was resuming conversation, when a hard-faced personage, standing behind us, leaned forward, tapped him on the shoulder and whispered: "Come along!" My clerical friend protested that he wished to stay and see the disembarkation. "Come along," said the other in sinister undertones, "Don't make any fuss or, damn you, I'll show you who I am." With an air of resignation the ministerial person departed. No one among the two hundred people in the room had noticed the episode except myself. A little later I made enquiries at the office, and found that the courteous gentleman with the white tie was the illustrious "Bald Faced Kid", master pickpocket. "I've been trailing him for two days," said the detective, "and I knew he would get busy as soon as the guns started firing. You didn't see it, but he dipped into three pockets on his way back from the window. We caught two of his[Pg 290] pals working crowds at other windows just at the same time." It was the neatest and quietest achievement in thief-taking I ever witnessed. Throughout the fifteen minutes I had been talking to the stranger a large sum in expense money had been in a pocket almost under his hand, and I still wonder why he spared me. Possibly the job looked too easy for an expert of his calibre.

CHAPTER XVIII

A SHEAF OF CELEBRITIES

The past twenty years has witnessed a great change in Canadian cities in the number of celebrities who come to their gates. The twentieth century is the age of globe-trotting; and for eminent Britons Canada is now part of the Imperial pathway around the world. But in my boyhood and early manhood the visits of famous men were few and far between, and were talked of for weeks afterward. The same condition prevailed throughout most of the nineteenth century in the United States. Witness the great amount of reminiscent literature that has grown up around the single visit of Thackeray. That early American institution, the public lecture, was in the past responsible for most of the visitations that relieved the smaller civic communities of their parochial atmosphere. In glancing through old newspaper files I have encountered references to visits to Canada by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Matthew Arnold. In one of the essays of the latter there is a satirical jibe about Torontonians who whiled away long winter evenings in theological discussion, a fruitless pursuit in Arnold's eyes. I am not old enough to recall these events; but I distinctly remember the furore, forty odd years ago, over the coming of the apostle of aestheticism, Oscar Wilde. Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson has since revealed that this American tour was an advertising dodge devised by D'Oyly Carte to[Pg 292] advertise the forthcoming production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, in which the aesthetic vagaries of Wilde were satirized. But in most cities his lectures and his costumes were taken quite seriously. I remember my mother describing his sage green velvet suit with knee breeches, silk stockings, buckled shoes, lace cuffs and shirt ruffles, and voluminous velvet cloak, which he unfastened and laid aside as he commenced to speak in studied dulcet tones. Whether his visit was an advertising dodge or not, it assuredly did much good. He fascinated women and started them thinking about making their deplorably ugly homes more attractive. To-day the poor salaried man as a rule lives in a more attractive interior than did the wealthiest citizens in 1880. It is my privilege to relate an episode with regard to Wilde which has never been published. The heroine was at that time a spindle-legged little girl with gypsy eyes, and hair that would not stay in place, who later developed into a very handsome woman and met a tragic end when the Lusitania was sunk. She had the run of the Queen's Hotel, Toronto, the most historic caravansary in Canada, in whose "Red Parlour" many celebrities have reposed during the past seventy years. This lass, with her autograph album, was in the habit of holding up notabilities for their signatures, and because of her youth was never refused. So when she heard everyone talking of Oscar Wilde, she made up her mind to add him to her list of victims. The hotel clerk sent up word to the Red Parlour that a young lady wished to see him; and Wilde, who in those days was susceptible to feminine attentions, replied that he would receive her. In answer to the child's timid knock came a request to enter; and as she opened the door, she saw a majestic,[Pg 293] cloaked figure posed gracefully against the marble mantel-piece. When, instead of a love-sick maiden, Oscar descried a scraggy elf, he gave a start of surprise, and the frightened youngster had difficulty in stating her errand. He wrote his signature, and then commenced to unbend.

"What are your favourite studies, my child?" he asked in gentle tones. She was the kind of little girl who had no favourite studies, and was immediately at a loss. But realizing that it was up to her to name one, she gave a gulp and ejaculated "'Rithmetic!"

In after years she recalled the look of pain that swept across Wilde's ample countenance. "Ah! my child, that is not well," he said. "You should study history and poetry."

Then he continued, "What is your favourite flower, my child?" In her embarrassment, she had difficulty in thinking of anything, but finally an inspiration came to her:

This was too much! Oscar seized a large bunch of calla lilies from his desk and presented them to her with the words: "Good-bye, my child; consider the lilies!"

Certainly he must have felt that there was room for aesthetic evangelization among the youth of Canada.

When I read of the rubbish that is now being written about "Fundamentalism", it brings back to mind the pow-wow there arose, the echoes of which reached childish ears, over a visit from the great preacher and orator, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who took as his subject "Evolution and Revolution" and espoused mildly modernist ideas. My mother and her[Pg 294] friends fell in love with his noble appearance, his rosy clean-shaven countenance and silver hair, and his glorious voice. But for weeks parsons were busy writing to the newspapers denouncing views which were then deemed radical. The women of our circle were loyal in their admiration for Beecher when, about that time, an attempt was made to smirch his name with a dirty scandal. They would not believe that so noble a being was guilty; at any rate, if it was true, they argued, it was the woman who had trapped him, and he was really blameless. I am afraid that a man less handsome and charming would not have fared so well.

Beecher as a personality and speaker was many notches higher than his successor at Brooklyn Tabernacle, the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmadge. I reported one of the latter's last lectures in this country, and a more raucous type of professional "spell-binder" I have never heard. He lectured on his recent travels abroad, and of that journey a curious but authentic story was told. Part of his itinerary included a tour of Greece and Palestine; and before leaving New York he wrote out a series of sermons to be syndicated and released at intervals. These sermons were to be preached on the same spots as various sermons mentioned in the New Testament: a sermon on the Mount of Olives; a sermon on the steps of the Temple at Jerusalem; a sermon on Mars Hill at Athens (vide St. Paul); a sermon by the waters of Jordan, where after the manner of St. Philip he baptized an Ethiopian. The Ethiopian in this case was said to have been a wandering Arab whom he bribed with a piastre to submit to being ducked. The fact that all the syndicated sermons were "staged",[Pg 295] and had no audiences except Talmadge's party, apparently did not discredit him with his admirers.

He had a gift for seeming to weep, and allowing his voice to break with emotion, which could not fool anyone acquainted with the technique of acting, but moved many listeners. I watched him bring forth this bag of tricks in describing the scenes of the Indian Mutiny; but the richest part of his discourse was an account of his visit to the Czar and Czarina of that time (circa 1890). "I had been instructed in all the forms of court etty-quette," he said, "but when I saw that magnificent man; I forgot them. I was so overcome with emotion that I rushed up to him and gave him a good hearty Amurrican handshake, just like that" (suiting the action to the word).

Then he went on to relate that the Czar had said he was proud to meet an "Amurrican", and had added, "The Czarina wants to see you." He told how he had interviewed "that bee-utiful woman" in a garden of roses, and had also given her a good Amurrican handshake. Shouted at the top of his voice, this kind of tosh was appalling, but apparently it delighted his admirers.

I also heard the renowned orator, Robert G. Ingersoll, on his final lecture tour; but on the night in question it was pouring rain and he had such a heavy cold that I could not judge of the "silver voice" which had been famous for a generation. The mere fact that he was able to speak at all showed, however, that he was a master of modulation and did not abuse the ears of his audiences with the raucous flights of many other popular speakers. He had Lloyd George's ability to make himself interesting even when very sick. His subject was "Burns", and the thing about the Scottish[Pg 296] poet that seemed to interest him most was his war against conventions and "Holy Willies". He declared that it was the aim of organized religion everywhere to destroy the freedom of the spirit, but did not touch on questions of orthodoxy, or say anything to indicate that he was an "atheist".

Of all the public lecturers and entertainers of the eighties and nineties, the most popular so far as I was able to judge was Mark Twain. I did not hear him myself, but after his visits my elders would exchange notes for days on his quips and stories, and discuss his dry and solemn mode of delivery. Incidentally I may relate that Mark Twain had enjoyed a community of bad judgment with the Hon. George Brown, the famous Liberal leader and editor of the Globe. When Prof. Graham Bell perfected his invention of the telephone at Brantford, Ont., he approached Mark Twain with a request for financial backing. The latter not only laughed at the proposal, but made the telephone the subject of bitter ridicule in a short sketch published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1878, which I have read, but which I think was suppressed in his collected writings. About the same time Bell approached the Hon. George Brown, to whom he owed money for promotion advertising in the Globe, and offered him a block of Bell Telephone stock in payment. Brown roughly ordered him from his office with the words: "Take away your toy, I want money." When Brown was assassinated in 1879 he was in financial difficulties and he left his newspaper in a sorry plight. That block of stock would have been a permanent endowment. Mark Twain had similar hard luck. He advanced a great deal more money than the sum Bell requested, on[Pg 297] another and worthless invention, which helped to bankrupt him ultimately.

After Mark Twain left the lecture and entertainment rostrum the most popular platform figure among the American literary coterie was the Indiana poet, James Whitcomb Riley, whose verse enjoyed immense vogue thirty years ago. The distinction of Riley's work lay in the fact that though written in "Hoosier" dialect it was real poetry, and the best of it will live for that reason. During the twenty years between 1880 and 1900, fostered largely by Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, there was a veritable scourge of dialect in American fiction and verse, most of which is utterly forgotten; some, like the Tennessee novels of Miss Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock), undeservedly. But Riley, who as a young man was a deep student of Shakespeare, Herrick, and Keats, knew how to make music out of the crude speech of his own people. Of the host of verse writers whom he inspired to similar efforts, only one succeeded in capturing his spirit. That was Dr. W. H. Drummond, of Montreal, whose French-Canadian lyrics and ballads were clearly inspired by the methods of Riley.

On the public platform, Riley was a wistful little figure with an owlish face, a soft drawling voice that nevertheless carried very well, and a personality that instinctively won his listeners. He could evoke tears by the unexaggerated tenderness of his utterance in such a line as "Well, good-bye, Jack, take keer of yourself". He had a failing for alcohol, which I believe was conquered in after life, that made his engagements uncertain; and quarrelled with his platform partners on that account. One of his tours was with the annalist of the Louisiana creoles, George W. Cable,[Pg 298] who, however, made no impression as a reader of his own tales. Bill Nye, the humourist, with whom he subsequently toured, was a better drawing card, but was guilty of a very brutal action when, at Rochester (I think), he went out on the platform and said, "I regret to announce that my colleague, Mr. Riley, is drunk," and was hissed for his pains. On one of his visits to Toronto it was necessary to rush Riley to a Turkish bath and delay the opening of the programme until half past nine, but when he did arrive he so charmed his hearers that they felt well repaid for their waiting. Afterward I had supper with him and he must have drunk at least three quarts of strong coffee, but was full of droll, philosophic comment on things in general. He had taken a great fancy to some nature verses of mine, and afterwards wrote me urging that I should not allow the poet in me to be submerged by newspaper work. But unfortunately few verse-writers are so fortunate in securing popular support as Riley, who earned a substantial income from his poetry.

I do not suppose any popular poet has been so soon forgotten as Sir Edwin Arnold. Thirty years or so ago everyone was reading and talking of The Light of Asia, and his later volumes commanded a wide market. He was a very fine-looking man with a rosy face and short white beard, but a very dull reader of his own work. In connection with one of his appearances, I heard Goldwin Smith perpetrate a most bare-faced example of possibly ambiguous flattery. As Chairman he said: "I once said to another Arnold, Matthew Arnold, that he was the last of the great poets; to-night I amend that view in favour of a later Arnold, the poet who is with us to-night."

Very few literary men are interesting interpreters of their own work. I omit references to the later men who have come across the ocean since the war, but for sheer dulness it would be difficult to equal Conan Doyle's readings. Even the most dramatic passages from some of his fine romantic tales seemed incredibly tedious as he read them; and Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was almost as bad.

Nearly all the celebrities I have mentioned toured under the direction of a typical Yankee showman, the late Major Pond. A close friend of mine, Will J. Wright, at one time Paris correspondent of the New York Herald, was for a time his European representative. He was in the habit of cabling Wright to book such and such a celebrity; and when Wright would cable back that the task was impossible his sole retort was: "Pay him what he wants!" Major Pond's motto was "Money Talks", and Wright knew it meant dismissal if he failed to make an effort to carry out orders. Once he was instructed to book Lord Tennyson for one hundred appearances. He knew that he might as well attempt to book the Angel Gabriel. In addition to Tennyson's dislike of public appearances he had learned that the laureate, though he had written movingly of the sea, was afraid to trust his life on it. However, in obedience to orders he went to the Isle of Wight where the laureate was making a temporary sojourn and discovered that he was in the habit of sitting for an hour every morning on a stone overlooking the English channel and meditating while he smoked evil-smelling shag. Next day Wright took possession of the stone and, when the poet arrived and hovered about with a look of annoyance, at once offered to vacate. Tennyson was pleased at this courtesy from[Pg 300] a stranger and entered into conversation. Wright told him he was an American and gently broached the question of whether he contemplated visiting the United States before he died, assuring him of the enthusiastic receptions that would be accorded him. The laureate seemed pleased, but said he could not think of it at his age. Wright had performed his duty, and Tennyson never knew that he had been sounded by a lecture manager.

Another order Wright received from Major Pond was to book Ibsen for a lecture tour. "Pay him what he wants, and tell him we will provide an interpreter," was the instruction. Wright, knowing that he might be received with insult, went to Christiania, and had the good luck to run across a Norwegian whom he had known in Minneapolis, who, having accumulated a fortune, had returned to his native land. This friend said he knew Ibsen and would introduce Wright to him in the café where the dramatist was accustomed to sit for an hour or two every afternoon. Ibsen proved to be in a pleasant mood and, after champagne had been served once or twice, grew expansive. Wright then made his proposition, and the dramatist at once flew into a rage: "No, I will not go to America," he said, "it is a nation of thieves." Then he drew from his pocket a list of managers, actors, and actresses, very comprehensive, who had produced plays of his without paying him royalties. He had probably obtained these through his son, Dr. Sigurd Ibsen, at one time an attaché at Washington. "All thieves, all pirates!" he said. "If I went there they would rob me again." But presently he calmed down and said he meant no reflection on Wright, who had made him a very generous offer. Then he did something quite unprecedented[Pg 301] with him—ordered another quart of champagne—so that the waiters wondered who the hypnotic stranger could be.

Thirty years ago when the Ibsen craze was at its height I got a cold douche with regard to the great genius of the modern theatre. A young Danish count came to Canada from Aalborg, to study agriculture, and knowing that Ibsen had lived for a time at Copenhagen I asked if he had ever seen him. "Yes," he said, "both he and Bjornsen were often guests of my father when I was a child." "What was he like?" I asked. "He was an old bore," said the count; "he used to tell stale stories and get angry if everyone did not laugh." Even genius has its foibles and frailties.

Major Pond, who wanted the big end of the stick in all his dealings, met his match in the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill. Pond recognized that the latter, as the son of the most famous of America's international beauties, Lady Randolph Churchill, would be an immense drawing card on this side of the Atlantic, and engaged him to tour and lecture on the South African War, in which he had had many exciting adventures. Churchill, who knew nothing of the economics of the lecture business in America, made an improvident contract which gave Pond about nine-tenths of the profits. He had not been on tour very long before he realized that he had been duped, and at Toronto he went on strike. Pond smoked many long cigars over the problem. "Churchill is a genius," he said to the reporters, "some day he will be Prime Minister of England,—but like all geniuses he is temperamental,—very temperamental." But he found that temperament was[Pg 302] combined with a good deal of obstinacy, and finally conceded a fair division of profits.

One of the most interesting of British public men whom I encountered in my early days as a reporter, was the famous pioneer of the parliamentary Labour party, James Kier Hardie. In the early nineties a petty controversy in which Hardie was involved excited world-wide attention. On his election to the House of Commons he entered that august chamber wearing a workingman's tweed cap. Mr. Speaker took exception to his head-gear, ruling that any kind of a hat was admissible, but not a cap. Hardie refused to remove it and was suspended. It was one of the silly things that used to happen before the Great War made the world serious, and Hardie's cap became an international sensation. A few months after the incident he came to America to attend a Labour convention, and dropped off in Toronto at midnight, took a stroll around the city, and left early in the morning. But by good luck I happened to get an exclusive interview with him. He laughed at the cap episode, and I found him quite different from the ruffian he had been painted by some ponderous leader writers. He spoke a broad Glasgow accent, but I found him very well versed in Swinburne and other poets. Modern poetry, he said, was the poetry of revolt, and he made predictions as to the part that Labour was destined to play in British politics. At the same time he had good words to say for the British land-holding classes. At that time the doctrines of Henry George and Edward Bellamy were to the fore, and the "mortgage on the homestead" was much discussed in America. It was Hardie's opinion that the British farmer under leasehold to ancient territorial magnates like the Earl of[Pg 303] Derby was better off than the American or Canadian farmer paying interest on a mortgage. Of course Hardie had no means of knowing how much exaggeration there was in the propaganda for a single tax on land.

At that time also the Fabian essays of George Bernard Shaw were being widely read, and I was also deeply interested in the dramatic criticisms signed "G. B. S." which were appearing in the Saturday Review. I asked Hardie if he knew Shaw. "Of course I do," he said, "he is one of the symptoms of the spirit of revolt that I just spoke of, and which is influencing all the younger writers. I can give you an interesting bit of news, too, since you seem to follow the theatre. Shaw has written a play!"

He then told me all about Arms and the Man, which he said had been privately printed, but which no manager would dare produce as a commercial proposition. The play seems tame enough in comparison with Shaw's later dramas, but such was the benighted condition of the London theatre thirty years ago. Hardie advised me to write to Shaw and ask for a copy. "He will certainly send you one," he said, "because, between ourselves, he is rather vain, and will be delighted beyond words to get such a request from a stranger in Canada." I wrote the letter, but was too diffident to post it, for Shaw even in those days was a great figure in my eyes; and I have since deeply regretted it. To-day a privately printed edition of Arms and the Man would be a precious possession indeed.

Among other reformers whom I accidentally met in skirmishing about the hotels was the noble little man, Jacob A. Riis, who did more to alleviate the possibly[Pg 304] incurable evils of the New York tenement-house system than any other man. He was a Dane with eye-brows like long antennae and heavy spectacles, so that he looked like one of Hans Christian Andersen's characters. His work of reform was accomplished largely while he was police reporter of the New York Sun, and he knew whereof he spoke, for he had himself been a penniless immigrant on the East Side. His book How the Other Half Lives was a revelation which awakened the public conscience so effectively that it has been functioning on this matter ever since. When I met Riis he had been brought to Canada on a fishing trip by some wealthy and eminent New Yorkers, and he seemed honestly puzzled that I should prefer to interview him instead of his companions. He was full of enthusiasm for a certain rising politician, and asked me if I had ever heard of Theodore Roosevelt. I said I had. "Well," he said, "New York State is going to do the grandest thing for itself that it has ever done; it is going to elect him Governor this autumn." His enthusiasm for Roosevelt was based on the reforms that the latter had put into force as Police Commissioner of New York, which were largely based on information furnished by Jacob Riis. As some are aware, the latter became the biographer of the reforming President.

The name of Roosevelt brings to mind that of other American public men of yesterday. From my own point of view and that of many Canadians the most attractive of all was and is the Hon. William H. Taft, Chief Justice of the United States. His personality is better known to Canadians than that of most of the eminent men of his generation; and the combination in him of dignity with geniality and good fellowship,[Pg 305] the sense he conveys of profound scholarship untouched by pedantry, makes him unique. By long odds the most interesting lectures I have ever heard were his addresses on the constitutional history of the United States, in which he made a dry subject radiant with human interest. But to realize Taft to the full it is necessary to meet him in a small coterie where he is entirely free to express himself as he will. In Toronto, in years gone by, we used to have a dining club of newspaper men, which occasionally entertained visiting celebrities, and in which it was a strict rule that nothing a guest said should be reported unless he so desired. Personalities as diverse as Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Edward S. Willard, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Henry B. Irving (an eminent criminologist as well as actor), William Jennings Bryan, and Mr. Taft were our guests. The most charming and entertaining was the present Chief Justice of the United States. Mr. Taft is unique among American public men because in Cuba and the Philippines he won by his ability and wisdom the same type of distinction as was accorded great pro-consuls of Great Britain like the late Lord Milner and Sir Frank Swettenham. When we entertained him we asked the orchestra to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" as an international courtesy, and he afterwards amused his listeners by saying that we might have spared him this. He gave an imitation of the attempts of Filipino school children to sing it, wherever he went during his term as Governor of the Philippines. It will surprise many to know that the vast, august Chief Justice is a capital mimic.

His great predecessor, Chief Justice White, was also a great lover of Canada, but came and went in such an[Pg 306] elusive way that few were aware of his identity. I never saw him to my knowledge, but I ran across his trail in two Ontario towns that he loved, Orillia and Port Hope, at both of which he spent several summers. In both he was known to the populace as a well-to-do genial Louisiana gentleman whose chief interest was fishing, and only one or two were in the secret that he was Chief Justice of the United States. At Orillia his confidant on this point was a dentist who used to get his summer cottage ready for him. At Port Hope a young druggist enjoyed a similar honour. On his comings and goings he would stroll about Toronto, and nobody knew him, else there would have been ceremonies by the bench and bar, newspaper interviews, and other things he wished to avoid. At Port Hope he once went into the drug store of his friend and stood aside while an emergency prescription was being made up. When the druggist came to look for him he discovered the great authority on Roman law sitting on the ground in the back yard mending a toy wagon for a child.

The contrast between such learned yet simple men and William Jennings Bryan was wide. In close contact there was something flashy and insincere about Bryan that was disconcerting; and a sort of uneasiness as though he were continually interrogating himself, "Am I putting it over?". Two things stand out in the recollection of my first meeting with Bryan, first that he had the flabbiest, fishiest hand that I ever shook; second that he employed as "go-getter" as drunken a secretary and publicity agent as I ever encountered. This was when he was lecturing on "The Prince of Peace", and before he had become celebrated as a prohibitionist orator and shirt-sleeve[Pg 307] theologian. A man more adept in sensing the temperature of an audience I have never listened to. When he spoke to our newspaper club he started off by saying that he honoured us as British subjects because Dickens had been a British subject. Then he hastened to assure us that as a boy and youth he had been too serious-minded to read novels. This serious habit of mind had continued in him, but of Dickens he made an exception because of his high moral purpose. This confession of literary asceticism was frigidly received by the hard-boiled newspapermen around him. Suddenly he got a sense of this and commenced to tell funny stories. And to his credit be it said that he told them exceedingly well; and that they were both clean and humorous. The famous minstrel, Lew Dockstader, could not have done better; but when Bryan saw an auditor, as he thought, taking notes he suddenly froze up and his mouth became grim: "I thought I was not to be reported," he said. When the offender held up a sketch and showed that he had been making a drawing, the peerless one was placated. Obviously he felt that it would not do for one who was posing as the thirteenth apostle to be known as a humourist.

Bryan's puritanical attitude toward novels struck me as amusing in view of what I had been told of him in 1896 when he stampeded the Democratic Convention and became famous over-night. There was at that time a Canadian theatrical man, Duncan B. Harrison, well known all over the continent as a manager of small troupes. When Bryan's portrait appeared in the newspapers, Harrison at once identified it as that of a young Westerner whom he had engaged under the name of William Jennings to support a well-known barn-storming idol, Ada Gray, in East Lynne, and[Pg 308] whose fine stage appearance and splendid voice had impressed him. Harrison was also able to state the origin of the most famous sentence in the speech which won Bryan his first nomination for the Presidency:

"You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold; you shall not press upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns."

The speech comes from a forgotten melodrama, Jack Cade, full of turgid dialogue which the renowned and robustious American tragedian Edwin Forrest, used to spout, and which was used by barn-stormers on small rural circuits long after it was forgotten in the cities. Harrison published these statements openly in New York during the campaign of 1896, and so far as I am aware they were never denied. "Whether Bryan was ever an actor or not, I have no personal knowledge, but, whatever his attitude toward novels, he was certainly in his youth acquainted with crude melodrama."

The contrast between Bryan and Col. Henry Watterson, of Louisville, Kentucky, long regarded as the brains of the Democratic party, was remarkable. Watterson was a typical fighting man, but had long backgrounds of culture and at one time aspired to be virtuoso pianist. He was short, but very handsome. "When I met him I was startled to discover that he had but one eye. His portraits, always taken in profile, gave no suggestion of this defect, and it is said he lost the eye in one of the last duels fought on American soil. The nervous raciness and elegance of his speaking was a delight to listen to, but some of the things he said were depressing to a writer. He told us that the day of the individual journalist as a personal force was done in America; that never again would[Pg 309] men like himself be able to win personal fame and distinction with the editorial pen; for the simple reason that the counting-house would not let them. He held that the destiny of the daily press was counting-house control. His words were prophetic, even with regard to himself, for within a few months the counting house had driven him out of his own sanctum in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Another distinctive type of the old fashioned Southerner, with whom I once had a chance meeting, was the late Henry Clay Evans, of Tennessee, who succeeded Joseph H. Choate as U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. He dropped into Toronto from Niagara Falls one Sunday afternoon, and confessed that he had been astounded at the development of the Canadian towns and cities he saw en route. He said he had been ignorant of the fact that Canada had any cities at all. It reminded me of a story of a man who went to Tennessee to buy horses. When he told a hotel proprietor that he came from Canada, the boniface replied: "Canada, Canada, who's keepin' hotel up there, now?"

The young genius, Rupert Brooke, who died untimely, took a unique view of Canada, or at any rate of Toronto. Some years before his death he was sent to this country to write descriptive letters for the Northcliffe press, and he reported that Toronto was the hardest-drinking city in the world. It was not true, but it was a rather pleasing variation on such epithets as "The Belfast of America", "The city of churches" and "The choral capital of North America". The gentleman to whom he brought letters of introduction, and whose guest he became, was a hard-bitten Scots business man, the soul of hospitality, as[Pg 310] (Punch to the contrary) most Scotsmen are. This gentleman was of the type who says: "I've got a bottle, let's split it," and his guest, the young poet, had much of this kind of hospitality thrust upon him. The weather was exceedingly hot, and in connection therewith an amusing incident happened. Brooke's host, who was a lover of pictures, sent for the noted landscape painter, Archibald Browne, R.C.A., and asked him to look after the boy. One night Browne took the poet to the home of the late D. R. Wilkie, a famous banker, who was also honorary president of the Canadian Art Club. Mr. Wilkie was a fine, hospitable, but somewhat formal gentleman. The group sat in the darkness on his veranda, and Brooke, whose feet were very sore from walking about in the heat, slipped his shoes off, unnoticed as he thought. But the act did not escape the sharp eyes of Mr. Wilkie. Encountering Browne a few days later the banker said: "Browne, your Bohemian friends may be all right, but they have no manners. That young man dropped his shoes off the other night." A year or two later when the English-speaking world was ringing with the name of Rupert Brooke, Mr. Wilkie became very proud of having entertained an angel unawares.

Rupert Brooke, with his tall frame, rich complexion, fine eyes, and red gold hair, was a glorious creature physically, and he was the first man I ever saw wear a green felt hat, though such head-gear shortly became very fashionable. There was nothing of the brooding aesthete about him, as some critics seem to imagine. His was a robust personality, and though many of his poems are etherial in quality, his one-act play Lithuania is as sanguinary and brutal an example of realism as ever was penned.

Another Englishman whose personality was profoundly moving in close contact was the late Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great explorer of the Antarctic. Shackleton had already sisters in Canada and came here quietly to try to induce the Canadian government to commission him to unravel the mysteries of the northern magnetic pole, which he said would be a great boon to mariners on seas north of the tropics. Conditions were at that time very favourable to such an attempt, but the government could not see its way clear to accept his services, and therefore he set off on his last voyage to clear up certain mysteries in Antarctic waters. I met him at a luncheon given by the famous surgeon, Dr. Herbert A. Bruce, and I have never met a man whose eyes, black and sombre, expressed more of fire and resolution. To hear him tell with his own lips his adventures on one of his last voyages, when he lost his ship on uncharted waters and drifted for months on ice-floes with his crew, was more thrilling than any recital of experiences within my recollection. Shackleton had everything that makes for greatness but luck.

More rugged but almost equally striking in a different way was his rival, Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, who actually discovered the geographical south pole, though Shackleton, if I mistake not, discovered the southern magnetic pole. Amundsen in the late nineties accomplished one feat of importance to Canada which passed almost unnoticed. He was the first mariner to run the Northwest passage from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific. All through the mid-nineteenth century British scientists and explorers discussed the possibility of finding the Northwest passage,[Pg 312] and on that quest Sir John Franklin lost his life. Yet when Amundsen actually accomplished the feat, the world was so occupied with other matters that it attracted little attention, and he did not actually become famous until he discovered the South Pole. Among the very first to hear of Amundsen's successful venture was a veteran Canadian, Elihu Stewart, D.L.S., formerly of Collingwood and now a resident of Toronto. In 1897 Mr. Stewart induced the Laurier government to send him on an expedition to explore the country between the head waters of the Athabaska and Yukon Rivers, and wrote a most interesting narrative of his journey through wildernesses not previously penetrated by white men. At a post in the far northern part of the Yukon territory overlooking the Northwest passage, he learned that Amundsen's ship had sailed through a short while before, and had successfully made the passage for the first time in history. When I told Amundsen of this he was deeply interested to learn that a Canadian explorer had, unknown to him, been so near.

I leave these Nordic personalities, for one who, a quarter of a century ago, excited more attention than any living man who up to that time had visited America,—the great Chinese statesman and soldier, Li Hung Chang. Eminent gentlemen from the Orient when they travel to-day adopt the dress and customs of the Occident. But the super-mandarin travelled as he was accustomed to do in China, though he consented to be conveyed by special train. When he went abroad he was borne in a great gilded chair which because of his great bulk demanded four lusty bearers. He brought his own food with him, including a great[Pg 313] consignment of live ducks. In his commissariat was a vast pile of clay cubes that looked like cement bricks, each of which contained an egg several years old which he esteemed a palatable delicacy. His silken robes and head-dresses were a wonder to behold. But he was very genial and expansive with reporters, and indeed with all strangers presented to him. His first query, irrespective of sex, was, "How old are you?" and his second, "Have you any children?", which was often disconcerting. He had an alert little companion and secretary, a complete contrast physically, Lo Feng Loo, afterwards Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain, and a man who spoke many languages. It chanced that his arrival in Canada via Niagara synchronized with the time of the Canadian National Exhibition at Toronto, and Li Hung Chang was fully convinced that the whole display was arranged in his honour. Lo Feng Loo did not disabuse the mandarin's mind on this point, and he was highly pleased. Nor was he aware that the question of who should be his chair-bearers while in Toronto had been a serious problem. The civic authorities decreed that the task should be undertaken by the police; but many of the husky Ulstermen of that body threatened to strike if they were detailed to carry a "Chink". However, four stalwarts at last volunteered and were the subject of much derision by their comrades. Later they became subjects of envy when His Excellency conferred on them the Order of the Double Dragon. An amusing incident occurred when he was brought to a platform in front of the grand stand in order that the thousands of citizens might see him receive a civic address. A large number of girls had been engaged for a ballet in connection with the spectacle annually given at this Exhibition,[Pg 314] and were peeping from behind the scenery to get a glimpse of him. So soon as Li Hung Chang caught sight of them he turned his back on the civic dignitaries and started to go behind the scenes to obtain a closer acquaintance with the pretty girls. It required some very rapid argument from Lo Feng Loo to turn him about; and his face, which had been wreathed in smiles, expressed boredom. Aldermen, all things considered, are a less delectable sight than ballet girls.

CHAPTER XIX

MUSICIANS AND PAINTERS

In all the years that I was immersed in reporting politics, crime, and electrical development, and in the hurly-burly of daily newspaper routine, I was as it were, leading a double life. For when a boy of sixteen I had made Beauty my mistress, and whatever my pursuits I have never lost sight of her. Though I had a capacity for interesting myself in almost anything which demanded my attention, my primary interest always lay with the arts. Often in the courts or in the press gallery I have caught myself turning over some problem of aesthetics with one side of my brain, while following an argument of merely ephemeral importance with the other. That, of course, was not the way to get rich, but I think perhaps this duality of interest has helped my journalistic work, such as it is. Thus I viewed most of the incidents in the daily news, and the personalities of public men, from the detached standpoint of the artist, as though this terrestrial scene and its actors were matters arranged for my entertainment. On the other hand, the multitude of other interests born of the routine of newspaper work enabled me to view artistic affairs with some sense of perspective and proportion. Though I have been engaged in criticism for over thirty years, I have never desired to be known as a critic per se—much less as a censor—merely as an interpreter and analyst of artistic effort, even in its[Pg 316] humblest manifestations. My duties as a writer on music, the theatre, and the plastic arts came to me at first by chance—as newspaper assignments to be covered to the best of my ability. For instance, although music had been a passion with me from boyhood, I never anticipated becoming a music critic until in 1898 W. J. Wilkinson, news editor of the Mail and Empire commanded me to become one, and when I expressed diffidence said, "Go ahead and try, anyway!" Seven years earlier E. E. Sheppard told me I must report the theatres and art exhibitions, and so I did, educating myself as I went along. Like Topsy, "I wasn't bawn, I jest growed." I think perhaps this is how most so-called critics happen. But before I was twenty-one my dramatic articles signed by my old pen-name of "Touchstone" had attracted some little attention, and I have the honour of being the first man to establish a week-end theatrical causerie on the daily newspaper press of Canada, first in the Sunday World, and then in the Empire.

The eighteen-nineties—the fin de siècle period, as they were called—were a glorious and stimulating time for young men with artistic predilections,—a period of awakenings throughout the English-speaking world in connection with all the arts; of recognition of earlier awakenings in other lands such as Russia, Germany, Scandinavia, and Spain. In English-speaking countries all the more excellent work in various fields of artistic endeavour owes its existence to seeds sown three decades or more ago in that new springtime of the closing century. This is not the place to discourse upon the fin de siècle period, but I commend to all readers Holbrook Jackson's superb survey in his book[Pg 317] The Eighteen Nineties. Even such parochial centres as the cities of Canada felt this awakening, and in the end have profited by it.

Forty years ago the sons as well as the daughters of gentlefolk were supposed to study music and drawing,—often much against their will. An old lady gave me a quaint reason why I should practice my piano lessons. If I acquired music, she said I would be able to turn the leaves for young ladies who played and sang, and thus become a youth of true social accomplishments. But at the pianoforte I could never accomplish anything that really sounded like music to me. I executed in crayon certain copies of dogs and horses by Landseer which I dare say were bad enough, but served as an initiation to an art which has ever been a source of delight to me, and my interest in painting was stimulated by a friendship, dating from childhood, with one of the most enthusiastic of connoisseurs, the noted architect, Ernest R. Rolph.

The first musician of real eminence with whom I came in contact was an Englishman, Arthur E. Fisher,—a man of profound learning, though still under the shadow of the cathedral, like most English musicians of the eighties. One of Fisher's compositions, a cantata, "The Wreck of the Hesperus," is still performed in various parts of the world; and he also composed a very fine "Te Deum". His cantata, originally designed for women's voices was later expanded into a full choral and orchestral work and was performed at the great music festival in connection with the inaugural of Massey Hall, Toronto, in 1894. He was a short stout Englishman with mutton chop whiskers and a massive brow that bulged at the sides, as do the brows of most gifted musicians. He taught piano and theory[Pg 318] simultaneously. His assistant would take junior pupils over the ordinary work and once a month or so Mr. Fisher would sit down beside the pupil and explain the why-and-wherefores. He was also a gifted teacher of sight singing, as I learned through experience under him as a choir boy. But he was destined to be a wanderer, not that he was idle or dissipated, but because of his extreme tactlessness. He had a theory that whenever he accepted a church appointment it was his first duty "to go to the mat with the Rector",—to state the case in modern vernacular. If that functionary suggested that a certain hymn, to which he wished to make an allusion in his sermon, be sung, Mr. Fisher would peremptorily refuse and give the Rector to understand that the musical selections were exclusively his business. He was first brought to Canada by St. George's Church, Montreal, and at various times he took up the challenge of battle with such doughty foes as the Rev. Edward Sullivan, the Rev. Septimus Jones, the Rev. John Langtry, and I know not how many others. Yet he was a most progressive man, and it was he who suggested to the late Dr. F. H. Torrington the idea of holding local examinations in Ontario and the West, a policy which has proven a great factor in the development of Canadian music. He was the first official examiner of the Toronto Conservatory of Music on its foundation in 1887 by Dr. Edward Fisher, who was a New Englander and no relation of his. He was most versatile, and one of the pioneers of chamber music in Canada. He played the viola in the Toronto Chamber Quartette, a fine organization of forty years ago, which also included John Bailey, afterwards first violin of the splendid orchestra of the Henry W. Savage Grand Opera Company[Pg 319] Henry Jacobsen, for many years the leading musician of Rochester N. Y., and Ludwig Corell, a violoncellist of international experience who has played in many famous orchestras. Mr. Fisher also made one of the earliest attempts to interest Canadians in the beauties of capella or unaccompanied singing (an art later brought to perfection by Dr. A. S. Vogt with the Mendelssohn Choir), by establishing the St. Cecilia Choral Society, of which my father was secretary treasurer. The musical tastes of the times may be judged by the fact that once, when in order to keep up interest in the society it was decided to give a concert in a near-by town, the local authorities said it was useless to expect an audience unless a comic singer were included in the programme.

My father engaged a young lawyer, who had aspirations in that direction and who could be, he thought, trusted to show some discretion. When the humorist sang as an encore a ditty containing the lines:

just before the lovely old motet, "Matona Lovely Maiden", was to be rendered by the choristers, there was almost a fistic encounter in the dressing-room.

An illustration of Mr. Fisher's tactlessness was his apologizing at the opening of a concert for "the wretched instrument which Messrs. Pedal & Keyes have so kindly loaned us for the occasion". Messrs. Pedal & Keyes were a noted piano firm who exercised a widespread local influence, and as both leading members of the firm were present the conductor[Pg 320] made two powerful enemies at one shot. Finally, after various adventures in Canadian cities, Arthur Fisher joined the staff of Florenz Zeigfeld (father of the impresario of the "Follies") at the Chicago Conservatory, and whether he fared better there I know not.

At the period of which I speak, Dr. F. H. Torrington, conductor of the Philharmonic Society, dominated the local scene, and had done so since coming from Boston in the early seventies. The story of Dr. Torrington, who did so much to promote good music in Toronto and Canada at large in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, would require a chapter in itself. Like Arthur Fisher he was one of those all-round English musicians who could teach singing, play the fiddle, the piano, the organ, and the tympani, if need be,—a type which filled a most important place in the musical history of both Canada and the United States. Though English to the core, the chief object of Dr. Torrington's admiration was the late Carl Zerrahn of the Harvard Musical Society, Boston, under whom he had been concert—master for three years. Indeed Carl Zerrahn's popularity made the road hard for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, during the first years of its existence, and certain celebrated critics of "The Hub" wrote attacks that in after years they must have blushed to remember. In the late nineties, when Lieut. Dan Godfrey came to Canada with his Guards Band and was given civic receptions wherever he went, Dr. Torrington, though not opposed to such a recognition of a conductor, expressed indignation to me that, when some years previously "a really great man" like Carl Zerrahn had come to Canada, no such honours had been accorded.

In his way, Dr. Torrington was as outspoken as Arthur Fisher, but his nature was so kindly, and the respect in which he was held so great, that he could, as the saying goes, "get away with murder". The German prima donna, Lilli Lehman, who was chief soloist at the first great Canadian music festival in 1887, records in her books of memories, an encounter with him. Since it took place in the presence of a chorus of hundreds of school children, present for rehearsal, it yielded great delight. Prima donna and conductor disputed over the interpretation of the orchestral part in an aria she was to sing; and the air resounded with phrases like "Gott im Himmel", as the singer emphasized her views. Dr. Torrington had not enough German to understand half the invective she poured on his head; but many of the orchestral performers, who were Germans imported from other cities, did, and laughed and applauded; which of course increased the anger of the conductor. Finally the great Lilli seized the baton and conducted the number herself as she desired it to be rendered, singing her part at the same time.

Dr. Torrington had an unhappy experience with another great German musician, the eminent Hans von Bülow, pianist and conductor. Von Bülow had been booked by his managers as a pianist for an entertainment at Toronto, the character of which was unknown to them. It turned out a very mixed affair; half spectacle, half concert, a feature of which was a tableau showing the ladies and gentlemen of the Toronto Hunt mounted on their steeds. Von Bülow had to pick his way to the platform among horses which had been manifesting stage-fright in natural but unpleasant ways. He followed the old-fashioned custom[Pg 322] of the salon pianist of coming on with his opera hat under his arm and gloves in hand. As he set them down he looked daggers at the audience, and then his eyes chanced to fall on the large sign attached to the side of the pianoforte, announcing the name of its manufacturer. Removing it, he deftly kicked it into the wings, and then settled down to business.

Dr. Torrington, who was distressed that so great a man as Von Bülow should appear under such disconcerting circumstances, went behind the scenes afterward to utter a word of appreciation on behalf of the musicians of Toronto, and to invite him to supper. But the infuriated pianist slammed the door in his face. He was very foolish, for Dr. Torrington was the soul of hospitality, and his entertainment would no doubt have atoned for the earlier annoyances.

When I look over the long list of famous works which the conductor of the Philharmonic Society performed in Canada for the first time, with scratch orchestras, largely trained by himself, and with choruses, not all of whom were sight—readers, his energy amazes me. For instance, he gave Gounod's oratorio "Mors et Vita" nearly twenty years before it was heard in New York; and many of the great works of Handel, like "Israel in Egypt", which for some reason or other conductors shun to-day, were at his fingers' ends. When he was conducting he was seemingly unconscious of auditors; and if choristers or orchestra made a bad attack, he would stop them and make them do it over again, as though at rehearsal. Those under him knew him so well that it did not upset them, but it was sometimes disconcerting to the uninitiated. On one occasion my wife was singing the soprano solos in the "Messiah" and an old gentleman who had known her since[Pg 323] childhood and who was entirely ignorant of music, went to hear her. Afterwards he said, "You were fine, but what was that old fellow doing up there, confusing everybody with his stick?"

I daresay many of the public regard the conductor as a fifth wheel to the coach at public performances. In presentations of musical entertainments of all types the conductor does most of the work, but seldom sees his name mentioned by the newspapers unless he is a great celebrity.

A staunch friend of mine from youth was the late Eliott Haslam, who really did provide Canada with its first experiences of the higher order of unaccompanied choral singing, an art which requires more finesse than work with orchestral accompaniment. Haslam, though an Englishman, and a relative of Sir John Haslam, Bart., always suggested a Frenchman in grace of manner and volatility of wit and address. He had been educated in Paris and had at one time been a flautist in the orchestra of the Opera Comique. I never knew a man who took more enjoyment in the oddities of the human scene than he,—when in good spirits. The Toronto Vocal Society founded by him in the late eighties gave beautifully expressive interpretations of English madrigals, but he was a bundle of nerves and eccentricities. Once at rehearsal his chorus so got on his nerves that he ran away from the hall without his hat. These brain—storms of his ultimately split his organization into two camps; and finally he went away to become Professor of Oratorio in Mrs. Thurber's National Conservatory, New York, then under the direction of the Bohemian composer, Antonín Dvořák. Dvořák thought highly of his abilities, but Haslam[Pg 324] disliked oratorio and came back to Toronto to teach singing, a task which he really enjoyed.

I was lunching with him the day after his return when a young lawyer, who had been a rebellious member of the Toronto Vocal Society, suffered under his tongue. This lawyer's ambitions outran his abilities; he was notorious for having taken the defence in a murder case and by incompetence materially assisted in sending his client to the gallows. "Ah, Haslam," he said, "still in the land of the living I see." "Yes, my dear sir," replied the musician, "fortunately I have never had to employ you to defend me on a charge of murder."

Haslam's great discovery while a singing teacher in Toronto was a young motherless English girl, daughter of a poor organist, now the noted prima donna, Florence Easton. She was then as a child of fourteen singing in a small choir in Toronto, though English relatives subsequently brought her home and gave her an education at the Royal Academy of Music. About 1900 Haslam went back to Paris and opened a studio in the region of Parc Monceau, and here presently Florence Easton renewed her studies with him. Until he was driven from Paris by the war in 1914, and even during the years when she was prima donna at the Royal Opera, Berlin, she always went to Paris to be coached in each new role by him. He was an Officier d'Académie, with a host of friends in Europe, but the need of earning a livelihood brought him back to Canada in 1915. He arrived in Toronto on a Sunday night, and found the city so utterly changed that loneliness struck into his heart. Though pupils flocked to him, he was the constant victim of nostalgia for his beautiful studio in Paris and the artistic life with which he[Pg 325] had been surrounded. One morning he was found dead in his studio with a bullet in his brain. He had ample funds, but in the excitements of war times it had been impossible to re-establish old friendships on the delightful Bohemian basis of the nineties. He really perished of homesickness,—one of the gayest and most enchanting companions I ever knew.

Haslam had a gifted nephew, Percy Mitchell, a violinist, who thirty-five years ago taught music at Upper Canada College. When the uncle went to New York to join the staff of Dvořák at the National Conservatory, he took Mitchell with him, and the latter obtained a position as musical and theatrical reporter on the New York Herald. His duties were to make the rounds of the theatrical district and pick up news, not to write criticism. With regard to the Metropolitan Opera House he was in luck, because Willy Parry, an old Paris friend of Elliott Haslam's, was stage manager, and able to give him many tit-bits of news. Parry, by the way, assisted Frank Lascelles, the noted pageant master, in staging the Quebec Tercentenary Pageant in 1908. By Parry's friendship Mitchell and his uncle were allowed back of the stage at the opening of the Metropolitan season, to write a special article from that point of view. The bill was Faust, with Melba as Marguerite, Jean de Reszke as Faust, and Édouard de Reszke as Mephisto. Haslam told me of a charming instance of the affection between the two brothers. Jean, despite his greatness, was always nervous before a performance; and on that occasion when, disguised by the white beard and doctor's robes of the aged Faust, he could be seen to tremble as he took his place on the stage while the first mysterious notes of the prelude were sounding. Édouard, ready in scarlet attire for[Pg 326] the sudden appearance of Mephisto, which occurs a few minutes later, noticed it and cupping his hands whispered tenderly in the soft French pronunciation of the phrase, "Courage, Jean!" Presently Jean commenced the opening soliloquy with steady, beautiful intonation, and the episode gave Mitchell a splendid "lead" for his first big newspaper "special".

Percy Mitchell's luck stayed with him. A few months later James Gordon Bennett cabled that he had engaged the great French actor Febvre to write a series of impressions of the American theatre, and ordered that a reporter who could speak French be assigned as his cicerone. Mitchell, though a mere beginner, was the only man on the staff who could speak French fluently and was chosen for the task. So well did he direct the French actor's movements and translate his articles, that Febvre gave a glowing account of him on his return to Paris. Bennett, following one of his famous impulses, at once appointed Mitchell editor of the Paris edition of the Herald and cabled him to sail for France next day—a sudden promotion for a youth who a year previously had been a music teacher in a Toronto school. Though he did not remain editor for a lengthy period Mitchell managed to retain Bennett's good-will (no easy task); he was Madrid correspondent through the difficult period preceding the Spanish-American War, and later served in other European capitals.

My first acquaintance with the name of Dr. Augustus Stephen Vogt, founder of the Mendelssohn Choir of Toronto, who for twenty-five years has been the most eminent figure in the domain of Canadian music, came in a curious way. As a boy I was visiting a relative in Hamilton, who before her marriage had[Pg 327] resided in St. Thomas, Ont. I was turning over the leaves of an old photograph album and observed the picture of a clever-looking youth with a trim moustache. Asking who he was I was told, "Oh, he's Mr. Vogt. He was the organist of our church in St. Thomas. He's awfully clever. He's over in Germany now, and some people think they'll keep him over there."

Dr. Vogt's life-story as one of a large family in the little rural village of Elmira, Ont., who fought his way up and provided the means for his own education, is one of the most inspiring to a native-born Canadian that can be imagined. All the other eminent figures in the earlier history of Canadian music came to us from abroad; but he, the most famous of all, is truly native, and his history is quite as romantic and characteristic of a new country as that of any self-made captain of industry. It is more striking, because, with the abundant opportunities that the natural resources of America provide, it was much easier to make a great career in commerce than in the field of music. The prestige that Dr. Vogt gradually won for himself and for the Mendelssohn Choir, after its foundation in the mid-nineties, is a tangible thing. Many a Canadian has found a mere mention of either a pass-word in the musical centres of Great Britain and Europe. Apart from his musical abilities, Dr. Vogt, now Dean of the Faculty of Music, in the University of Toronto, and Director of the Toronto Conservatory of Music, has in a remarkable degree the gifts of winning respect and of holding the affection of those he chooses to make his friends. I once heard a singular tribute to him from an old school friend of mine who had become an eminent manufacturer. His boy had developed musical[Pg 328] gifts and he consulted me as to whether he should let him go on with music or put him into the factory. "I was brought up to think musicians were mere freaks," he said, "but when I met Dr. Vogt I found out that they weren't at all. They're just as intelligent as the average business man!"

Before I rose to a wide acquaintanceship among musicians I already knew most of the Canadian painters, although they have become so numerous that nowadays I can no longer make such a boast. I have already mentioned a few, and it should be said that the path of a musician of even mediocre talent is much easier than that of the most gifted painter, though the widespread development of commercial art has offered a livelihood to many who would have starved in days gone by. I have no intention, at present, of discussing conditions and tendencies, but on one point there is need of enlightenment. The idea has been promulgated in Great Britain and the United States that Canadian painters have but lately developed a national individuality. That is a Fleet Street discovery entirely unrelated to the truth. As long ago as the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, the individuality of Canadian painters, especially in the matter of mountain-scape was noted by international critics. In nearly thirty-five years' association I have always found Canadian painters striving for independent expression with more or less success, and speaking of their aims in precisely the same terms as do the younger painters of to-day. They were compelled to do that even in spite of themselves; for the artist if he has temperament at all is a chameleon-like being, profoundly influenced by his surroundings, who must interpret what he sees,[Pg 329] even though his faculty of interpretation may be infirm or commonplace.

It is rather ludicrous to note references to "European influences" in the work of painters who never saw Europe; and even in the case of men trained abroad competent craftsmanship invariably adjusts itself to surroundings. Many years ago I was introduced to George Theodore Berthon, who died in Toronto in 1892 in his eighty-sixth year. Berthon, a Frenchman born in Vienna and son of an artist, actually recalled Napoleon I, whom his father had painted. He was nine years old at the time of the Battle of Waterloo; he came to Canada in 1841 and lived here for half a century. In his day he painted most of the eminent Canadian jurists and public men of the nineteenth century, and many of his portraits adorn the walls of Osgoode Hall, Toronto, seat of the Ontario law courts. Though Berthon spent the entire formative years of his life in Europe, no one would mistake his subjects for Europeans. They are sturdy Canadian gentlemen of the ruling, nation-making class, and convey an ineffaceable impression of their environment.

Earlier I have spoken of another venerable artist, O. R. Jacobi, and I also met on one or two occasions the patriarchal Daniel Fowler, a great colourist and aquarellist whose pictures have commanded increasingly high prices since his death in 1894. Fowler, born in Kent, England, in 1810, had a singular history. Like David Copperfield he had been destined for Doctors Commons, but finally broke away and studied with Harding, the watercolourist, who was one of the earliest advocates of pictures painted directly in the open air. One of Fowler's fellow students was Edward[Pg 330] Lear, inventor of that metrical form known as the "limerick", and a musician, traveller, and topographical artist, as well as humorist. Lear and he went to Italy, but Fowler's health breaking down he gave up painting altogether and came to Canada to take up farming. He settled on Amherst Island at the head of the St. Lawrence River in 1843, and never touched a brush again until he was forty-seven years of age. A visit home in 1857 brought back all his old artistic longings, and from then on in the leisure he could spare from farming painted steadily, exhibiting first in Montreal in 1862. The veteran painter, J. W. L. Forster, tells a characteristic story of O. R. Jacobi and Fowler. At this display the judges awarded the silver medal for the best watercolour to a picture by Jacobi. The latter insisted that a picture of Fowler's, "Hollyhocks", was better than his and on his urgence the judges divided the prize. Fowler knew nothing of this and since Jacobi was president of the society which organized the exhibition, took a wrong view of the division. He went to the latter's studio and demanded an explanation. The German painter gently referred him to the committee on awards. An hour later, Fowler came back and in deep dejection apologized. Jacobi's enthusiasm with regard to "Hollyhocks" was justified fourteen years later when it received a medal at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia. As many are aware, Fowler's pictures of Canadian bird and game life are surpassingly fine in solidity of effect and beauty of texture, while in delicacy and loveliness of colouring they are beyond praise.

The most singular thing about Fowler's fame is that it was practically unknown to his family and neighbours.[Pg 331] His son, the late R. W. Fowler, was a farmer in Lennox county on the mainland, who became an active rural politician, warden of his county and later a member of the Ontario Legislature. One day he came to see me with a photograph of the old homestead on Amherst Island showing the tall, white-bearded Daniel Fowler in his garden. He had shown it to an official in the Parliament Buildings who said he thought I would like to see it and would probably publish it. The son opened his eyes with amazement when I told him of his father's eminence in the world of art, and that the Toronto Art Gallery had deemed itself fortunate in procuring one of his small game pieces at the bargain price of $800. A friend who ran a country paper in Lennox county for several years told me that no one there knew of Daniel Fowler's eminence, and that had R. W. Fowler realized it, the facts would certainly have been heralded, for he was a keen politician who knew the value of an advertisement.

Another noted character among the artists, although of a younger generation, was the late William Cruikshank, a relative of the great Dickens illustrator, George Cruikshank. "Cruik", as he was known to the fraternity, was a black, beetle-browed, bearded Scot, and a great draughtsman, who in New York before coming to Canada taught Charles Dana Gibson to draw. He was a recluse who, as it was said, seemed to live on the smell of an oil rag. Yet when he died it was found that he had accumulated over $20,000 safely invested, though he had worked very little and had mainly subsisted on his salary as a teacher, than whom there was none better. "Cruik" was a discerning critic of the works of other men and his views were highly valued by them; and his own pictures were thoroughly[Pg 332] national. Nothing more typically Canadian could be imagined than his "Breaking the Road", showing floundering oxen driven through snow drifts, according to the old pioneer method.

The rugged Canadianism of Homer Watson's landscapes was discovered and admired by English artists like Whistler, before the birth of some of the London critics who imagine Canadian art was first revealed at Wembley in 1924. Homer Watson's home at Doon in the heart of the beautiful pastoral country of Western Ontario has for many years been a meeting place for artists. One summer Cruikshank and the brilliant landscape painter, Carl Ahrens, were Watson's guests, and on a fine day were proceeding along a country road and arguing about art. The eyes of all three were fascinated by the sight of a farmer plowing in a perfect setting for a picture. "Cruik" began to rhapsodize in this wise: "Look at yon man! He is a man of sense! He is not worrying about art! He is thinking of his land, and of the harvest he will reap. He is a useful man,—the true citizen." The farmer just then reached the end of his furrow and waited to talk to the pedestrians. As they came up he said in German accents: "Say, wouldn't it be fine if Doon could get a prass pand?" "Cruik" walked on in a brown study and after several moments ejaculated mournfully: "Yon man was a damn fool after all!"

Canada was at one time the home of a very distinguished school of water-colourists, which was created a half a century ago in connection with the old photographic firm of Notman & Fraser of Montreal and Toronto, when the tinting of photographs was an art in itself, and miniature painting was a commercial pursuit[Pg 333] carried on in connection therewith. Two of this group, Henry Sandham and John A. Fraser, were among the illustrators assembled when the Century magazine was established as the most beautiful of American monthly periodicals. Their work, together with that of several American painters, is also embalmed in a fine pictorial work, Picturesque Canada. Malcolm Fraser, for many years art editor of the Century under Richard Watson Gilder was, I think, one of this coterie; and so was the veteran R. F. Gagen, who has long been Secretary of the Ontario Society of Artists. But the most brilliant graduate of all was Horatio Walker, whose genius was for oils, and whose pictures are world famous. Ten years ago I took a very able English decorative artist, Ernest Wallcousins, to see an exhibition of Walker's sketches and paintings. He paused before a cattle piece in amazement. "I don't care much for the colour," he said, "but believe me, Michael Angelo himself never drew better than that." Walker was a crude country boy, son of a poor preacher in Western Ontario, when he came to Toronto in the seventies to learn the trade of colouring photographs. After some months' apprenticeship he had a "scrap" with a son of one of the partners and the father, it is said, threw him bodily down stairs. He wandered in American cities painting little picture cards and selling them to support himself. Gradually he acquired his superb craftsmanship by some power within himself. Presently he was exhibiting both in the Royal Academy and the National Academy of Design, New York, and the strength, depth, and beauty of his work, especially his marvellous technique in the handling of "planes", are universally recognized. His love for the French-Canadian[Pg 334] people, among whom he has long lived on the Island of Orleans, for a part of each year, is reflected in his work; and when you see Walker coming down the street it is as though Cyrano de Bergerac had come to life. Once a Canadian painter, much heavier in physique, announced that he was going to pull Horatio's nose for some fancied wrong. The threat reached Walker's ears and when he next came to Canada he chanced to see his enemy in the distance. The latter also saw Walker and hurriedly darted into a public building. The bristling little painter followed him up and said: "I say there, Bill, I understand you intend to pull my nose. Now here's your chance." The other smiled sheepishly and said, "Oh! that was just one of my jokes." "Well, I would advise you not to make any more of them," said Walker, "I might take it seriously the next time."

Another celebrated artist who left Canada with bitterness in his heart, but whose affection did not return so warmly as in the case of Walker, was Ernest Seton Thompson, or "Thompson-Seton", as he later called himself, much to the indignation of his father. Thompson spent his boyhood in Toronto, and the early nature stories which made him famous were based on eye-witness material that he collected in its environs and in Manitoba, where for a time, about 1890, he was government naturalist.

I first became acquainted with Thompson and his work in 1892, when he had returned from a year or two of study in Paris, whither he had gone to brush up in technique. At that time he intended to become a painter, and his fame as a story-writer, illustrator, and lecturer was yet undreamed of. He was almost the earliest of Canadian painters to treat the problems of[Pg 335] snow in the analytic manner of the French impressionists. His chief picture was a large piece, "Awaited in Vain," which showed three wolves devouring the last remnants of a man they had slain. The time was evening, and the light in a distant hut showed the significance of the title. Though the subject was ghastly, and candidly handled, the beauty and veracity of the colour effect, and the perfect painting of the animals, gave the picture a haunting, sinister beauty I have never forgotten. The obvious cleverness of Thompson was rather disconcerting to his fellow painters. Shortly after, the assembling of paintings for the Canadian collection at the Chicago World's Fair began, and the jury of selection promptly rejected "Awaited in Vain" on the ground that it was too realistic and brutal. I was one of those who were convinced that that was not the real reason. Artists are as a class poor, and for that reason art politics sometimes get rather near to the gutter. The painter of real brilliance and originality who suddenly appears on the scene is apt to fare much as does the boy with a new suit of clothes who gets into a gang of urchins. So with my pen I made a fight for recognition for Ernest Thompson, and his other friends took up the cry. The result was that the jury of selection was forced by the government to reconsider its decision, and "Awaited in Vain" went to Chicago. But when I saw it there some months later it had been hopelessly "skyed" by the Canadian hanging committee. Thompson, who was a very handsome, slender young man, later spoiled his appearance by letting his hair grow too long, at the suggestion, it is said, of his lecture manager, who also may have been responsible for his change of name. Shortly after the episode just related he left Canada[Pg 336] disgusted with the unkindness of his fellows, and his subsequent career is known to many. I have often wondered since what he did with the collection of animal pictures that was the work of his early years as painter and naturalist.

CHAPTER XX

STARS OF OTHER DAYS

In opportunities for amusement, the world of to-day compared with that of forty years ago is much changed for children and, indeed, for people of all ages. Motion pictures, recording musical instruments, and the radio have made the personality of Gloria Swanson or the voice of Galli Curci as familiar in the villages and on the farms as in great cities. In the eighties there were no motion-picture theatres, and even in cities of 100,000 or 200,000 no "family vaudeville". In the great school which I attended, the parents of half of the children did not think it right to go to the theatre, and had somehow managed to make their offspring think that the practice was forbidden in the Bible, which did not make it the less tempting. In 1885 when the Mikado craze was at its height, some of these boys were rather wistful and peevish about the good fortune of those whose parents had allowed them to see that most popular of entertainments. One little chap in bravado boasted of having seen The Mikado seven times, but his veracity could not stand the test of cross-examination by those of us who had seen it. Fortunately there was no prejudice against the theatre in my own home; and I heard actors and plays discussed from earliest childhood. But my parents did not think too much playgoing good for youngsters, so, until I was nearly sixteen, my allowance was four "shows" a year, carefully selected.

Of all the actors and actresses of the past fifty years I think the artist who captured the greatest share of public affection, on this continent at any rate, was the Shakespearian actress, Adelaide Neilson, who died in 1880 at the age of thirty-two. From the time I remember anything, I recall Adelaide Neilson being talked of with adoration. My mother wept, and my father was unable to control his voice because of the lump in his throat, when on a summer day news came of her untimely death. The circumstances were doubly tragic, for she died suddenly while alone in Paris; and her body lay unidentified in the Morgue for a full day or longer. The older generation of playgoers still talks, after nearly half a century, of the loveliness of her presence and the music of her voice. I have several photographs of her, and though her features were not very regular, one may imagine the magic of her soft, dark eyes. Juliet's first line in the prompt book she used was, "How now, who calls?" uttered off stage; and the music of her utterance of that exclamation used to thrill playgoers before they got a glimpse of her. Adelaide Neilson was a native of Leeds, born Elizabeth Ann Brown, and had been a bar-maid when a young girl. She had been befriended by a naval officer, to whom she left the fortune she rapidly accumulated after she became famous. In his book of memories the late Henry A. Clapp, of Boston, one of the ablest dramatic critics of his time, says that at the outset some of her pronunciations were provincial, but that she so rapidly overcame this defect, that in a few seasons her diction was unique in beauty and distinction. Not long ago I was reading an account of a visit of the leading artists of the Comédie Française to London in the seventies, written for the Athenaeum by[Pg 339] the celebrated critic Joseph Knight, in which he said that among the contemporary artists of the British theatre, Adelaide Neilson alone measured up to an equally high standard of excellence. When we recollect that in the period of 1880 the London stage was much richer in talent of a high order than it is to-day, this was praise indeed.

There is little doubt that William Winter, the most eminent American critic of the nineteenth century, who writes so eloquently of her in Shadows of the Stage, was deeply in love with Adelaide Neilson, like most others who came under her spell. Once during my incumbency as critic of the Toronto Mail and Empire, an old foreman-printer told me that he had set Winter's copy in connection with a performance of Romeo and Juliet. I asked him if he had ever worked in the composing room of the New York Tribune, and he said, "No, it was right in this office." It appeared that Winter had come to Toronto to see Miss Neilson, and the editor had thought it would be a good stroke of business to ask him to write the review,—a task which the critic joyfully accepted.

Of all the stage doors in America, the one (with the exception of that of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York) that is richest in associations is probably that of the now disused Grand Opera House, Toronto, the walls of which have been standing for fifty years though the interior was burned in 1879. There are a few other theatres as old in various American cities, but the associations are greater in connection with "the Grand", because it was the one theatre where nearly all the noted artists of the quarter of a century from 1875 to 1900 appeared, and the weather-beaten door that still remains, has opened and closed on their[Pg 340] comings and goings. And so when I pass it I think of Adelaide Neilson, Irving, Terry, Patti, Edwin Booth, Coquelin, Bernhardt, Modjeska, Mary Anderson, and a host of idols of other days who had stepped across its dingy threshold. A sinister atmosphere hangs over the old theatre now, for within its walls its millionaire manager, Ambrose J. Small, was possibly murdered in 1919, and the mystery of his disappearance has never been solved.

It was here that the radiant Adelaide Neilson came in 1879 to re-open the theatre, renovated after the fire; and it was in front of this stage door that the students of the University of Toronto took the horses from her carriage and drew her to her hotel. This demonstration, absolutely spontaneous, proved so great an advertisement, that managers subsequently worked up similar demonstrations in connection with lesser stars until the public commenced to jeer.

There was, until a few years ago, another theatre in Toronto of much older associations—the Royal Lyceum Theatre, which, when burned in 1922, was used as a mattress factory, and earlier still as a spoon factory. It was there that Clara Morris, a native of Toronto, afterwards celebrated as an emotional actress, made her first appearance on the stage as a child in pantomime. There also Mrs. Charles Walcott, one of the most distinguished of comédiennes, made her début, under the direction of her father, John Nickenson, who was manager of "The Royal". It was there I saw the first play that I remember, some time in the early eighties. It was a very crude affair called Uncle Josh, but its author, the late Denman Thompson, later built it up into The Old Homestead, the most popular and successful of all[Pg 341] American plays except Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the seventies Thompson ran a not very reputable saloon and dance hall on Bay Street, Toronto. He had been a variety actor and was anxious to get back into the profession, so he began with a one-act rural sketch in which he played the role of Joshua Whitcomb, a Yankee farmer. By the time I saw it it had been expanded into a full-length play. The episode in it which remains most vividly in my memory was afterwards toned down when the piece became The Old Homestead and a highly moral entertainment, praised from many pulpits as a sermon against drunkenness. Uncle Josh was seen praying at the bedside of a poor woman; and during his devotions her drunken husband came reeling in. Uncle Josh abruptly rose from his knees, picked the bully up in his arms, and threw him out of the window; the property man dropped a box of glass behind the scenes to make an effective noise; while Uncle Josh knelt down and with much demonstration resumed his prayer. To a boy of ten, this episode seemed the pinnacle of humour.

One of the most delightful of my boyhood memories of the theatre is of the celebrated soubrette "Lotta" (Charlotte Crabtree), who retired from the stage while still comparatively young and died at Boston in 1924, leaving an estate of four million dollars to American soldiers wounded in the great war. Managers have for forty years been trying to find another Lotta; one who could play girlish parts and command the love of the entire community in equal degree. The only parallel to Lotta's vogue has been disclosed in a different field, Mary Pickford, whose first performances as the little child, Gladys Smith, I witnessed at the Princess Theatre, Toronto, a quarter of a century ago. As I[Pg 342] recall Lotta she was a petite, black-eyed, sprightly creature, full of nervous energy and undeniable witchery. She appeared in a charming French operetta Mlle. Nitouche, but her earlier successes had been in American plays of a cruder type; and she had first come into fame in the mining camps of California and Nevada. Contemporary with Lotta was another soubrette of immense popularity, Maggie Mitchell, whom I never saw, but who made a fortune out of a stage version of George Sand's idyl, Fanchon the Cricket. She was a native of Elgin county, Ontario, and on her comparatively early death made provision that she should be buried in the village where she was born.

I am satisfied that the long-sought successor to Lotta would have developed in a child actress of the period of 1890, known in the smaller towns of Ontario as "Little Gladys". Thirty-five or forty years ago there were several stars, well known in the towns and villages of Ontario, northern New York State, Ohio and Michigan, who kept alive many forgotten plays. There was Ida Van Cortlandt, a wholesome personality, who played famous old pieces that had been discarded in the cities. For instance, in a small centre I saw her play The Honeymoon, by John Tobin, a once famous comedy of the Kemble era. There was Josie Mills, still living, who ran the gamut of comedy and emotion and presented old pieces like Lucrezia Borgia and Forget-me-Not. There was the redoubtable Ada Gray, whose acting was absurdly exaggerated, yet whose performance of Lady Isabel in East Lynne made her as popular, in what actors call "the tank towns", as were Ellen Terry in London and Ada Rehan in New York. One of the best of these small-town[Pg 343] combinations was headed by Mr. and Mrs. George Woodward and Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Day. Woodward and Day became well-known actors. Mrs. Woodward (Eugénie Lindemann) subsequently became chaperon and character-actress in the company of the youthful Julia Marlowe. The Woodward-Day Company included the child actress "Little Gladys", who at the age of about sixteen adopted her own name, Gladys Wallis, and made successful appearances on Broadway. After the death of Maggie Mitchell, she was starred in the latter's vehicle Fanchon, and her grace, charm, and intelligence amounted to something like genius. While still a young girl she married a young Englishman and retired from the stage. Unlike some unions of the kind it turned out very happily, and the young Englishman became the great Chicago capitalist, Samuel Insull.

The great event of my boyhood, and it was a great event for adults also, was the advent of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. The three "P's" (Pinafore, Patience, and The Pirates of Penzance) were much talked of in the early eighties, and as wee lads my brother and I had sailor caps with "H. M. S. Pinafore" on them, in recognition of the popular craze. But it was not until The Mikado came out in 1885 that our minds were deemed mature enough to appreciate Gilbert's wit. Recollections of my original hearing of the immortal operetta are more vivid than of the many revivals in the subsequent four decades. The Ko-Ko was a young elongated Oxonian, the late Joseph W. Herbert, one of the most finished of singing comedians, with a perfect gift for patter. I subsequently saw Herbert in many comic roles, the most memorable of which was his irresistibly funny performance of the[Pg 344] Scottish town-crier in DeKoven's Rob Roy. In 1922 I met Herbert in the Lambs' Club, New York, and it seemed strange to encounter in the youthful and debonair actor, one who as a boy had seemed to me ages older than myself. Another member of this first Mikado cast was a comedian named Nathaniel Burnham, a stout, unctuous actor with a very ugly face, who was the best impersonator of the title role I have ever seen; and who seemed a veritable ogre when he spoke of "boiling oil or melted lead". Later Burnham gave a wonderful impersonation of Shadbolt, the loutish turn-key in The Yeomen of the Guard. The Pitti Sing was a sprightly and tiny comédienne, Ida Mulle, and thirty-five years later she was giving a most amusing performance of the fat little female slave-dealer in Chu Chin Chow.

The Mikado has very tender memories for me. In the early nineties I reported by long odds the ablest amateur performance of the classic that has been given in this country. I wrote of the "beautiful, raven-haired Yum-Yum", and spoke of her glorious voice. Her name was Katherine Ryan, and though I did not at that time know her personally, I fell in love with her. I did not meet her until four or five years later, and would not be denied until she married me—to my lasting happiness.

The very first entertainment, an appreciation of which I wrote for publication, was a delightful legitimate burlesque, The Seven Ages, in which Henry E. Dixey, who united a brilliant comic talent with a romantic personality, starred, after having won much fame in an earlier burlesque, Adonis. In The Seven Ages, presented in as many episodes, Dixey impersonated every one of the types outlined in Jacques'[Pg 345] immortal speech. He was delightfully amusing when wheeled on as an infant in a great perambulator, and had obviously studied the ways of a restless child minutely; but his greatest achievement was in the final episode,—"sans everything". He took the course, very daring in a comic entertainment, of playing a bereft, senile man in a quasi-tragic way, and it was unforgettably touching and graphic. Dixey was by long odds the most versatile actor I ever knew, equally facile, whether as Malvolio in Twelfth Night or as a comic juggler in vaudeville. In his company he had an exquisitely lovely singer named Yolande Wallace, and recollection of her brings back to mind many of the vanished beauties that thrilled the senses of the youths of the eighties and nineties. "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" asks Villon in a similar mood. What does become of the lovely beings that are for a time the "toast of the town", and then vanish? The same question arises in every generation. Some go on and on and become celebrated artistes; some marry into the British peerage or the American plutocracy; and some re-appear as old women in motion pictures.

Of all the singing beauties of my boyhood and youth the one who best preserved her loveliness from decade to decade was Lillian Russell, who for more than thirty years carried with her the same suggestion of honey and roses. The richness of her beauty as a young woman, in whom golden hair, delicate complexion, and classic features were set off by sapphire eyes and a dreamy, gentle smile, was vast. I sat near her at a war entertainment in 1917, and despite advancing years, she seemed on close inspection almost as lovely as she had been behind the footlights twenty-five years[Pg 346] previously. The preservation of her beauty was in part due, no doubt, to the sweetness of her disposition, for the tales of her kindness to women less fortunate were many. Despite the sweetness of her voice, there was but one part in which she revealed vital artistry. It was that of the street singer in Offenbach's charming, but almost unknown operetta La Perichole, a touching role composed for Hortense Schneider.

A year or so ago in an American magazine Carl Van Vechten asked what had become of another vision of blond loveliness,—Adam Forepaugh's "Ten Thousand Dollar Beauty," Louise Montague. I happen to be able to answer that question. She married a very able Shakespearian actor, Arthur Elliott, and the exploitation of her beauty in youth left her unspoiled; for he told me after her death that she had been the best of wives. The only occasion on which I saw her was when she was playing Portia to the Shylock of Thomas W. Keene in 1890, and she gave a commendable but not brilliant performance, overshadowed by the piquant Nerissa of Emma Sheridan (said to have been a niece of Gen. Phil Sheridan), who also shortly afterward left the stage.

In the nineties two girls rose from the chorus into prominence in America, went to London, and subsequently married peers of the realm. One was the lovely, dove-like Edna May, the demure Salvation lassie of The Belle of New York. The other was Madge Lessing. I first saw Madge Lessing thirty years ago when she was singing in a small summer opera company in Toronto, managed by a well-known low comedian, Fred. Solomon, brother of Edward Solomon, the composer of Billee Taylor. Fred. Solomon had been trained as a bandsman for the British Army at[Pg 347] Chatham, and could play any instrument with facility. He was a competent conductor and stage manager, and a low comedian who had scored a great hit at the New York Casino as the little cockney thief in Erminie. Among the many avocations he filled at various times was that of stage manager for Koster & Bial's Music Hall, whose "cork-room", where wine was opened, was a famous resort of New York "bloods". Madge Lessing at that time was a very ordinary, half-nourished little girl in the chorus, who had obtained an engagement solely by the sweetness of her voice. Solomon discerned the talent of the child and took her out of her undesirable surroundings. He gave her music lessons and as she grew up she developed into a woman of rare beauty, and became a great favourite in London. So, when I see plays of the Cinderella order in which poor girls blossom into something like princesses, and am disposed to critical jibes, I recall the career of Madge Lessing and hold my hand. These Cinderella plays are not so impossible after all.

There are, however, many forgotten women that were lovely beings known to all playgoers in the nineties who just disappeared—Helen Lamont, Alice Carle, Camille D'Arville, Virginia Earle, Delia Fox, Josephine Hall, Pauline Hall, Minnie Ashley, Marie Celeste, Laura Schirmer Mapleson, and Hilda Clark, to name but a few. The most gifted of them all has retained her position in the public eye because her art has been as fine as to appeal to successive generations. She is Marie Tempest, still a captivating comédienne in middle-aged roles, and, as a girl in the early nineties, positively enchanting. Those were days when a comic opera star was expected to wear tights; and librettists contrived that at some time or other during[Pg 348] the evening the heroine disguised herself as a boy, preferably in military uniform. W. S. Gilbert protested against this convention, and adhered to his convictions, but it persisted long. Of all the girls of the nineties the one best fitted by nature to adorn a pair of tights,—save perhaps Pauline Hall,—was Marie Tempest. To have seen her in scarlet ones in The Red Hussar, in purple ones in The Fencing Master or in cute little mountaineer panties in The Tyrolean, was to realize the truth of a popular aphorism as to the grandeur of Nature. But Marie Tempest had much more than lovely supports; a glorious voice as revealed in the famous "Nightingale Song" in The Tyrolean, a deliciously piquant countenance, and finesse which made every gesture and inflection tell. I am perhaps one of the few critics who have seen her play Carmen, for which her voice though of thrilling timbre was rather light. She gave a memorable impersonation, suggestive of wanton caprice, though she lacked tragic suggestion, because her mask is naturally comic.

CHAPTER XXI

THE ENGLISH INVASION

I have entitled this chapter "The English Invasion" because it deals with the manner in which London standards of acting began to influence the American theatre forty years ago. In Canada we have been first-hand witnesses of this, for all important English companies which came to America in days gone by invariably made a stay in Toronto and Montreal, and frequently opened in Canada before venturing into New York. All modern British acting traditions of the better order trace to two sources: one, the small Prince of Wales Theatre established in London by Sir Squire and Lady Bancroft in the sixties, a great school of modern realistic acting. The Bancrofts with the "cup and saucer" drama of Tom Robertson paved the way for the later renaissance of British comedy; and they originated the modern practice of specially designed productions, later carried to such superb heights by Henry Irving at the London Lyceum. The other fountain head of modern acting, the results of which became apparent at a later period than that of which I am writing in this volume, has been the school of poetic acting established by Sir Frank Benson a quarter of a century or more ago in connection with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. Irving's career at the London Lyceum was an isolated phenomenon, the influence of which disappeared[Pg 350] when the light of its presiding genius flickered out.

I have always deeply regretted that circumstances prevented my hearing Sir Squire Bancroft, when he came to Canada in the late nineties at the request of Lady Aberdeen to give readings of Dickens' Christmas Carol for the benefit of her Ladyship's pet benevolence, the Victorian Order of Nurses. I thus missed seeing the man who, taken all-in-all, has been unquestionably the most potent influence on the modern theatre, both in England and America.

Among my most delightful memories are those of the English comédienne, Rosina Vokes, who under the direction of her husband, Cecil Clay, brought many eminent artists to America. Rosina Vokes was one of a considerable family, which fifty years ago used to give dramatic sketches in association with the Swiss Bell Ringers. One of the group, Victoria Vokes, was I am told, beautiful, and a brother, Fred Vokes, a talented comedian. Rosina herself was far from lovely. She had a mop of straw-coloured hair which she bobbed a generation or more before bobbing became the fashion. She had the face of a Dutch doll with round protuberant eyes, and little mobility of expression. Yet she had an almost incredible magnetism. She radiated good nature, had a gift of saying amusing things in liquid contralto tones, and if need be she could make people cry, as she did in Jerome K. Jerome's sentimental little play, Sunset. She was not the type of homely actress who is afraid to have beauty about her; for her company always included several exquisitely pretty girls. Loveliest of all I think was Isabel Irving. But it was in the excellence of her male support that her companies shone. As a[Pg 351] manageress she pursued a policy which has never succeeded commercially before or since—that of confining her bills to three one-act plays. This system had the advantage of giving all the brilliant personalities of her organization, opportunities. Chief among them was a character actor of American birth, the late Felix Morris, who won his first real success playing a Scottish role in London. His finest performance was in a version of a famous French curtain-raiser, Partie de Piquet, in which he played an aged chevalier, who falls into a senile quarrel with his dearest and oldest friend over a game of cards. The Morris version was known as A Game of Cards. In England Sir John Hare used another version made by Charles Coghlan, and known as A Quiet Rubber. I saw both Morris and Hare in this difficult role and there was nothing to choose between them; each was perfect, though their personalities were dissimilar. Another actor whom Rosina Vokes introduced to America was the finished and handsome actor, Brandon Thomas, who showed emotional talent in a play by Hugh Conway known as In Honour Bound, and also supported the star in her best piece My Milliner's Bill. In this she sang her famous song, "His 'art was true to Poll". Other very gifted artists of her company were the famous comedians, Weedon Grossmith and Ferdinand Gottschalk. Gottschalk made his first appearance on any stage—the commencement of a long and brilliant career,—with Miss Vokes at the Grand Opera House, Toronto. Grossmith, who was irresistible in roles suggesting bewilderment, had his great opportunity in A Tinted Venus, in which a barber dreamed that a statue (played by Miss Vokes) came to life and made love to him. The company also included a "juvenile"[Pg 352] with a most poetic personality, Courtenay Thorpe, and the whole organization used to appear in a wonderful romp known as A Pantomime Rehearsal written by the husband of the star, Cecil Clay.

George Grossmith, brother of Weedon and the celebrated comedian of the D'Oyly Carte-Gilbert-and-Sullivan forces, never acted in America, but his piano-logues in which he satirized everything from Beethoven sonatas to country rectors were deliciously funny. It is said that Gilbert used to restrain his "slap-stick" tendencies as a comedian; but as a satirical entertainer he relied solely on polite irony.

The first coming of Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Kendal, about thirty-five years ago, was the sensation of the season all over America. They represented the Bancroft tradition and Mrs. Kendal was the sister of Tom Robertson, the founder of the "cup and saucer drama", the best example of which was Caste. A season or two earlier a production which exemplified the same tradition had been sent over from London. It was a sentimental piece, Bootle's Baby, by John Strange Winter, and the characters were all military men wonderfully characterized. The title role was played by C. W. Gathorne, an elder brother of W. H. Kendal, and a more finished actor of a certain type of Englishman I have never seen. Gathorne was the precursor of Cyril Maude in types of military men without much brains but gentle hearts, such as we have seen in The Second in Command and The Saving Grace. In the same cast was a brilliant low comedian, Fred Tyler, who was afterwards an important aide to E. S. Willard, and Bootles's sweetheart was beautifully played by Nina Boucicault, then young and piquant.

The Kendals continued to come to America periodically for a decade, and had a very large repertoire of interesting plays. Mrs. Kendal was very tall and fair with a beautifully modulated voice, and in bearing was the essence of grace. I once saw her come into the reading room of the public library to look over the files of the London Times, and the distinction of her bearing was as remarkable off the stage as on. As a high comédienne she was impeccably fine. I still thrill with my first recollection of her. I had arrived in the middle of the performance to see Sardou's farce, A Scrap of Paper. She was alone on the stage, humming to herself, and peering into this article and that in quest of the letter which forms the basis of the plot. Anything more feminine, graceful and natural than her pantomime in that scene it has not been my privilege to witness. In emotional scenes I thought her over-demonstrative. The Kendal repertoire was very largely composed of adaptations from the French, and one of these was Ohnet's Ironmaster, in which she played the aristocrat, Claire, who has been forced by her family to marry a commercial magnate for mercenary reasons, and on her wedding night pleads for a separation to the natural chagrin of the victimized husband. In this role I thought she blubbered too much; and in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, which she first played in America she erred in trying to make Paula "common", for she had a theory that a really "nice" woman could not have a "past". Mrs. Kendal's renowned virtue made her unpopular, and was the subject of many jibes in the press. When she first came to America, Daniel Frohman, recalling how P. T. Barnum had capitalized the chastity of Jenny Lind, spread the tale abroad that Mrs. Kendal represented[Pg 354] all the virtues of the British matron. At that time nearly everybody in America assumed that actresses were no better than they ought to be, and had grand times talking about it; and Frohman thought he was sounding a new note by celebrating the virtue of Mrs. Kendal. But the outcome proved that the public liked a little mauve, real or imaginary, in the reputations of stage idols. One of the most beautiful of all Mrs. Kendal's performances was as the love-lorn old maid in The Eldest Miss Blossom—the last role she played in America.

Mr. Kendal was overshadowed by the fame of his wife, but I thought him an able and versatile actor. Though perfect as a good natured English gentleman, he was also very fine as a scoundrel. He played a rotter in Robertson's Home (an adaptation of Augier's L'Aventurire) in superb style, and his characterization of the plain, blunt "Ironmaster" was graphic and sincere. The Kendal forces at various times included some very gifted actors, including J. E. Dodson, who succeeded to John Hare's roles after the latter dissolved partnership with the Kendals, G. P. Huntley, still one of the most brilliant of living comedians, Seymour Hicks, George Grossmith, Jr., and Florence Cowell, a very handsome brunette.

An English actress who came to America prior to the Kendals and brought very fine companies was Mrs. Langtry. She owed much of her success to the rumour that she had found favour in the eyes of the Prince of Wales. She was very handsome, and at one time her notoriety as "The Jersey Lily" was so great that school boys used to sing:

Despite the eulogies of such amorists as Oscar Wilde and William Winter she was never other than a notoriety. Her chief success was a foolish emotional play by F. C. Phillips, As in a Looking Glass, in which her acting was rather crude. The change that has come over the sentiments of playgoers is illustrated by the vogue of this play. The heroine killed herself, because it was discovered that, though "more sinned against than sinning", she had once lived with a man. To-day such an incident is the stage heroine's claim to moral recognition as a true woman, and the tragic dénouement would be laughed at. In the nineties there was a poor old man in Toronto whose white beard and generally magnificent patriarchal appearance, brought him engagements as an artist's model, and at election times he picked up an odd dollar as attendant in political committee rooms. This man had once been prosperous in the Island of Jersey and a churchwarden in the parish of Dean Le Breton, Lily Langtry's father. By some means she learned of the existence of this old friend of her babyhood and childhood, sent for him, and on her every visit bestowed generous largesse upon him. Though all his gettings went in the same channel that had brought him to penury, her gifts brought him temporary happiness at least.

I recall in Mrs. Langtry's support two very gifted actors destined to fame, Maurice Barrymore and Ian Robertson. In modern roles, the elder Barrymore was a more brilliant and finished actor than any of his children, though the worst Romeo I ever saw; but then[Pg 356] he was supporting the worst of all Juliets, Olga Nethersole. Ian Robertson as stage director for his brother, Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson, has given many productions of beauty to the world.

Another actress much more richly endowed with beauty and talent than Mrs. Langtry, was Cora Brown-Potter, supposed to be a special favourite of the Prince of Wales. She was indeed as glorious a woman in personal appearance as ever adorned the stage, with wonderful auburn hair, tragic eyes and somewhat of the same soulful type as Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Though an American by birth she first sprang into fame as an amateur in London through her recitations of a ballad by George R. Sims, entitled "'Ostler Joe". It was damnable twaddle, and rang the changes on "The languor and lilies of virtue and the raptures and roses of vice." Queen Victoria was said to have condemned it as immoral, which brought more fame to Mrs. Brown-Potter. As an actress, though seldom at her ease, she had qualities of personality and refined emotion that were essentially beautiful. She was happily associated with a very fine actor, trained by the Bancrofts, Kyrle Bellew, who was, in his younger days, undoubtedly the handsomest man in the world. I once interviewed him in his dressing room while he was changing costume, and he was really a creature to tempt the chisel of Phidias. He resented tributes to his good looks; and in Charlotte Corday, one of Mrs. Brown-Potter's finest performances, deliberately chose the role of the croaking syphilitic, Marat—by long odds the most repulsive, though one of the most brilliant pieces of acting I ever saw. Bellew's versatility was remarkable. He was equally good both as Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to[Pg 357] Conquer and Armand Duval in Camille; and his fencing in Stanley Weyman's Gentlemen of France was thrilling in lethal elegance. One of the finest performances of these stars in a technical sense, though it caused a tempest among moralists (sincere and insincere), was in Zola's Thérèse Raquin.

An actress who leaped into sudden fame in London in the early nineties and whose success was speedily followed by a tour of America was Olga Nethersole. The piece in which she achieved success was a trashy affair known as The Transgressor in which she played a governess "who was found out"; but who had one big scene in which she came back with a "Tu quoque" against society in general. Crude as was The Transgressor it fills an interesting place in English dramatic history; because it initiated a new attitude toward erring heroines. For many decades it was popularly conceded that all that was left for a woman, if it were revealed that she had once accepted lingerie from the villain, was the poison cup. The heroine, played by Miss Nethersole, decided to live; and intimated that there were other persons whose suicide would be acceptable. The power with which this speech was delivered, led Clement Scott, most sentimental of critics, to proclaim Miss Nethersole one of the greatest geniuses in the history of the stage. Subsequently when she came to America it was found that she was a comely, intelligent woman, with a sensuous, exotic quality in love scenes, and a voice of unusual volume capable of expressing emotion without becoming strident. But genius she was not, although her best performance, that of Marguerite Gautier in the old emotional drama Camille was very touching and sincere. Her tendency was, however,[Pg 358] toward exaggeration, especially in amorous episodes; and in New York a number of holy persons got the advertisement they craved, and incidentally swelled the bank account of Miss Nethersole, by dragging her into court for kissing Don José too passionately in a dramatic version of Merimée's Carmen. I later saw this kiss, and it assuredly was "linked sweetness long drawn out." On the whole Miss Nethersole fared much better in America than another London actress of the emotional school, Mrs. Bernard Beere, the original "La Tosca" in England, who made such a fiasco in New York that her bookings, even in Canada, were cancelled.

Of all the English stars who came to America in the period of which I speak, the individual who made the most complete conquest of the public, was Edward S. Willard. He came in the season of 1891-2, and until his retirement in 1907 he was one of the most popular stars on this continent. Some day perhaps I shall write at greater length of Willard, whom I came to know very well. His name will be permanently preserved in the annals of the London stage as the most perfect exponent of villainy both in its baleful and persuasive aspects that has been known in modern times. Of this aspect of his art America saw but little. He first sprang into fame in 1881 when he played Capt. Skinner ("The Spider") in Wilson Barrett's production of The Silver King, and another of his many famous studies in criminality was the title character in Jim the Penman. But from 1890 onward when he had become an actor-manager on his own account, he eschewed villainy so far as he could. The only role of the kind in which I saw him was that of a financial crook in The Rogue's Comedy, written for him by[Pg 359] Henry Arthur Jones, and even this role was more or less attractive. In this production a very touching performance of the scoundrel's unhappy but affectionate wife was given by a once famous actress whose name seems utterly forgotten, Olga Brandon. In the main Willard, tired of being classified as a "Heavy", (to use the cant of the theatre), demanded roles that were "sympathetic". Henry Arthur Jones in 1889 provided him with two completely contrasted roles of this type; and those who saw him play them in his prime retain an ineffaceable memory of his greatness in emotional expression. The one was Cyrus Blenkarn, an old potter in The Middleman; the other a young Welsh clergyman, Rev. Judah Llewellyn, in Judah.

There are certain scenes in The Middleman that have hardly been surpassed in legitimate and fervent appeal by any modern dramatist. In the character of Blenkarn, Jones took the legends surrounding the career of a famous French potter of the seventeenth century, who actually burned his furniture to keep his fires going in pursuit of an experiment, and adapted them to modern conditions. I am told that Mr. Jones's original intention was to make Batty Todd, the sales manager, who plays a prominent part in the piece, the chief character, as the title indicates. He had in mind a treatise showing how the man between reaps the profits of both capital and labour. In this Mr. Jones, whose early plays were, for their time, remarkably rich in imagination and intellectual power, showed his prophetic sense. He had an inkling of the enormous part "Salesmanship", euphemistically described as "Service", was to play in the later economic organization of both England and America. But as The Middleman got under way the traditional emotional possibilities[Pg 360] of the role of Blenkarn, an humble genius (on whose talents his wealthy employer grows rich, and whose favourite daughter is ruined by the capitalist's son), ran away with him. The change of plan gave tremendous opportunities to Willard, whose acting in the scene when the desperate man who has started on his own is trying to keep his fires alight, was so overpowering and convincing that people in the galleries were known to have thrown coins on the stage to assist him. Equally fine was Blenkarn's prayer crying for "A balance, a balance!" between his employer and himself. In Judah Willard played an entirely different type, a young emotional clergyman who has fallen in love with a girl, who, at the behest of a rascally father, claims to exercise occult powers as a healer. The spiritual atmosphere Willard imparted to the role; and the beautiful quality of his emotional acting after Judah discovers the girl to be an impostor, made this the finest of all his creations in the opinion of most contemporary critics.

The emotional exaltation to which Willard rose in both roles suggested to many critics in America that here was the actor who could become the successor to Edwin Booth in the role of Hamlet. Booth had just retired from the stage; Irving had shelved the role of the prince; and the Hamlet of Forbes-Robertson was yet to be revealed. Willard did make the attempt at Boston (in 1893 or 1894) and the interest in his first performance was so great that the Boston Herald sent four critics, including Henry A. Clapp and Mildred Aldrich, to record different phases of it. To the chagrin of everyone Willard's Hamlet proved a flat, unimaginative performance. It was not generally known that in London he had twice disappointed his[Pg 361] admirers in Shakespeare. His King of Denmark in Wilson Barrett's production of Hamlet had lacked distinction, and his Macbeth at a few performances given in co-operation with Mrs. Bernard Beere had also been insignificant. The result of the Boston fiasco in Hamlet was that he abandoned a project of playing Shylock, in which, perhaps, he would have succeeded.

Yet Willard, thirty years ago, was the most perfectly equipped actor in a physical sense whom I have ever seen; with a voice of thrilling timbre and unlimited resource, great personal magnetism, a face of remarkable mobility, fine eyes and nobility of presence. The gods had apparently denied him the greatest gift of all, imagination. So long as he remained under the direction of A. M. Palmer, one of the greatest and most artistic managers that ever adorned the American theatre, his companies and productions were of a superior order. In his company I first saw a beautiful young woman of rather mediocre talent, whose loveliness destined her to fame,—Maxine Elliott. And his leading woman in those early years was Marie Burroughs, a California actress of exquisite sensibility, who was especially fine in Judah. The ingenue of his company, Nanny Craddock, also possessed charming and sympathetic gifts. These ladies were all Americans, but from England for his original company Willard brought Royce Carleton, who died thirty years ago, a brilliant and accomplished leading man, and two character comedians of the first water, Fred Tyler, of whom I have already spoken, and Harry Cane, who had been his school friend in Brighton, where the father of Willard conducted a bake-shop. Cane was a most versatile actor. His Batty Todd, the[Pg 362] pursy little middleman in the play of that name, was nothing short of perfection. In the mid-nineties Willard acquired the English rights of Alabama, Augustus Thomas's fine study of the South after the war, and himself played the role of the northern officer, created in America by Maurice Barrymore. But the hit of the production was Harry Cane as an old negro servitor. Willard himself told me that American visitors in London thought he was "spoofing" when he told them that Cane was an Englishman who had picked up his knowledge of negro character in brief visits to Southern cities while supporting his chief on tour.

Willard's art succumbed to two obsessions, an ever-growing sentimentalism, emphasized by a too abundant use of gesture, and fear that he would die poor. After he parted with A. M. Palmer, his productions grew more and more "provincial". His acting became too sugary altogether; and this tendency spoiled even his impersonation of Thackeray's Col. Newcome, one of the last roles he played in America. I once begged him to secure Octave Mirbeau's fine play Les Affaires sont les Affaires (Business is Business), in which W. H. Crane had failed in New York, and which needed but an actor of Willard's calibre to repeat the success it had won in Paris as presented by Antoine. But he said: "My public likes to see me in 'nice' parts." I was once standing at the back of the theatre with Ben Greet when Willard was acting Cardinal Medici in L. N. Parker's romantic piece The Cardinal. I said, "Mr. Greet, what's the matter with Willard? He used to be superb; but now his acting seems hollow." Greet said: "It's his ruddy paws; he waves them all the time. I'd like to put him[Pg 363] in rehearsal and say, 'Now Ned, I'm going to tie your hands behind your back; go ahead and act.'"

Save the performances of the Kendals the most finished productions that came to us from London thirty years ago were those of Sir John Hare, not at that time knighted. Hare, though he had a light, brittle voice, which unfitted him for emotional roles, and was too short for romantic leads, had intellectual distinction, pungency of utterance, and graphic outline in the delineation of character, that represented perfection. From early manhood he had played old or middle-aged roles; and in portraying them he revealed qualities of sympathy and imagination that were enchanting. He was the type of realist who nevertheless suggested a fine mind back of it all; thus his old Eccles in Caste was a perfect study of a disreputable curmudgeon, and yet gave the impression of being a criticism of life. I had an opportunity to study him in comparison with two other celebrated actors, Willard and J. H. Stoddart, in the celebrated role of Benjamin Goldfinch in A Pair of Spectacles. He was much finer than either in finesse and in subtle suggestion of changing moods, the basic interest of the character:—although Stoddart's impersonation, long popular in New York, was admirable. Even in The Gay Lord Quex, a role to which Hare was in some respects unsuited, for it was hard to imagine him as a pursuer of women, his utterance of the line, "Gad, you're a fine-plucked 'un," remains unforgettable. In it he conveyed, as in a flash, the spirit of sportsmanship which is the greatest quality of the British people, and the line became, as it were, symbolic. The team-work in Hare's companies was splendid. When he first came to America he brought with him Julia Neilson,[Pg 364] a handsome, but rather ponderous actress; Fred Terry, very handsome and attractive; and later such brilliant actors as Charles Groves, inimitable as "the brother from Sheffield" in A Pair of Spectacles, and Frederick Kerr, now the doyen of the London stage in middle-aged roles. But the most brilliant artist Hare ever brought to America was Irene Vanbrugh, whose perfect impersonation of the saucy, great-hearted Cockney girl Sophie Fullgarney, the "fine-plucked 'un" of The Gay Lord Quex, will live in the memory of all who saw it. I first saw Irene Vanbrugh as a delicious beginner in a company which her brother-in-law, Arthur Bourchier, brought to America, when a one-act play, Kitty Clive, was put on to show her talents. At that time her sister, Violet Vanbrugh, was more famous, but both she and her husband, Bourchier, were too august in style for the farces they presented. In the early nineties Bourchier had a trial in New York when Augustin Daly brought him from London to succeed John Drew as leading man of his famous stock company; but his style proved too heavy in comparison.

The advent of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Sir Martin Harvey, Sir Frank Benson, H. B. Irving, Lawrence Irving, Charles Hawtrey, Lewis Waller, and other celebrities of the London stage belongs to a later period of the theatre than I am in the main touching upon in this volume. There were, however, two eminent English stars who filled a great place in the public eye during the days of my youth of whom I have yet to speak—Wilson Barrett and the isolated Irving.

CHAPTER XXII

SHAKESPEARIANS OF THE NINETIES

When I first became an active playgoer the more eminent of the Shakespearian stars of this continent were on the eve of departure. On the very first day I entered a newspaper office Lawrence Barrett died. Edwin Booth had retired, and passed away a year or two later. Booth had paid his final visits to Montreal and Toronto in the late seventies, when his business was so poor that he vowed he would never come again, and kept his word. A very old Canadian newspaperman, Louis A. M. Lovekin, told me an interesting story of William Winter's actual opinion of Booth as an actor. Those who have visited the sanctum of the Players Club in Grammercy Park, New York, formerly the private apartments of Booth, and now preserved as on the night he was stricken, are aware that the end came to him while he was reading a book of poems by Winter. Winter later wrote a biography of the actor that is rhapsodical from first to last. Mr. Lovekin, who saw Booth in the seventies, felt that while his elocution was the most beautiful he had ever heard, he was deficient in power. About 1880 he met Winter in New York and discussing Booth, said he had seen greater actors, but never one with so fine an elocution. "Of course," said Winter gruffly, "that's all he's got." But it was evidently a good deal. In looking over old newspaper files I have discovered that in Canada at any rate the brother, John[Pg 366] Wilkes Booth, assassin of Lincoln, was seemingly more highly esteemed as an actor. The latter played in Canada as a guest star during the early years of the Civil War and evidently was very highly esteemed.

When I was a boy the American actor foremost in carrying on the Shakespearian tradition in the lesser cities was a man with a noble brow, Thomas W. Keene. I must confess that though effective in melodramatic episodes he had a monotonous style and a voice of flat, uninteresting timbre. But he had sufficient vitality to draw large houses. Shylock was his best performance, though he exaggerated the emotions of the part to the extent of falling headlong in a faint at the conclusion of the trial scene. At various times he employed interesting actors in his support. Among them was Frederick Paulding, a son of the famous Indian fighter, Col. Dodge, an eloquent actor of striking appearance, who it was said had played Romeo oftener than any other Thespian of his time. One of Keene's leading ladies was a very gifted young actress, Maida Craigen, who was really brilliant in certain roles (Ophelia especially), but who disappeared from the public gaze years ago.

The first Shakespearian performance I ever saw was about 1888 or 1889 and was a handsomely staged production of Romeo and Juliet, of which Margaret Mather was the star. Miss Mather, a pretty woman with beautiful red hair, had been very much boomed in the role of Juliet, in which she played continuously for several seasons, but she seemed to lack lightness of touch and inspiration. At the time of which I speak, she had two actors in her company whose performances I have never forgotten. The Romeo was Otis Skinner, then slender, handsome, and graceful,[Pg 367] who gave a most impassioned interpretation of the headlong Montague. The Mercutio was the celebrated Milnes Levick, who had been leading man to Mary Anderson, and whose debonair grace and abandon made the duel scene with Tybalt the most memorable I have witnessed. Not long before her death, which occurred less than a decade later, I saw Miss Mather in a revival of Cymbeline when she gave a touching impersonation of Imogen, but was overshadowed by a celebrated actor of sinister roles, Mark Price, who played Iachimo. No one who witnessed the baleful, catlike suggestion of Price's acting as Iachimo emerged from the chest and prowled about Imogen's bed chamber, will ever forget it.

Though never a star, Price at various times supported most of the stars of "classical" drama, which did not mean Shakespeare exclusively, but included the dramas of Lytton, Sheridan Knowles and others. He was especially fine as Appius Claudius in Knowles's tragedy Virginius written for Macready. It was based on the old Roman legend of the brave soldier who slew his own daughter, Virginia, rather than let her fall into the hands of the villainous tribune Appius, who for his own base purposes adjudged her a slave and the property of one of his minions. Price's acting was so grimly impressive that I once heard a man in the audience shout at him, "You dirty dog". He was also a fine Iago and an admirable exponent of villainy in French romantic dramas like Monbars and The Corsican Brothers, in which he supported Robert Bruce Mantell. When in the later nineties the public enthusiasm for Shakespeare, and what I might term "near-Shakespeare", suddenly died, Price entered the company of DeWolf Hopper and played[Pg 368] elderly roles in the early operettas of John Philip Sousa.

Thirty-five years ago "Bob" Mantell, as he was universally known, was making his early essays in Shakespeare with Hamlet and Othello. In the late seventies he had enjoyed a thorough training in the traditional Shakespearian methods of the nineteenth century,—methods somewhat stagey and formal, but nevertheless impressive when exemplified by a man so tall, graceful, and sonorous as was Mantell in his youth. I have been told that his Hamlet much resembled that of the famous Irish star, Barry Sullivan. Though it threw no new light on the character it was a good, straightforward effort. His Othello was more interesting, and in reviving the role Mantell abolished the convention that gave the Moor a "sooty" aspect, and coloured his face a rich, reddish brown like that of an Arab. This was not only right in a racial sense, but made Desdemona's infatuation more plausible. Mantell in those days was a singularly uneven actor. I have seen him play the last act of Othello so beautifully as to bring tears to my eyes; and again so badly that I wanted to hoot him from the stage. He had a good deal of misfortune both in his domestic and financial relations. In 1890 he was as popular a drawing card as there was in America, and a few years later he was "down and out". A decade or so later he revealed a magnificent return to form as Lear, Brutus, and Richelieu. Because of his majestic bearing he was credited with undue personal vanity, but this was quite untrue. At that time it was fashionable among leading actors to contemn Irving as "a good stage manager,—yes; but an actor-r, no!" In the mid-nineties anti-British feeling was strong in New York, and when[Pg 369] Irving brought his revival of Macbeth to Broadway there was a veritable cabal against him in the press. I ran across Mantell about that time and with Celtic fervour he denounced the "dirty, low scuts, unfit to black Irving's boots," who were attacking his Thane of Cawdor. "If I could ever learn to recite that speech, 'To-morrow, and to-morrow and to-morrow,' half as well as Irving, I would be too conceited to speak to anybody," said Mantell. Before hard luck overtook him Mantell had some very good actors in his forces. After Mark Price left him he engaged an artist to play "heavies" who is now, despite advancing years, one of the chiefest ornaments of the Broadway stage, Albert Bruning. Bruning has never been a star, but he has never failed to give profound artistic satisfaction, and I have seen him in the characters of playwrights as diverse as Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, and Dumas the elder. His traditions go far back, for fifty years ago he played Cassio to the Othello of Edwin Booth when the famous tragedian toured Germany. For a season Mantell had also in his company a lovely Torontonian, the daughter of a Kentucky family which had moved to Canada after the Civil War,—Caroline Scales, or Caroline Miskel, as she was known on the stage. Her light auburn hair, creamy complexion, bright sapphire eyes, and noble form and features commanded immediate attention. And she was as intellectual as she was beautiful. Charles H. Hoyt, wittiest and most imaginative topical humourist that the American stage has known, fell in love with her and married her. For her he wrote one of the earliest skits on the feminist movement, A Contented Woman. His first wife, the charming actress Flora Walsh, had died young, and when Caroline Miskel also passed[Pg 370] away in childbirth, Hoyt did not long survive her. Caroline Scales holds an unique place in the history of periodical publications; for she was the very first "magazine cover girl". When Frank A. Munsey started Munsey's Magazine, he conceived the idea that pictures of lovely maidens would be more acceptable on its covers than the formal designs then in fashion and secured a picture of her to initiate a policy which proved immediately and enormously successful.

When Mantell was in his early prime there were several other "legitimate" stars of widespread popularity, especially in the "provinces". One was Lewis Morrison, a Jewish actor of very considerable distinction. He starred for many seasons in a rather commonplace version of Goethe's Faust (which many of his admirers supposed was the work of Shakespeare), and physically he was an ideal representative of Mephisto, with a peculiarly vibrant intonation and dark, lustrous eyes. He played Mephisto so long that the mocking suggestion of his tones became second nature. Thus when he later played Richelieu, and Yorick's Love, founded on an old Spanish play by William Dean Howells, he gave a sense of insincerity in important scenes. Yorick's Love, by the way, was based on the same story as that on which Leoncavallo founded his opera Pagliacci. In those days Florence Roberts (Mrs. Morrison) was an exquisitely idyllic Marguerite, and she later became immensely popular on the Pacific Coast as an exponent of heavy emotional roles. James O'Neill was another very gifted star more or less identified with a single role, that of the Count of Monte Cristo, in which his good looks, ease, and beautiful voice made him very effective. One of his sons told me his father was[Pg 371] very anxious to get away from Monte Cristo and do something in New York, if only for a few performances, that would regain for him the attention of the critics. I suggested Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkmann, then recently published, and outlined the story. But the son told me he was afraid his father would refuse to play anything as "morbid" as that. I wonder what James O'Neill would have thought of the plays of another son, Eugene, in comparison with which Ibsen's dramas are light and gleeful.

O'Neill did, however, vary his repertoire by playing Virginius and the production was deeply interesting to me because the Virginia was a brilliant young Toronto girl, Margaret Anglin, who had been at school with my wife. In the dignity and eloquence of this performance she fore-shadowed her later triumphs in Greek tragedy. Margaret Anglin was always a wise and far-seeing woman. At the outset of her career she had an entrée to New York, owing to her success in a revival of Shenandoah under the management of Charles Frohman, but she deliberately went out and barn-stormed with a very bad actor named Charles Rohlfs, husband of Anna Katherine Green, author of The Leavenworth Case, who financed her husband's ambition to play Shakespeare. By this policy Margaret Anglin got an experience in big roles which proved of the highest value to her,—whereas if she had remained in New York she would have been allotted pretty ingenue types season after season. Two or three years after her season with O'Neill as Virginia and Mercedes in Monte Cristo, she became famous in a night as Roxane in Cyrano de Bergerac, supporting Richard Mansfield. Since Rostand's drama[Pg 372] was at that time the most talked of play in the world, this was fortune indeed.

There never was an actor more vital or interesting than Richard Mansfield, with his brittle, stirring voice, and suggestion of both aesthetic and intellectual perceptions; but in the nineties he seldom visited the smaller cities. Even in middle age he could express the ardent spirit of youth as could no other actor; while he was perfect in aged and eccentric types from the outset of his career. The roles in which he was really unapproachable were that ideal of British valor, Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth, and the gentle prince in Old Heidelberg. Mansfield had a rooted objection to mention of his associates. I once threatened to publish a picture of an actress, who was a friend of mine and playing leads with him; but she said: "For heaven's sake don't; Mansfield would be furious." Yet he had the gift of lifting everyone around him to a finer edge of expression than was natural to them. Thus his companies always seemed brilliant; and in other hands, after his death, the same actors became colourless. I think he must have "created" each man's role for him in rehearsal, which perhaps explains why he desired all the credit.

Another star who has always possessed this gift of inspiring associates to high endeavour is Edward H. Sothern; but unlike Mansfield, he has always been desirous that everyone should receive recognition,—a quality he shares with William Faversham. I have spoken of the first performance I ever criticized; the second was E. H. Sothern in a play by Jerome K. Jerome, The Maister of Woodbarrow. Sothern had then been a star for about three seasons, and his fine eyes, elegance of manner, and vital personality were[Pg 373] very winning. His productions had the distinction of those of the perfectly balanced stock companies of other days. Sothern's successes in classic roles belong to a later period than that of which I am writing in this volume; but he was even then an ideal actor-manager and fully half the abler actors of the American stage have at one time or another appeared in his support.

Another famous son of a famous sire, who showed promise of great achievement was Alexander Salvini. His appearance was ideally romantic and winning and when he died he was gaining a better knowledge of English speech, season by season. In D'Artagnan and Don Caesar de Bazan his verve, charm and abandon made him inimitable. Shortly before his early death he essayed Hamlet, and played the Prince in a romantic, stirring spirit entirely unlike the studied, reflective methods usually applied to the role. It would undoubtedly have matured into a superb performance; and his portrayal of Hamlet's outburst of fury after the players' scene ("Now could I drink hot blood") was the most impressive I have witnessed.

The dashing, varied Prince of Salvini was utterly unlike the deliberate Hamlet of the English actor, Wilson Barrett. Matthew Arnold, who reviewed the initial performance in 1882 for the Pall Mall Gazette, praised the lucidity of the impersonation, but said that Barrett "lacked soul", a very penetrating comment. Barrett made his whole production so interesting, however, that he really popularized Hamlet with thousands who were indifferent to the poetry of Shakespeare. With his fine head, curling hair, and strong virile neck, Barrett resembled certain heads on ancient Roman coins. He was conscious of this and his Hamlet[Pg 374] was distinctly décolleté in garb, though "Carados" (H. Chance Newton), the veteran critic of the London Referee, says this fashion began with Charles Kean. Barrett was a fine melodramatic actor; at his best as Wilfred Denver in The Silver King and Dan Mylrea in Hall Caine's Deemster. The aesthetic beauty of his productions won the approbation of Ruskin and he was not afraid to include in his company better actors than himself. He had always at least half a dozen men of first rate talent around him. One of the finest was Austin Melford, who after Barrett's death took over some of his productions and starred in the British provinces with them. Melford was barred by a lisp from being truly great, but his acting of the role of the Bishop of Man in The Deemster, who is called on to condemn his own son, was magnificent; and he was splendid also as King Claudius of Denmark.

Barrett had also the honour of discovering the famous Canadian actor, Franklin McLeay, the perpetuation of whose fame in England is one of the most interesting of theatrical phenomena. His entire stage career did not exceed eight years, half of which were spent in America. Yet no company comes from England that some member of it does not enquire of me about McLeay's antecedents and allude to his genius. He was born at Watford, Ont., and was named after Sir John Franklin, the Arctic explorer, whom his father had known. At the University of Toronto he won note as a football player, and subsequently became a high school teacher at Woodstock, Ont. There he decided to go on the stage, and having saved a little money went to Boston to study under James E. Murdoch, a veteran who, at the request of Junius Brutus Booth, had taught the younger Booths elocution. When[Pg 375] in Boston all the celebrated actors used to pay homage to the aged Murdoch, and it was he who suggested to Wilson Barrett that he give McLeay an opportunity. McLeay was dreamy and temperamental, but Barrett knew how to bring the best out of him. Among his finest performances were the Ghost in Hamlet and Iago in Othello. Barrett permitted him to evolve an entirely new Iago—a laughing, plausible scoundrel, not the sinister, palpable villain of the old convention. But with Barrett, McLeay's most striking performance was that of a crippled court fool, called "The Bat" in a rather tawdry Egyptian melodrama, Pharaoh. As a dramatist Barrett was something of a charlatan. He would take an ordinary shop-worn melodramatic plot and cast it back two thousand years into a showy Roman or Egyptian mise-en-scêne; he did this in Claudian, Clito, Pharaoh and most remuneratively of all in The Sign of the Cross. In reading up lore for Pharaoh he learned that the Egyptian kings used to deliberately break the bones of children to turn then into grotesques for the entertainment of the court, and devised such a role for McLeay. Only a man who had been an athlete could have stood the physical strain of acting throughout an entire evening in a stooping position, hopping about the stage like a toad. The genius of McLeay was such that he made this grotesque role so dignified and pathetic as to remain forever in the memory of those who saw it. In 1923 when the British Association for the Advancement of Science met, after a quarter of a century's absence, at Liverpool, one of the speakers in the opening proceedings spoke of McLeay's performance as the Bat as one of the memorable things the Association had witnessed on its previous visit.

After five years with Wilson Barrett, McLeay was engaged by Sir Herbert Tree for his superb company of His Majesty's Theatre, London. There one of his triumphs was Cassius, in which he outshone other members of a famous cast. When the poorer section of Ottawa was burned in 1900 and thousands of families were left homeless, McLeay organized a great benefit in London at which he and Tree gave scenes from Othello. This was the first and only occasion on which London saw his unique Iago. After the performance he took a chill, and, already run-down from overwork in organizing the affair, died of pneumonia within three days. Many London actors believe that he would have become known as the greatest actor of the twentieth century.

The name of Wilson Barrett brings up that of the great Polish artist, Helena Modjeska, whom he introduced to the English public. Modjeska subsequently in America became associated with Booth and Barrett, but when I first saw her in 1891 she was starring on her own. Though no longer young, and embarrassed by a foreign accent, her Rosalind was entrancing in sentiment and humour. She had a small head that she moved with bird-like vivacity, a bewitching countenance, and an aristocratic quality in bearing and address very seldom encountered on the stage. She was the essence of grace. Later I saw her in very impressive performances of Shakespeare's Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, and Queen Constance (in King John); in Schiller's Mary Stuart she gave a profoundly touching impersonation of the ill-fated Scottish Queen, for in all that she did Modjeska was ever a princess.

Fanny Davenport's Cleopatra (in the Sardou version) was very commonplace in comparison with[Pg 377] Modjeska's. In the nineties Fanny Davenport was admittedly in her decline, though not very old; and I could not share the chivalrous enthusiasm with which Boston and New York critics continued to speak of her acting. Her early triumphs had been as a comédienne and I fancy that she should have continued in that field. The last role in which I saw her was Joan of Arc, in a rather paltry drama by a man whose name I have forgotten; and she made an absurd figure in tights, with a costume that seemed designed to reveal her rotundity in an unnecessary degree.

Contemporary with Modjeska, two other foreign actresses had tempted fortune in America, but neither attained her command of English, or artistic skill. They were Hortense Rhea, a Belgian, and Francesca Janauschek, who in the seventies had been regarded as the greatest of German tragédiennes. Rhea was very pretty, but never displayed a first-rate talent, yet for a few seasons her sentimental impersonation of Empress Josephine and her gay, attractive Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing won her widespread favour. The Napoleonic play, written by an American, Alfred Roland Haven, whitewashed the fair Creole in an excessive degree, and one of my most interesting memories is that of having seen the movie bad-man, William S. Hart, play Napoleon with Rhea—a very strident performance. Poor Janauschek, when I saw her, was but a shadow of her former self, and was a victim of some wasting disease. She was so poor that her companies were wretched. Her Meg Merrilees was rather effective, and her Lady Macbeth had its "moments", but I can still see her leading man mouthing, "Is this a dagger that I see before me?" over a[Pg 378] dish of dusty plaster-of-Paris fruit, resurrected from the property room for the banquet scene.

There was a woman star of that period who was really exquisite in appearance and possessed of delightful charm and sensibility, Marie Wainwright, who in America had been the original Josephine in Pinafore. Strangely enough she never made money although she lavished large sums on beautiful productions and maintained a splendid company. Her production of Amy Robsart in 1891 was only surpassed in beauty by those of Irving. Of all her roles the one which charmed me most was her Rosalind, which she played with humour and delicate passion, and she was also delightful as Lady Teazle. Among the actors she brought to the fore was Henry Miller, a Toronto lad, who had in youth been trained by Charles W. Couldock, at a time when he was leading man of a very fine stock company in the Grand Opera House, Toronto; another was Blanche Walsh, daughter of a once noted Tammany leader, "Fatty" Walsh, and a woman of much beauty and the highest talent. She had so much genius that she might have done anything, but her erratic nature led to her early death;—nevertheless, Blanche Walsh must be credited with having given the finest impersonations of La Tosca, Fedora, and Gismonda, Sardou's three greatest emotional creations, that have been heard in the English language. Another of Miss Wainwright's company was a brilliant young Jewish actor, admirable as Joseph Surface, and known as Nathaniel Hartwig. He subsequently left the stage and reverted to his own name, Nathaniel Baruch, and is now one of the leading bankers of Wall Street.

Another American actress who failed to fulfil her[Pg 379] great promise was Elita Proctor Otis. Her acting in an adaptation of Dumas's Demi-Monde called The Crust of Society, was memorably fine. The production was deeply interesting because her associates included the famous blonde idol, Lydia Thompson, once noted as a star in legitimate burlesque, who in this production proved a quiet and dignified dowager. Zeffie Tilbury, a clever daughter of the latter, was also in the company with her husband, a brilliant actor, Arthur Lewis.

A very popular star of the nineties was Rose Coghlan, a flamboyant beauty whose style was rather robust. In those days a beautiful bust was deemed an attribute of feminine beauty, and she had been richly dowered by nature in this respect. Where to-day is there an actress who could wear an old fashioned riding-habit with the same distinction as did Rose Coghlan as Lady Gay Spanker in London Assurance? Her companies would to-day be called "all-star" casts. One of the finest of her productions was a revival of Sardou's Diplomacy, in which her brother, Charles Coghlan, as Henry Beauclerc, gave an impersonation of an English diplomat that for poise, refinement, and urbanity I have never seen equalled. Rose Coghlan herself played the adventuress, Countess Zicka, and her husband, John T. Sullivan, a handsome and gifted emotional actor, the much-tried lover, Julian Beauclerc. The leading feminine role of Dora was played by the exquisite Sadie Martinot, the mercenary mother by Madame Ponisi, and the rest of the cast was in keeping. A year or so later, Miss Coghlan produced for the first time in America Oscar Wilde's brilliant comedy A Woman of No Importance, with a company equally superb, including additions such as Aubrey[Pg 380] Boucicault and Effie Shannon, then an exquisite ingenue. Rose Coghlan did the best acting of her career in the title role, especially in her scenes with young Boucicault, who played the son.

Casts were often family parties in those days, and two of these that I recall were presentations by the great comédienne, Mrs. John Drew, of The Rivals and The Road to Ruin. The latter, with its irresistibly vain and silly character, the Widow Green, has never been revived since Mrs. Drew's death. The old lady, who had been fifty years on the stage, was still an exquisitely polished comédienne, peerless in ease and distinction, whose every look and accent as Mrs. Malaprop were delicious. She was almost entirely surrounded by relatives. Her grandchildren, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore, played small roles; her son, Sydney Drew, and her daughter-in-law, Phyllis Rankin, more important ones.

Productions that would excel most all-star casts of to-day were not infrequent even in the smaller cities. In 1893 A. M. Palmer's Madison Square Stock Company was at its most brilliant stage despite the fact that it was on the verge of dissolution, for it contained actors like E. J. Henley, Maurice Barrymore, J. H. Stoddart (finest of "old men"), E. M. Holland, Reuben Fax, Walden Ramsay, Owen Fawcett, Frederick Robinson, Charles Butler, and E. M. Bell, all artists of rare gifts, together with beautiful and talented young women like Julia Arthur and Ida Conquest. The "emotional lead", May Brooklyn, committed suicide not long after the dissolution of this great company. Its productions of such varied plays as Thomas's Alabama, Jones's Saints and Sinners, Grundy's A Pair of Spectacles,[Pg 381] Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, and Haddon Chambers's Capt. Swift, all in one week, illustrated the magnificent resources of the organization, and in each play every role was well-nigh perfectly done. After the dissolution of the company its various members were speedily engaged by other managers. Julia Arthur, the brilliant Canadian girl who had been trained as a mere child by the Shakespearian star, Daniel Bandmann, went to England to join the forces of Irving. Subsequently J. H. Stoddart, after nearly fifty years of continuous acting in New York, became one of the most popular of stars "on the road" as the hard, emotional Scotsman, Lachlin Campbell, in The Bonny Briar Bush. The instance of a man nearly seventy becoming a star for the first time and drawing enormous audiences in a new environment is, I think, unexampled in theatrical history. Stoddart was the dearest of souls, and a very religious man. I was sitting with him one evening in the private room of a restaurant when E. J. Henley and Maurice Barrymore came in. They loved the old man and called him "Daddy", but he grew restive and presently drew me away. "They are fine boys and splendid actors," he said, "but presently they will start telling their stories, rather lurid stories."

Palmer's company I thought the superior of that of Augustin Daly, though it lacked any star of the prestige of Ada Rehan, a most queenly and radiant woman with a noble voice and finished style. Her finest performance was Katherine in Shakespeare's most inferior play, The Taming of the Shrew, in which, as Bernard Shaw has truly said, her genius lifted the comedy above the commonness of the original conception. Daly's manipulation of Shakespeare's comedies[Pg 382] displeased many sensitive critics. Some of the alterations he made in Twelfth Night were in bad taste, as when he cut out all of Duke Orsino's speech beginning, "If music be the food of love, play on", except this one line, and made it the excuse for the introduction of a singing ballet. But his production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was enchanting, especially the performance of Helena by Ada Rehan and Bottom by James Lewis. When I saw it Lillian Swain was the Puck, Maxine Elliott the Hermia, Percy Haswell the Titania. The Grecian lovers were played by Frank Worthing and John Craig, and the clowns included such fine actors as Herbert Gresham and Tyrone Power. The most popular artist of the company, save Miss Rehan, was the sweet and lovely old gentlewoman, Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, who got her best chance in The School for Scandal. In the latter production Miss Rehan was a superb Lady Teazle, and the cast included such fine mellow actors as George Clarke and Edmund Varrey.

I have left to the last, two women stars of the nineties who in America have held their prestige unapproached in the twentieth,—Julia Marlowe and Minnie Maddern Fiske, the one in Shakespeare, the other in modern roles. The lyrical loveliness of Miss Marlowe when, as a mere girl, she dawned on the consciousness of America thirty-five years ago, can only be expressed in terms of poetry. To have seen her Juliet in those days was to have seen Shakespeare's vision come to life. In one of his novels of that period Howells wrote the following snatch of dialogue:

Julia Marlowe, though a native of Cumberland, England, and typical of the dark, Celtic beauty of its people, was reared in Cincinnati, and when she came to the fore, Howells and Robert G. Ingersoll, both Ohio men, were very proud that their home state had at last produced a genius. They did much to present her claims to the public for which she was deeply grateful, and their eloquence was amply justified. The devotion of the novelist was lifelong. In 1910 Julia Marlowe and her husband, E. H. Sothern, opened the New Theatre, New York (now the Century Theatre), built without regard to cost as a home of the arts; and the bill was Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra. Miss Marlowe afterward told me that she was dissatisfied with her own performance, which she thought good in but one scene. A day or so after the opening, W. D. Howells, then very old, called on her and she gave him this verdict on herself. "It was all beautiful," he protested, "to me you are always divine." And that is the feeling of all of us who saw Julia Marlowe as a girl, despite the fact that in comic roles like Rosalind, Beatrice, Katherine, and Viola her art subsequently matured and became more authoritative. I have never known an actress so candid about her own achievements. Many years ago she said to me, àpropos of an actress who claimed she never read criticisms: "Show me an actress who says she does not read criticisms and I will show you a liar; or if not, a fool."

Mrs. Fiske was literally cradled in a dressing room, and was a girl star in the eighties. In those days I did not see her, but even then she showed that initiative and freedom from convention which have ever since marked her art. My mother, who had seen her act as a[Pg 384] tiny tot in King John with John McCullough, went to see her again as a girl in her 'teens playing in Sardou's In Spite of All, and was amused at neighbours in the audience, who, accustomed to the explosive methods with which emotional scenes were then played, asked, "Why doesn't she act?" Mrs. Fiske's retirement from the stage for intensive study, from 1890 to 1895, was assuredly fruitful. She then matured those intensive intellectual methods of acting which have influenced the careers of an entire generation of younger actresses. When she came back to the stage early in the winter of 1896, it was as a leader in the intellectual renaissance of the theatre, then in its infancy. And she was not well received by critics imbued with the sentimental fallacies of the dying century. I saw her early performance, a month or so after her return, in Ibsen's Doll's House, Alphonse Daudet's Queen of Liars and the younger Dumas's La Femme de Claude. Her methods, intensely quiet, poignant, and true in emotional scenes, reversed the prevailing conventions, and some critics frankly said that she should go back to the trivial roles she had been playing when she retired in 1890. There is a reflex of this unfriendly attitude in a letter she wrote me on Feb. 23rd, 1896, a few weeks after her return to the stage:—

"It is the occasional light of understanding which makes the sunshine of the rather gloomy pathway of art. You believe that instead of reaching truth by ways of beauty it may be better to reach beauty by ways of truth, and I am also of that belief."

We have here, briefly stated, Mrs. Fiske's artistic creed, which was not at first understood. But in the late nineties her impersonations of Tess of the[Pg 385] D'Urbervilles and Becky Sharp brought her complete recognition. They were characterizations that left an indelible impression of veracity, and in America sounded the death knell of the old-fashioned emotional style as applied to modern roles. I reprint the above message because it explains why, in spite of certain mannerisms as too rapid speech, and many bad plays (selected because of certain traces of originality which interested her), her prestige has remained unabated.

CHAPTER XXIII

MEMORIES OF IRVING

I have reserved for the final chapter of this volume certain personal impressions of a man who was in many respects the greatest personality ever identified with the British theatre, Sir Henry Irving. It was my good fortune to meet him on two occasions, and on one to obtain at considerable length his views on many things. The stories of Irving are countless and appear in many volumes of memories; and a review of the many different characters in which I saw him would extend far beyond the limits of this book. On one or two occasions in lecturing on the actors of other days, I have likened Irving's position in relation to the art of acting to that of Edgar Allan Poe in literature, as an isolated artistic phenomenon. The analogy seems a just one to me because in his most characteristic moments there was something macabre in his art, as well as a quality so essentially beautiful and spiritual that it fitted into no accepted formulas of acting. As many know he was destined to misfortune, as well as to greatness and universal recognition; and a sense of fatality seemed to lurk in his personality even in his most urbane moments. His resemblance to the portraits of Dante is a matter of notoriety, and it was said of Dante, "This man has been in hell." Despite Irving's unique personal charm and good humour, there was always a suggestion of tragedy. His own end, when broken both physically and financially, was[Pg 387] tragic, and the Norns had further tragedy in store in the untimely deaths of both his brilliant sons.

In 1917, the wife of a Canadian officer overseas was at a little tea-party in the Shorncliffe military area. She chanced to remark, "I suppose I'm the only one here who is not English." An aged lady with a strong Irish accent spoke up and said: "Indeed, I'll have you to know that I'm not English," and commenced such a tirade against England and its people as would have landed a man in a detention camp in those days of war. Afterward the Canadian lady asked who the feminine malcontent was; and was told that she was the widow of Sir Henry Irving, and that her hatred of the English amounted to mania, although she had always lived among them. This was the wife of the most brilliant actor the modern English stage had known and mother of two remarkable sons,—all dead by that time. This episode, related to me after the war, explained much, for I had been told years before that the reason for Irving's separation from his wife, which had saddened his life, had been her intense jealousy of his success, though she had no stage ambitions of her own. It is said to have begun in the seventies, on the night when, after a long struggle for recognition, he at length completely triumphed in The Bells. Driving home from the theatre he said: "Well, I've won at last," and she replied with a sneer, "You were never more ridiculous in your life."

Irving, a man burning with ambition, simply could not go on facing domestic hatred of his successes; though it meant separation from the children he loved dearly, and who became an honour to his name. No other actor had ever risen to such prestige as he enjoyed in the early nineties, when he was the valued[Pg 388] friend of most of the great statesmen, jurists, writers and artists of his time. He lavished fortunes on beautiful stage pictures; and such productions as Faust, Tennyson's Becket, and Comyns Carr's King Arthur contained vistas of beauty almost incredibly lovely in recollection. Thirty years ago rising critics like George Bernard Shaw and William Archer were already assailing him for his neglect of the modern realistic drama, and for spending fortunes on scenery. But Irving's romantic personality would not have fitted into an ordinary setting or into the prose of modern drama. It required wonderful backgrounds. He was also taunted with the "mediocrity" of his companies, whereas in reality he employed the best actors of the time; but his personality so overshadowed them that they did not seem so brilliant as they really were. Above all he was accused of having submerged a woman of genius, Ellen Terry; though on what ground this accusation could be laid those who know the history of the Lyceum productions, in which Ellen Terry nearly always had equal opportunities, find difficulty in determining. Ellen Terry was indeed an exquisite creature, with a curious nervous sensibility and poetry of movement, when I first saw her as Nance Oldfield and Rosamund in Becket. Julia Arthur, who joined the company a year later and succeeded to the latter role, told me she was really engaged to keep Miss Terry at work. She had become more or less indifferent about appearing; and Irving thought the engagement of a young actress from America might make her look to her laurels. In Irving's American tours Miss Terry's failures to appear were very frequent. After they parted company Ellen Terry toured America by herself and in Heijermans' tragedy of the[Pg 389] sea, The Good Hope, gave the most poignantly beautiful performance of a bereft mother, all of whose sons have been drowned, that could be imagined, and in Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion, though she seldom knew her lines, she was enchanting. So perhaps it is true that she felt herself submerged in her later years with Irving.

My first meeting with the great actor was in the form of a hasty newspaper interview when he was passing through Toronto to San Francisco, and was spending a holiday sight-seeing at Niagara and Toronto. After vainly seeking him all day I ran into him in the evening, strolling about the streets with Bram Stoker, his business manager, and H. J. Loveday, his stage director. He was most genial and did not resent being interviewed in this abrupt fashion. In fact he interviewed me; he wanted to know why Toronto merchants closed their shops so early; and where they went at night. He also asked about an old friend, a favourite actor with Canadians of the seventies, Thomas C. King, and he wondered whether he might chance upon Edward Hanlan, the famous oarsman, whom he had seen and admired years previously. The next occasion on which I met him was on a beautiful autumn Sunday, when I perceived him sitting alone on the ancient verandah of the Queen's Hotel, Toronto, which then commanded through an avenue of chestnut trees a view of Toronto Bay, on which skiffs were sailing about in the sunlight. This was in 1895, the season in which he brought King Arthur, the most beautiful of all his productions, to America; and that in which we were first afforded a sight of his only experiment in modern roles, the aged veteran, Corporal Brewster, in Conan Doyle's Waterloo. I[Pg 390] have told of how certain persons used to deride Irving and intimate that he was not an "actor-r". When I first saw his magically truthful delineation of Brewster, I was sitting beside a clever English comedian, Charles Coote. After the curtain fell Coote under his breath gave vent to blood-curdling oaths; and I asked what was the matter. Tears were in the comedian's eyes as he said: "I'm cursing the low-browed, ignorant tripe who say Irving can't sink his own personality."

The King Arthur production was of especial interest because, in addition to the radiant Guinevere of Ellen Terry, the role of the lovely Elaine was played by Julia Arthur. In passing it is interesting to note that the original Elaines in England and America both hailed from Canada. When I was a little boy in the Church of the Redeemer, Toronto, a retired naval officer of very religious temperament, named Commander Pocock, used to bring a large family of youngsters to church with him. Nobody foresaw that one of these children was destined to fame as the celebrated actress, Lena Ashwell, who was the original Elaine in London. But her personal beauty did not approach that of Julia Arthur, whose remarkable powers have, after all these years, been again revealed in a superb impersonation of Shaw's Saint Joan.

On the autumn afternoon when I last interviewed him, Irving looked more like Dante than ever. He was wearing a wide-brimmed Cromwellian hat that accentuated the austerity of his appearance, but he proved to be in a mood for company. As he took off his hat, the grey locks ruffled over his high-arched forehead, supplementing his gentle, high-bred smile and softening his countenance. At his feet lay the famous fox-terrier,[Pg 391] Fussy, subject of many anecdotes. That he had lately been in more affectionate contact was evidenced by the white hairs that covered his master's coat and trousers. Fussy rose and investigated me; and apparently his conclusions were satisfactory, for he lay down again and went to sleep. "Fussy is getting old," said Irving. "He came with me on my first trip to America, and this is his fourth. He is fourteen years old now."

The actor looked out over the water and again asked of Hanlan, as before. "I see by the newspapers that he is still rowing," he said; "he must be getting on, like all of us. What a grand young fellow he was when he first rowed in England. We loved him for his grand physique and because he was a true sportsman. That's a great thing. But I suppose you didn't come to see me to hear me talk about sports. What shall I talk about?"

I suggested that he choose his favourite theme and he mused: "I suppose that's the theatre, or Shakespeare perhaps."

"What kind of a man do you suppose Shakespeare was?" I asked by way of a start, and at once the actor launched into thoughtful, unpedantic discourse:

"What kind of a man was Shakespeare? That's a difficult question; I must think! Well, he must have been a man of very sweet and genial nature, penetrating in his dealings with men. He knew more of human nature than any man who ever lived; and that must have influenced his everyday life. I do not believe for a moment the old story that he died after a carousal. It was vile gossip. Shakespeare was not that kind of a man. Don't you think so yourself?"

Irving's voice was so deep, solemn, and persuasive that it compelled affirmatives. I interjected a word[Pg 392] about that curious brood of self-deceivers, the Baconians, who were at that time traducing Shakespeare's character to bolster up their theory.

"The Baconian theory," he said scornfully. "That nonsense is disproven by the plays themselves. That the author of them was an actor is apparent in them all. He was fully acquainted with all the resources and necessities of the stage of his time. The practical knowledge of stage effect revealed in them is wonderful."

He then told me he was turning over in his mind a project of reviving Julius Caesar (subsequently abandoned), and that he was considering Coriolanus. This proved one of his misadventures. Caesar, as he called the tragedy, he deemed the more interesting from the public's standpoint. "It has three great characters," he said, "and even the subordinate role of Casca is a grand one. If I revive it I shall play Brutus,—a wonderful study. Caesar has one peculiarity. The climax,—the murder in the Forum—comes in the middle. It is the only play Shakespeare wrote in that form. But there is another drawback from my standpoint; it has no part for Miss Terry. In any event I am going to do Madame Sans Gêne for her. She will be wonderful; she is the most exquisite comédienne living."

I asked him what role in his opinion gave Miss Terry her best opportunity. "Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing," he said. "She has an indescribable personal charm in that role; I cannot put it into words."

"The light that never was on sea or land?" I suggested. "Yes, that is it. Ah! If Shakespeare could have seen her Beatrice. It would have warmed the[Pg 393] cockles of his heart. What a genius he was to write such glorious women's parts knowing that they would he brutally misinterpreted by the lads who played them. There is a good story of Kineston conducting a rehearsal of Othello and calling aloud for Desdemona. 'Please, sir,' said the prompter, 'Desdemona has gone to the barbers.'"

I laughed, but something in the tone seemed to dissatisfy Irving. He turned with something like severity, and said, "You've heard that story before!" There was a sort of suggestion of "Don't lie to me, boy," so I confessed that I had read it in Percy Fitzgerald's Theatrical Anecdotes. "Um," murmured the actor, "I told it to Percy! It's an old story of mine."

In truth the absent-minded quality of my laugh was due to the fact that I had noticed suspicious movements behind a heavy curtain in an open window just back of his chair. It was silently drawn aside, and I saw three girls, members of his company, eavesdropping. One put a finger to her lips, and later I identified her as Edith Craig, Ellen Terry's daughter, who must have heard the tribute to her mother.

We passed on to Ibsen, a moot topic in 1895. Controversy was still rife and most of Irving's journalistic admirers in London were attacking the Norwegian in stupidly abusive terms. Irving was emphatic in the opinion that Ibsen was a marvellous master of dramatic construction, but would never be popular with the British people because of his choice of subjects. This seems commonplace enough to-day when we have a proper perspective on Ibsen, but it was important thirty years ago, when the older actors and critics were in the habit of proclaiming him utterly lacking in constructive power.

Another moot topic in 1895 was the "new woman", a subject allied to the Ibsen controversy because the "new woman" was supposed to be symbolized in Nora Helmer and Hedda Gabler. The subject seems archaic to-day when the newer women appall those who were the new women of the nineties. I asked Irving whether the "new woman" was making inroads on English society.

"No," he said, "she has never existed, or perhaps I had rather say, she has always existed. The 'new woman' you hear so much about is really only a humorous type created by wits and journalists."

Though Queen Victoria was still alive, fin de siècle writers were already speaking of the "Victorian era" in the past tense as a vanished epoch, so I asked Irving:

"Whom do you consider the representative man of the Victorian era; that is the man who stands in the same position toward it, as Shakespeare to the age of Elizabeth?"

"There is no one," he replied. "The Elizabethan epoch was so wonderful that it stands by itself. It was a time of great turmoil and great production. There was the victory over the Spanish Armada which fired English enthusiasm. There were the discoveries of new lands which developed the imagination of the people infinitely; and in literature the period is unique since its imaginative productions were almost wholly in the realm of the theatre. Some philosophic discourses were written, some lyrical poetry, but the intellectual life of the people pulsed in the theatre. Therefore there is no writer of the nineteenth century whose position is analogous to that of Shakespeare in his time.

"In many respects Tennyson is the great representative literary man of the Victorian era. [Tennyson at that time was three years dead.] I knew him well. Tennyson would have made a great dramatist had he started earlier. Strangely enough his whole ambition in his last years was centred in the drama. He desired above all things to be an author of great plays,—plays to be acted. In my opinion the last act of Becket is almost as good as anything in Shakespeare. He lacked knowledge of the stage, but had be commenced to write plays as a young man, under the guidance of some good actor, he would have achieved success. I have spoken of the value to Shakespeare of his experience as an actor, and take Lytton. He was a much lesser man than Tennyson, but he wrote dramas which have held the stage. He had no practical experience himself, but he wrote entirely under the guidance of Macready."

Irving never sought publicity; he had no need to, but in this conversation he unconsciously revealed qualities which would have delighted a modern publicity expert. As I have said his newest production was King Arthur by Comyns Carr, and when I asked him, "Who is the wittiest man in London?" he replied: "Well in my opinion the greatest of our wits is a man of whom very little is known in America,—Comyns Carr. He is a theatrical manager in London, but he is a distinguished man of letters also, a polished essayist, and the most sparkling man I ever met. I never asked him, but perhaps he is an Irishman; many of our celebrated wits have been."

I asked Irving in what the Irishman differed from the Englishman, constitutionally. "As the Celt from the Saxon, of course; the one mercurial and light; the[Pg 396] other possessed of slow, solid qualities. I think the difference is one of climate really. The light, clear atmosphere of Ireland is essentially different from that of England. It affected me so that I could not sleep on my first visit to Dublin. I am not so sure though about the influence of climate on the Scottish people. They are a delightful race, brilliant and full of keen insight and exquisite wit. The old saw about it requiring a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotsman's head is a gross libel. Even the poor peasants of Scotland are cultured and Scottish audiences are a delight to play to; they are so keen they never miss a point." An old gentleman joined us who said he had seen Irving act in Manchester in 1860. "Oh," said Irving, "I had only been four years on the stage then," and so the interview ended.

It is plain that the man who gave that interview was no ordinary mummer, but an artist who had thought wisely of many things. His art was so varied that he made such varied figures of legend and history as Mephisto, Becket, Shylock, King Arthur, Corporal Brewster, Robespierre, and the haunted Matthias live ineffaceably as complete beings; and with this record of the random thoughts of an amazing man I close these rambling memories of the past.

THE END

INDEX OF NAMES

Abbott, Sir John J. C., 140, 194

Aberdeen, Lady, 350

Acheson, Rt. Rev. Edward Campion, (Bishop of Connecticut), 48-9

Ade, George, 149

Ahrens, Carl, 92, 332

Alcott, Louisa M., 7

Alexander, Sir George, 102

Alexander of Teck, Prince, 274

Amundsen, Roald, 311

Anderson, Sir John, 276

Anderson, Mary (madame de Navarro), 367

Anderson, Thomas, 8

Anglin, Margaret, 371

Archer, Belle, 100

Archer, William, 388

Armour, Chief Justice, Hon. John D., 245

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 298

Arnold, Matthew, 119, 291, 298, 373

Arthur, Julia, 380-1, 388

Arthurs, Col., 122

Ashford, Clarence W., 22

Ashford, Col. Volney Vallencourt, 22-4

Ashwell, Lena, 390

Atkinson, J. E., 136, 171

Atkinson, Mrs. J. E. ("Madge Merton"), 88-89

Aylesworth, Sir Allen, 240

Bailey, John, 318

Baldwin, Rt. Rev. Maurice, (Bishop of Huron), 58

"Bald-Faced Kid", 288-90

Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (Lord), 54

Bancroft, Sir Squire, 349-50

Bandmann, Daniel, 381

Barrett, Lawrence, 33, 365

Barrett, Wilson, 358, 373

Barrymore, Ethel, 380

Barrymore, Lionel, 380

Barrymore, Maurice, 355, 362, 380

Baruch, (Hartwig) Nathaniel, 378

Beatty, E. W., 156

Beck, Sir Adam, 186, 190, 191-2

Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward, 293-4

Beere, Mrs. Bernard, 358

Bell, Edward M., 380

Bell, Prof. Graham, 296

Bell, Moberly, 279-80

Bellew, Kyrle, 356-7

Bergeron, J. G. N., 208

Bethune, Rt. Rev. Dr. (Bishop of Toronto), 49

Bengough, J. W., 197

Bennett, James Gordon, 75, 281, 326

Bernhardt, Sarah, 94

Berthon, George Theodore, 329

Bigge, Sir Arthur, 276

Birmingham, Robert, 161, 179

Birchall Murder Case, 214

Bismarck, Count von, 99

Blaine, James G., 153, 196

Blake, Hon. Edward, 165-6, 197-8

Blake, Lady Helen, 102

Blake, Hon. Samuel H., 49-50, 233-5

Blake, Kathleen ("Kit"), 94-5

Blondin, 24

Booth, Edwin, 360, 365

Booth, John Wilkes, 366

Borden, Sir Robert, 194

Boucicault, Aubrey, 380

Boucicault, Nina, 352

Boultbee, Alfred, 38

Boulton, Major, 42

Boulton, William Henry, 117

Bourchier, Arthur, 364

Bowell, Sir Mackenzie, 149, 160-2, 194, 206

Bowes, R. H., 122

Boyd, Sir John, 244

Brandon, Olga, 359

Breckenridge, William Wallace, 61

Brennan Murder Case, 245

Brick, Rev. J. Goff, 58

Britnell, Albert, 209

Brooke, Rupert, 309

Brown, Hon. Adam, 184-5

Brown, Hon. George, 126, 147, 296

Brown, Gordon, 198

Brown, Mrs. J. N. E. ("Faith Fenton"), 93

[Pg 398] Brown-Potter, Cora, 356-7

Browne, Archibald, 310

Bruce, Harry Addington, 156

Bruce, Dr. Herbert A., 311

Bruning, Albert, 369

Bryan, Col. Claude, 156

Bryan, William Jennings, 306-8

Buchan, John, 46

Bülow, Hans von, 321-2

Bunner, H. C., 83

Bunting, Christopher W., 75, 115, 126, 161-2

Burnham, Nat., 344

Burrell, George, 6

Burrell, Sir Peter, 6

Burroughs, Marie, 361

Burwash, Chancellor, 118

Butler, Charles W., 380

Butler, Elizabeth Thompson, 99

Butler, Seymour, 267

Butler, Gen. Sir William, 99

Cable, George W., 297

Callaway, Samuel R., 13

Campbell, Prof. Thomas, 30

Campbell, Bishop Thomas, 30

Campbell, William Wilfred, 89-91

Cane, Harry, 361

Carleton, Royce, 361

Carlile, J. B., 220

Carman, Bliss, 91

Carmichael, Dean, 53

Carr, Comyns, 388, 395

Carte, D'Oyly, 291

Caven, Rev. Principal, 54

Charlesworth, Horatio George, 17

Charlesworth, L. C., 22

Charlesworth, Solomon, 14-5

Churchill, Lady Randolph, 301

Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer, 301-2

Clapp, Henry A., 338

Clark, Joe T., 127

Clark, Rev. Prof. William, 52, 145

Clarke, Edward F., 56, 152

Clarke, George, 382

Clay, Cecil, 352

Clayton, Bessie, 153

Coghlan, Charles, 351

Coghlan, Rose, 379-80

Collins, J. E., 198

Colquhoun, Dr. A. H. U., 150-1

Connaught, Duke of, (Prince Arthur), 99, 255

Conners, "Fingy", 247-8

Conquest, Ida, 380

Cook, Fred, 134-5

Coote, Charles, 390

Cornyn, J. H., 156

Cornwall and York, Duke of (See George V.)

Couldock, Charles W., 378

Courtleigh, William Flynn, 100

Cowan, Thomas, 148

Cowell, Florence, 254

Craddock, Nanny, 361

Craig, Edith, 393

Craig, John, 382

Craigen, Maida, 366

Crane, William H., 362

Creighton, David, 126, 148-64

Crichton, Viscount (Earl of Erne), 274-5

Cronin Murder Case, 157-60

Cronin, Patrick F., 163

Cruikshank, William, 331-2

Curran, James W., 78, 155

Curry, J. Walter, 224, 227-8

Cushing, Dr. Harvey, 213

Cust, Sir Charles, 267, 274

Dalby, Henry, 200

Daly, Augustin, 381-2

Damien, Father, 23

Damrosch, Walter, 78, 153

Dana, Charles A., 114

Davenport, Fanny, 376-7

Davey, Mary (Mrs. Fiske), 32, 382-4

Davey, Thomas, 32

Davidson, John, 101

Davis, Richard Harding, 194

Day, Wilson, 343

Denison, Col. George Taylor, 57, 80, 203

Denison, Grace E. ("Lady Gay"), 92-4

Denison, Major Septimus, 285

De Reszke, Édouard, 325

De Reszke, Jean, 325

Dewart, Hartley H., 224

Dickens, Charles, 57, 61

Dillon, Luke, alias Karl Dullman, 246-52

Disraeli, Benjamin, 119

Dixey, Henry E., 344-5

Dockstader, Lew, 307

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 241-3, 299

Drew, Mrs. John, 380

Drew, Sydney, 380

Drummond, Dr. W. H., 297

[Pg 399] Dryden, Hon. John, 170, 174

DuMoulin, Rt. Rev. Philip, (Bishop of Niagara), 53-5

Dunton, Theodore Watts, 95

Dvořák, Antonín, 323

Easton, Florence, 324

"Ebor" (H. T. Howard), 142-4

Edgar, Sir James, 197

Edgar, Prof. Pelham, 198

Edward VII (Baron Renfrew), 254-5

Egan, Eleanor Franklin, 283

Egan, Martin, 266, 282-4

Elliott, Arthur, 346

Elliott, James, 19

Elliott, Maxine, 361, 382

Ellis, P. W., 191

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 291

Empress Dowager of China, 283

Erne, Earl of, 274-5

Evans, Henry Clay, 309

Ewan, John A., 76, 127, 133-6, 166

Fairbanks, Hon. Charles W., 287-8

"Faith Fenton" (Mrs. J. N. E. Brown), 93

Farini, Signor, (William Hunt), 24-5

Farrer, Edward, 108, 120-1, 135, 196

Faversham, William, 372

Fawcett, Owen, 380

Fax, Reuben, 380

Febvre, M., 326

Ferguson, Justice Thomas, 226-7, 236

Fielding, Hon. W. S., 204

Fisher, Arthur E., 317-9

Fisher, Dr. Edward, 318

Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 382-4

Fiske, John, 90

Fitzgerald, Percy, 393

Flavelle, Sir Joseph, 165, 191

Forbes, Archibald, 278

Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnston, 291

Forster, J. W. L., 330

Forrest, Edwin, 308

Foster, Sir George, 204, 209-10

Foster, Col., 229-31

Fowler, Daniel, 329-30

Fowler, R. W., 331

Foy, Hon. James J., 185

Fraser, John A., 333

Fraser, Malcolm, 333

Frohman, Daniel, 353

Gadsby, H. F., 156

Gagen, R. F., 333

Galli-Curci, Amelita, 337

Galsworthy, John, 14

Galt, Sir Alexander, 10

Garrett, John, 26

George the Fifth, His Majesty, 253-73

Gibson, Charles Dana, 331

Gibson, Sir John Morrison, 185, 234

Gilbert, Mrs. G. H., 382

Gilder, Richard Watson, 297, 333

Givens, Rev. Canon, 39

Glenn, Francis Wayland, 114

Godfrey, Lieut. Dan, 156, 320

Gooch, W. W., 223

Good, H. J. P., 151-2

Gottschalk, Ferdinand, 351

Gray, Ada, 307, 342

Greenwood, Sir Thomas Hamar, 156, 195

Greet, Ben, 362

Gregg, George, 76

Gregg, Thomas A., 76, 126, 195

Grey, Earl, (Governor General of Canada), 284

Gresham, Herbert, 382

Griffin, Martin J., 197

Grossmith, George, 352

Grossmith, George jr., 354

Grossmith, Weedon, 351

Groves, Charles, 364

Guise, Arthur, 280

Haggard, Sir Rider, 110

Haggart, Hon. John, 109

Hale, Horatio, 96

Hall, Pauline, 348

Hamilton, Lieut.-Col. Charles F., 136

Hammond Murder Case, 237-9

Hanlan, Edward, 389

Hanna, Hon. W. J., 186-90

Hardie, James Kier, 302

Hardy, Hon. Arthur Sturgis, 172-7, 178-82, 190

Hardy, Thomas, 20

Hare, Sir John, 351, 363

Harkins, John A., 111

Harrison, Duncan B., 307

Harrison, Dr. (of Selkirk), 222

[Pg 400] Hart, William S., 377

Hartwig, (Baruch), Nathaniel, 378

Haslam, W. Elliott, 323-5

Hastings, Cuyler, 73

Haswell, Percy, 382

Haultain, Arnold, 113

Haven, Alfred Roland, 377

Haverson, James, 241

Hawkins, Sir Anthony Hope, 299

Haycock, Joseph, 120-2, 173

Healy, T. P., 43

Hearst, William Randolph, 157

Henley, E. J., 380

Herbert, Joseph W., 343

Herbette, Léon, 287

Heward, Hon. Stephen, 36

Hicks, Seymour, 354

Holland, E. M., 380

Holland, Dr. J. G., 184

Holmes, Robert, 91-2

Howard, Capt. "Gatling Gun", 49

Howard, Henry Taylor ("Ebor"), 142-4

Hoyles, Dr. N. W., 50

Hoyt, Caroline Miskel, 369-70

Hoyt, Charles H., 369

Howells, Rev. Mr., 97

Howells, Hon. Mr. (U. S. Consul), 98

Howells, William Dean, 98-9, 370

Huissel, Bill, 266

Hughes, His Honor Judge, 140

Hughes, General Sir Sam, 24, 63-4

Hunter, Rose & Co., 109

Huntingdon, Agnes, 93

Huntley, G. P., 354

Huskisson, Rt. Hon. William, 15

Huston, William, 64

Hyams Murder Case, 121-31

Hyde, Rev. Dr., 23

Ibsen, Henrik, 300

Ingersoll, Robert, 9, 20, 295

Insull, Mrs. Samuel, 342-3

Irving, Aemilius, 240

Irving, Sir Henry, 84, 349, 386-96

Irving, Isabel, 350

Irving, Lady, 387

Jacobi, O. R., 84, 329

Jaffray, Robert, 163

Janauschek, Francesca, 377-8

Jarvis, Miles O'Reilly, 82-3

Jefferys, Charles W., 91

Jetté, Sir Louis, 287

Johnson, Allan, 103

Johnson, Dr. Arthur Jukes, 244

Johnson, E. Pauline, 95-104

Johnson, Chief G. H. M., 95-8

Johnson, Sir William, 97

Johnston, E. F. B., 117, 223-31, 232, 238, 241-52

Jones, Frank, 288

Jones, Henry Arthur, 359-60

Jones, —— (Schoolmaster of Sandringham), 276-7

Jones, James Edmond, 39

Jones, Rev. Septimus, 39, 318

Juch, Emma, 224

Kalakua, King, 22

Keene, Thomas W., 346, 366

Kendal, Mrs. (Madge Robertson), 352-4

Kendal, William H., 352-4

Keppel, Sir Derek, 264, 274

Kerninghan, R. F. ("The Khan"), 196

Kerr, Frederick, 364

Kilbride, Richard, 54

King, Thomas C., 389

King, Rt. Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie, 156, 195

Kitchener, Lord, 281

"Kit" (Kathleen Blake-Coleman), 94-5

Knight, E. F., 276, 278

Knight, Joseph, 339

Krehbiel, H. E., 97

Kribs, Louis P., 16-8

"Lady Gay" (Grace E. Denison), 92-4

Lane, John, 101-2

Langtry, Rev. Dr. John, 214, 318

Langtry, Mrs., 287, 354-5

Lansdowne, Marquis of, 54-5

Lascelles, Frank, 325

Lash, Z. A., 117

Latchford, Hon. F. R., 193

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 163, 194-205, 258

Lear, Edward, 330

Lehmann, Lilli, 321

Lessing, Madge, 346

Levick, Milnes, 367

Lewis, Arthur, 379

Lewis, James, 382

Lighthall, W. D., 4

Lincoln, Abraham, 10

[Pg 401] Li Hung Chang, 312-4

Lindemann, Eugénie, 343

Lloyd-George, David, 295

Lo Feng Loo, 313

Long, Charles T., 157-60

Lorne, Marquis of (afterwards Duke of Argyle), 255-6

"Lotta", 341-2

Louise, Princess (Duchess of Argyle), 255-6

Lount, William, 223, 245

Loveday, H. J., 389

Lovekin, L. A. M., 365

Lygon, Lady Mary, 277

Lyon, Stewart, 210

McArthur, Peter, 71, 87-8

McCarthy, D'Alton, 160, 171, 240-1

McCarthy, Hamilton, 21

McCarthy, Justin, 165

McCullough, John, 32, 384

Macdonald, Adam Fergus, 62

Macdonald, E. A., 120, 167

Macdonald, Rt. Hon. Sir John A., 33, 77, 81, 105-9, 134-5, 147-8, 166-9, 214

Macdonald, Rev. James A., 209-11

Macdougall, Hon. William, 183

McEachern (McHector), 3

McEachern, Lieut.-Col. Archibald, 5, 9

McEachern, Archibald, jr., 9

McEachern, Hector, 13

McEachern, John, 3, 5-6

McEachern, John, jr., 10

McKellar, Duncan A., 71, 87-8

McKinley, Hon. William, 259-280

Mackenzie, Rt. Hon. Alexander, 33, 38, 130, 181, 194

Mackenzie, Finlay, 152-5

Mackenzie, William Lyon, 8, 75-6, 148

Maclean, "Jimmy", 133

Maclean, John, 132, 152

Maclean, John, jr., 133

Maclean, Wallace, 135

Maclean, William Findlay, 125, 128-41, 160, 166-81, 220-2

McLeay, Franklin, 195, 374-5

McMaster, Hon. William F., 36

McMechan, Prof. Archibald, 201

Macmillan, John, 197

MacMurchy, Archibald, 62-3

MacNab, Sir Alan, 277

"McNair, John" (McEachern), 11-2

McNaught, W. K., 191

MacVicar, John, 42

MacVicar, Victoria, 42-5

"Madge Merton", (Mrs. J. E. Atkinson), 88

Manley, Major Fred F., 63

Mansfield, Richard, 263, 371-2

Mantell, Robert B., 368

Mark Twain, 296-7

Marlowe, Julia, 343, 382-3

Marter, George F., 170-3

Martinot, Sadie, 379

Mason, General James, 48

Mather, Margaret, 366

Maude, Gen. Sir Aylmer, 279

Maude, Cyril, 352

Maxwell, William, 280

May, Edna, 346

Meighen, Rt. Hon. Arthur, 195

Melba, Nellie, 325

Melgund, Lord, (afterward Lord Minto), 46

Meredith, Sir William Ralph, 58, 168-70

Middleton, Major General, 46

Miller, Henry, 378

Miller, Prof. Willet G., 193

Mills, Josie, 342

Minto, Countess of, 199, 272

Minto, Earl of, 2, 46, 258, 278

Mitchell, Maggie, 342

Mitchell, Percy, 325-6

Moat, William, 19

Modjeska, Helena, 376

Montague, Louise, 346

Montague, Hon. William H., 104

Moody, Dwight L., 143

Moore, George, 94

Morley, Hon. John (Viscount), 119

Morris, Clara, 340

Morris, Felix, 351

Morrison-Bell, Major A. C., 284

Morrison, Lewis, 195, 370

Mowat, J. Gordon ("Moses Oates") 198

Mowat, Sir Oliver, 111, 162, 168-9

Mullarky, William, 57

Mulle, Ida, 344

Mulock, Chief Justice Sir William, 186

Munsey, Frank A., 370

Murdoch, James E., 374

Murray, Inspector John, 249-50

Myers, Frederick, 65

[Pg 402] Neilson, Adelaide, 338

Neilson, Julia, 363

Nethersole, Olga, 357

Newman, Cardinal, 118

Nickenson, John, 340

Nichol, Sir Walter C. 76, 81-3

Norfolk, Duke of, 286

Nye, Bill, 298

O'Brien, William, 54-6

Odell, Governor N.Y. state, 271

O'Higgins, Harvey, J., 156

O'Meara, Canon, 59

O'Neill, Eugene, 371

O'Neill, James, 370

Osler, Britton Bath, 212-31, 232, 241

Osler, Sir Edmund, 111-2, 212-3

Osler, Canon Peatherston, 212

Osler, Chief Justice Featherstone, 212

Osler, Canon Henry Bath, 59, 212

Osler, Sir William, 212-4, 223, 239

Otis, Elita Proctor, 379

Otter, Gen. Sir William, 48

Palmer, A. M., 361, 380

Papineau, Louis, 8

Parent, Hon. S. N., 260

Parkhurst, E. R., 147

Parry, Willy, 325

Passingham, Tremenheere, 272

Patteson, T. C., 113, 151-2

Patterson, Hon. John C., 33

Paulding, Frederick, 366

Peart, George, 221-2

Pickford, Mary, 341

Pole-Carew, Lady Beatrice, 287

Pole-Carew, Sir Reginald, 286-7

Pond, Major, 299

Ponisi, Madame, 379

Pope, Sir Joseph, 161

Power, Tyrone, 382

Préfontaine, Hon. Raymond, 260

Preston, W. T. R., 181

Price, E. E., 262-3

Price, Mark, 367

Prior, Melton, 278

Pullen, Horatio, 21

Queen Mary, 253-73

Queen Victoria, 44, 141, 254, 394

Radclive, the Hangman, 216-7

Ramsay, Walden, 380

Rankin, Col. Arthur, 33

Rankin, McKee, 33

Rankin, Phyllis, 380

Rehan, Ada, 342, 381-2

Rhea, Hortense, 100, 377

Riel, Louis, 43-5, 214-5

Riis, Jacob A., 303-4

Riley, James Whitcomb, 297-8

Riordan, John, 75

Roberts, Florence, 370

Roberts, Field Marshal Lord, 194, 285-6

Robertson, Ian, 355

Robertson, John Ross, 126, 183

Robertson, Madge (see Mrs. Kendal)

Robinson, Christopher, 240

Robinson, Frederick, 380

Robinson, Hon. John Beverley, 207

Robinson, John R., 126, 174

Rohlfs, Charles, 371

Rolph, Ernest A., 317

Roosevelt, Theodore, 288, 304

Ross, Sir George, 74, 173-85, 191

Ross, Victor, 25, 163-4

Rossa, O'Donovan, 57

Roxburghe, Duke of, 274

Russell, Lillian, 345

Ryan, Peter, 167, 172, 183, 196, 199-200, 241

Salvini, Alexander, 373

Sandham, Henry, 333

Sandys, Rev. Canon, 93

Sauvelle, Marc, 281

Schuch, E. W., 196-7

Scott, Clement, 357

Selkirk, Earl of, 3-4

Seward, Hon. W. H., 10

Shackleton, Sir Ernest, 311

Shaw, George Bernard, 55, 303, 381, 388

Sheppard, Edmund E., 70-86, 94, 105, 111-2, 125, 316

Sheraton, Rev. Principal, 50

Sims, George R., 366

Skinner, Otis, 366

Small, Ambrose J., 340

Smith, Alexander, 204

Smith, Sir Donald (Lord Strathcona), 42

Smith, E. Norman, 221

Smith, Sir Frank, 36-7

Smith, F. D. L., 156

[Pg 403]Smith, Goldwin, 110-22

Smith, Mrs. Goldwin, 117

Smith, John, 21

Smith, Seth, 21

Snider, E. W. B., 191

Solomon, Fred., 346

Sothern, Edward Hugh, 100, 372, 383

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 23, 65

Stewart, Elihu, 312

Stillman, Charles O., 186

Stoddart, J. H., 363, 380-1

Stoker, Bram, 389

Stone, Melville, 283

Story, Douglas, 281

Strathcona, Lord (Sir Donald Smith), 42

Stringer, Arthur, 92, 155-6

Sullivan, Barry, 368

Sullivan, Rt. Rev. Edward, (Bishop of Algoma), 53, 318

Sullivan, John T., 379

Sunday, Rev. Billy, 66

Swain, Lillian, 382

Swanson, Gloria, 337

Sweatman, Rt. Rev. Arthur (Bishop of Toronto), 51-3

Taft, Chief Justice Hon. W. H. 304-5

Tait, Joseph, 171

Talmadge, Rev. T. DeWitt, 294

Tarte, Hon. J. Israel, 199, 200, 202-3, 260

Tarkington, Booth, 41

Teck, Duchess of, 263

Tempest, Marie, 347

Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 16, 299, 388

Terry, Ellen, 342, 388, 392-3

Terry, Fred, 364

Thomas, Brandon, 351

Thompson, Denman, 340-1

Thompson, Sir John, 140-2, 199-200

Thompson, Lydia, 319

Thompson, Ernest Seton, 334

Torrington, Dr. F. H., 39, 318, 320-3

Tree, Sir Herbert, 376

Trollope, Anthony, 60, 213

Tully, Richard Walton, 22

Tunison, ——, 97

Tupper, Sir Charles, 114, 199, 200, 205

Tupper, Sir Charles Hibbert, 206

Turner, Frank, 148

Tyler, Fred, 352

Tynan, Katherine, 90

Tyner, John, 61

Vanbrugh, Irene, 364

Vanbrugh, Violet, 364

Van Cortlandt, Ida, 342

Varrey, Edmund, 382

Villiers, Frederic, 278

Vincent, H. H., 279

Vogt, Dr. Augustus Stephen, 87, 319, 326-8

Vokes Family, 350

Vokes, Rosina, 100, 350-1

Wainwright, Marie, 378

Walcott, Mrs. Charles, 340

Wallace, Sir Donald Mackenzie, 275-6

Wallace, Hon. N. Clarke, 208

Wallcousins, Ernest, 333

Wallis, Arthur, 115

Wallis, Gladys, 342-3

Walker, Sir Edmund, 25, 117

Walker, Horatio, 333-4

Walsh, Blanche, 378

Walsh, Flora, 369

Walsh, Rt. Rev. Dr. (Archbishop of Toronto), 58

Ward, Col. H. A., 21

Watson, Homer, 332

Watterson, Col. Henry, 308-9

Welland Canal Dynamiters, 233, 246-52

Wellman, Francis L., 217-31

Wenlock, Lord, 276

Westwood Murder Case, 241-5

White, Chief Justice, U.S.A., 305-6

White, Hon. Thomas, 147

Whiteman, Paul, 78

Whitney, Sir James Pliny, 173-5, 178-88, 191, 210-1

Wilde, Oscar, 291, 379

Wilkes, Robert, 36-7

Wilkie, D. R., 310

Wilkinson, Jonathan, 136

Wilkinson, Walter J., 136-40, 219, 227, 316

Willard, Edward S., 352, 358-62

Williams, Lieut.-Col. Arthur, 21

Williams, Sam, 288

Willison, Sir John S., 109, 126, 163, 165, 191, 199

Wiman, Erastus, 167

Winter, William, 339, 365

[Pg 404]Wolseley, Sir Garnet, 99

Woods, J. H., 159

Woodward, George, 343

Worthing, Frank, 382

Wright, Will J., 299

Wrong, Prof. George M., 2

Yeigh, Frank, 89, 101

Yeigh, Kate Westlake, 89

Zeigfeld, Dr. Florenz, 320

Zerrahn, Carl, 320

Transcribers Notes:

Hyphenation has been standardised.

The spelling of a number of words have been corrected/amended without note.

The major changes are as follows:

page xi Appomatox==Appomattox

page xiv Moberley==Moberly

page xiv siecle==siècle

page xiv Bulow==Bülow

page xiv Elliot==Elliott Haslam

page xv comedienne==comédienne

page 11 Appomatox==Appomattox

page 22 Vaincourt==Vallencourt

page 24 Vaincourt==Vallencourt

page 53 Dumoulin==DuMoulin x2

page 54 Dumoulin==DuMoulin x2

page 55 Dumoulin==DuMoulin

page 58 Dumoulin==DuMoulin

page 66 Lock's==Locke's

page 212 Featherston==Featherstone x3

page 232 Olser==Osler

page 260 Prefontaine==Préfontaine x2

page 264 removed duplicate 'the'

page 305 Sweettenham==Swettenham

page 323 Antonin Dvorak==Antonín Dvořák

page 325 Dvorak==Dvořák

page 325 Eduard==Édouard x2

page 346 Arthur Elliot==Arthur Elliott

page 367 Montagu==Montague

page 370 Yoricks's'==Yorick's

page 370 Christo==Cristo

page 371 Rolhfs==Rohlfs

page 375 Murdock==Murdoch

page 380 Brookyn==Brooklyn

page 381 Bandman==Bandmann

page 382 Elliot==Elliott

page 397 Vaincourt==Vallencourt

page 397 Bulow==Bülow

page 397 D'Oyley==D'oyly

page 397 Connors==Conners

page 397 Augusten==Augustin

page 397 DeReszke==De Reszke x2

page 397 Eduard==Édouard

page 399 Dvorak, Antonin==Dvořák, Antonín

page 399 Elliot==Elliott

page 399 Farrar==Farrer

page 400 Leon==Léon

page 400 Jette==Jetté

page 401 Eugenie==Eugénie

page 401 McEachren==McEachern

page 401 Macmurchy==MacMurchy

page 401 Willett==Willet

page 401 Mitchel==Mitchell

page 401 Murdock==Murdoch

page 402 Featherston==Featherstone

page 402 Prefontaine==Préfontaine

page 402 Ramsey==Ramsay

page 402 Rolhfs==Rohlfs

CHAPTER		PAGE
I	The Canada That Was: Mainly Personal	1

	An all-Canadian ancestry—Manitoba and the Selkirk
	Adventure—A forebear fights at Chateauguay—Early
	navigation on the St. Lawrence—Marriage
	customs in Old Quebec—My Grandmother's
	memories of Papineau's Rising—The
	American Civil War and Canada's youth—My
	uncle at Appomattox.

II	The Sixties and After	14

	A transplanted Yorkshire yeoman—The movement
	to make Canada the Empire's granary—A
	memory of Waterloo—Port Hope in the old
	sailing days—Volney Ashford, the Canadian dictator
	of Hawaii—Stevenson and Father Damien—Trading
	methods of the Confederation era—The
	old rural horse fairs.

III	Memories of Childhood	30

	An early fundamentalist—Windsor in the seventies,
	the New Orleans of Canada—Mrs. Fiske's
	father—The hazards of smuggling—The old village
	of Yorkville—Toronto University's bucolic
	surroundings—Victoria MacVicar, a woman of
	the Western Outposts—New light on Louis Riel.

IV	Mainly About Clergymen	46

	How the West was saved to Canada—The Bishop
	of Connecticut in the '85 Rebellion—Hon. S. H.
	Blake and Bishop Bethune—Bishop Sweatman's
	tolerant views—Orators of other days—Canon
	DuMoulin and William O'Brien's campaign
	against Lord Lansdowne—Riotous days—Missionary
	clergy.

V	My Beginnings As a Writer	60

	Deficiencies in education—My mother's literary
	tastes—Some teachers who helped—I become
	an accountant—The sordid side of business life—Tragedy
	of a clever man—E. E. Sheppard seeks
	out his anonymous contributor.

[Pg xii] VI	When Journalists Were Picturesque	72

	Edmund E. Sheppard, a Bret Harte type—Entertaining
	a Premier—His career in sensational
	journalism—Louis P. Kribs, "The Crown Prince"—Paul
	Whiteman anticipated—The hoax of Sir
	John Macdonald's retirement—65th Battalion's
	famous slander action—Origin of Saturday
	Night—Sir Walter Cameron Nichol's early
	exploits—Jacobi the painter.

VII	Poets and Women Writers of the Past	87

	The forgotten poet, Duncan McKellar—His
	most famous lyric—Kate Westlake's dime novel—William
	Wilfred Campbell—False charges of
	plagiarism in connection with "The Mother"—Two
	brilliant Irish women, Lady Gay and Kit—Pauline
	Johnson, the Indian woman-poet—Her
	relationship to William Dean Howells—Her
	success in London—A visit to the Pagans.

VIII	Two Famous Figures: Sir John A. Macdonald
	and Goldwin Smith	105

	The gap John A. Macdonald left—His handling
	of the Jesuit Estates Bill—How the Orangemen
	served the Jesuits—The Farrer annexation
	pamphlet and the thieving printer—How Rider
	Haggard was defrauded by literary pirates—Goldwin
	Smith as an anonymous writer—His
	many peculiarities—A Farmer Leader at the
	Grange.

IX	Learning Life With a Note Book	123

	The newspaper arena in the nineties—W. F.
	Maclean and The World—Maclean's advent to
	the House of Commons—His gift for choosing
	born newspaper aides—John A. Ewan, cosmopolitan
	correspondent—Walter J. Wilkinson, the
	instinctive news organizer—His story of Jumbo
	and the baby elephant—Scoop as to Sir John
	Thompson's illness that caused a national storm—"Ebor"
	the sermon-taster—The battle for Sunday
	street cars.

X	Hobbled Journalism	147

	My year on The Empire—A newspaper governed
	by a party machine—David Creighton's amiable
	peculiarities—Protection or Protestantism—A
	city editor with a Scottish conscience—Ideals of
	the "Glasgae Herruld"—Clan-na-Gael Murder
	of Dr. Cronin, and a reporter's hoax in connection
	therewith—How the Conservatives were
	bluffed out of their own newspaper—Laurier
	gets bouquets from unexpected source.

[Pg xiii] XI	Politics of the Nineties	165

	Edward Blake's departure for the British House
	of Commons—Humours of the Annexation Movement—Sir
	Oliver Mowat's last campaign—Petty
	issues and tedious leadership—Sir William
	Meredith drops out—Arthur Sturgis Hardy—Whitney
	surprises everyone—Hardy forces
	Niagara power development.

XII	Great Things Unforseen	178

	Policies born in the dawn of the century which
	changed the economic future of Canada—Great
	events obscured by electoral crimes—Sir George
	Ross and his contemporaries—Whitney's rise
	to power—W. J. Hanna, prince of politicians—Niagara
	development and Sir Adam Beck—Beginnings
	of Northern Ontario development.

XIII	Laurier and Tupper	194

	Sir Wilfrid's rise to popularity and power—Blake's
	hard luck with indiscreet litterateurs—The
	famous song "Ontario, Ontario"—The campaign
	of 1896 and some unpublished political
	history—Laurier's only financial speech—His
	tact, distinction and wit—Tupper the stalwart
	fighting man—A stickler for political proprieties—Sir
	George Foster's suave way with interrupters—Rev.
	J. A. Macdonald's attempt to destroy
	him.

XIV	B. B. Osler and the Hyams Case	212

	Osler, easily first among Canadian pleaders—His
	brother, Sir William, and the "Oslerization"
	hoax—A lie that has lived—B. B. Osler's international
	fame in the Riel and Birchall cases—Ratclive,
	the hangman, gives his views—The
	Hyams case, Toronto's greatest newspaper
	scoop—Indictment for conspiracy and murder—Famous
	New York lawyer, Francis L. Wellman,
	engaged for defence—His misrepresentations—My
	experiences as a witness—Col. Foster, the
	Tammany jury-fixer.

XV	Lawyers and Causes	232

	Osler's mastery of the Socratic method—Sir John
	Gibson crushes Hon. S. H. Blake—Episode in
	Bank Robbery case—The Johnson-Osler rivalry—Hammond,
	the wife-murderer, the one man
	Osler was proud of having convicted—The great
	pleader's death—Dalton McCarthy's gifts of
[Pg xiv]	argument—Conan Doyle and the Westwood murder—Johnston's
	constructive defences—Last
	Fenian attempt on Canada—The biggest scoop
	I ever got single-handed.

XVI	King George V. in Canada	253

	Royal Tour of Duke and Duchess of York in 1901—Previous
	visits of Royalty—"Lorne and Louise"—Looking
	for the royal ship, "Ophir"—Assassination
	of President McKinley causes gloomy
	reaction—Some untoward incidents—Feminine
	charm of the future Queen—Her vital interest in
	everything—Illness of His Royal Highness gives
	rise to slanders—An informal day in the woods
	of the Ottawa Valley—Picturesque episodes of
	Western trip—Governor Odell of New York State
	disappointed—Some cases of mistaken identity.

XVII	Coronets and Correspondents	274

	Celebrities who came in the wake of Royalty—The
	Earl of Erne's tragic destiny—Mr. Jones of
	Sandringham, correspondent of the royal children—A
	group of famous journalists—Melton
	Prior, Moberly Bell, Martin Egan and others—Memories
	of the Boxer Rising—Quebec Tercentenary
	a noble spectacle—Lord Roberts in Canada—The
	late Duke of Norfolk—My meeting
	with the "Bald-Faced Kid".

XVIII	A Sheaf of Celebrities	291

	Oscar Wilde's Questionnaire—Henry Ward
	Beecher—T. DeWitt Talmadge—Robert Ingersoll,
	the "Atheist"—Mark Twain and the telephone—James
	Whitcomb Riley—Sir Edwin Arnold—Yankee
	showman's offers to Tennyson and Ibsen—Winston
	Churchill worsts Major Pond—James
	Keir Hardie—Jacob A. Riis—Two American Chief
	Justices—Bryan and the drama—Col. Henry
	Watterson—Rupert Brooke's faux pas—Shackleton
	and Amundsen—Li Hung Chang.

XIX	Musicians and Painters	315

	Confessions of a double life—The fin de siècle
	period—Arthur Fisher, master of tactlessness—Dr.
	Torrington and Lilli Lehmann—Hans von
	Bülow in bad temper—Elliott Haslam, prince of
	companions—His tragic end—His nephew captivates
	James Gordon Bennett—A story of the
	De Reszkes—The Rise of A. S. Vogt—Some of
	the older Canadian painters—Berthon, Fowler,
	Cruikshank, Homer Watson, Horatio Walker, and
	others—Ernest Thompson-Seton's beginnings.

[Pg xv] XX	Stars of Other Days	337

	The tradition of Adelaide Neilson—A stage door
	rich in associations—Denman Thompson's beginnings
	with "The Old Homestead"—The bewitching
	Lotta Crabtree—Maggie Mitchell and "Little
	Gladys"—The "Mikado" craze—My first criticism—The
	versatile Henry E. Dixey—Lillian
	Russell's perennial loveliness—A real Cinderella—Singing
	beauties of the nineties—Marie Tempest
	in tights.

XXI	The English Invasion	349

	The Bancroft School and its votaries—Rosina
	Vokes, unique comédienne—The coming of the
	Kendals—Mrs. Kendal's virtue unpopular—The
	Jersey Lily—Cora Brown-Potter and Kyrle Bellew—Olga
	Nethersole's lingering kiss—Edward
	S. Willard, great interpreter of modern roles—His
	failure in Shakespeare and decline to sentimentality—Sir
	John Hare, master of finesse—Irene
	Vanbrugh's youthful charm.

XXII	Shakespearians of the Nineties	365

	Retirement of Booth—Thomas W. Keene—Margaret
	Mather—An actor of villains—Robert
	Burns Mantell—Beautiful Caroline Miskel—Lewis
	Morrison—James O'Neill—Richard Mansfield—The
	earlier Sothern—Younger Salvini, a romantic
	genius—Wilson Barrett—The brilliant
	Canadian, Franklin McLeay—Modjeska, Fanny
	Davenport, Rhea, Janauschek, and Marie Wainwright—Rose
	and Charles Coghlan—A. M.
	Palmer's great stock company—Ada Rehan and
	Augustin Daly—Rise of Julia Marlowe and Mrs.
	Fiske.

XXIII	Memories of Irving	386

	A personality that suggested fatality—Lady
	Irving's hatred of the English and alleged
	jealousy of his success—Unfair attacks on
	Irving—Ellen Terry's radiance—Two Elaines
	from Canada—An interview on many themes—Estimate
	of Shakespeare, the man—Irving's
	enthusiasm for Ellen Terry's Beatrice—An
	estimate of Ibsen—Tennyson's ambition to be
	a real playwright—Irving's tribute to the Scottish
	race.

CANDID CHRONICLES

CANDID CHRONICLES

Leaves from the Note Book of a Canadian Journalist

BY HECTOR CHARLESWORTH

TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED, AT ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE 1925

Copyright, Canada, 1925 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED First printing, November, 1925. Second printing, December, 1925. PRINTED IN CANADA T. H. BEST PRINTING CO., LIMITED TORONTO, ONT.

THE CANADA THAT WAS: MAINLY PERSONAL

THE SIXTIES AND AFTER

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

MAINLY ABOUT CLERGYMEN

MY BEGINNINGS AS A WRITER

WHEN JOURNALISTS WERE PICTURESQUE

POETS AND WOMEN WRITERS OF THE PAST

TWO FAMOUS FIGURES: SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD AND GOLDWIN SMITH

LEARNING LIFE WITH A NOTE BOOK

HOBBLED JOURNALISM

POLITICS OF THE NINETIES

GREAT THINGS UNFORESEEN

LAURIER AND TUPPER

B. B. OSLER AND THE HYAMS CASE

LAWYERS AND CAUSES

KING GEORGE V. IN CANADA

CORONETS AND CORRESPONDENTS

A SHEAF OF CELEBRITIES

MUSICIANS AND PAINTERS

STARS OF OTHER DAYS

THE ENGLISH INVASION

SHAKESPEARIANS OF THE NINETIES

MEMORIES OF IRVING

THE END

CANDID
CHRONICLES

Leaves from the Note Book of a
Canadian Journalist

BY

HECTOR CHARLESWORTH

TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF
CANADA LIMITED, AT ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE
1925

Copyright, Canada, 1925
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED

First printing, November, 1925.
Second printing, December, 1925.

PRINTED IN CANADA

T. H. BEST PRINTING CO., LIMITED
TORONTO, ONT.