Social interaction of Canadian and British political elites, 1849-1894
This essay discusses aspects of social and informal contact between Canadian and British political leaders in the second half of the nineteenth century.
It examines attempts that were made by the British to mitigate innate differences in order to facilitate, where possible, the harmonious transaction of business with visiting colonial and Dominion leaders. It establishes that personal relations between the British and Canadian political elites were complicated by class and cultural barriers, even when the two sides saw advantages in working together. Attempts by British politicians in the second half of the nineteenth century to offer hospitality or recognition to visiting Canadian leaders were motivated partly by goodwill but also by a desire to deter opposition to Imperial policies or to offer some consolation for the disappointed missions. A sequel, dealing with the twentieth century, is planned. Of necessity, such a study is indicative rather than exhaustive, probably doing little more than skim the surface of what must surely be a much larger subject.
The beginnings of formal courtesies British North American politicians began to visit Britain on official business soon after the introduction of responsible government in the late eighteen-forties. Edward Gibbon Wakefield complained in 1849 about the "difference of the reception which we give to foreigners, from that which we give to colonists when they visit England". Minor German dignitaries were "sought out, fêted, perhaps lionized" but "[w]hen a distinguished colonist comes to London … he prowls about the streets, and sees sights till he is sick of doing nothing, and then returns home disgusted with his visit to the old country. Nobody has paid any attention to him because he was a colonist."[1] It was probably coincidence that the Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey (who distrusted Wakefield), first extended social facilities to visiting Canadians that same year. Canada's finance minister, Francis Hincks, travelled to London to defend the provincial ministry's controversial Rebellion Losses legislation. Grey soon realised that Hincks was "a sensible man" and, although not an outgoing personality himself, organised a dinner party for him so that he could meet the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, which provided an opportunity for "much conversation on Canadian affairs". Hincks was then invited to a ball at Buckingham Palace. It helped that he could be tagged as something more than a colonial politician: his father, Thomas Dix Hincks, was an Irish Presbyterian clergyman and a well-known intellectual, which placed Canada's finance minister in some sort of intelligible hierarchy of social importance. Meanwhile, the chief critic of the legislation, Sir Allan MacNab, also arrived in Britain to argue his case. MacNab's inflammatory language had been widely blamed for stirring riots in Montreal in which the parliament buildings had been burned down, and it would have been both tempting and pardonable for British ministers to have cold-shouldered him. Yet the leader of Canada's Tories was a notable figure, who had been knighted in 1838 for his part in suppressing the Upper Canadian rebellions, and no purpose would be served in alienating him completely. There was no way that the British government would bow to his demand that they should intervene and veto the Canadian legislation. However, on finding him "very much more reasonable than I had expected", Grey arranged for MacNab to be invited to the Palace ball as well, believing that the gesture "would be very useful".[2] The following year, Grey organised another dinner party, to enable two more travelling Canadians to meet Lord Lansdowne, elder statesman of the Whig party, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, "which I think has pleased them much". Grey was impressed by one of his guests, the prominent Methodist Egerton Ryerson, who was Superintendent of Education in Upper Canada – "a very superior man". He made no comment on his other visitor, whom the Governor-General, Lord Elgin, had particularly recommended as "a respectable man and tolerably moderate in his views", a member of "the section of the Conservatives who are becoming reasonable", who was in London seeking investment for a loan company. He was "a certain Mr John A. MacDonald" who, in later decades, would become a familiar figure in British political and social circles.[3]
The first official Canadian delegation to receive an extended measure of official courtesy was the mission of George-Étienne Cartier, Alexander Galt and John Ross, who arrived in Britain during the autumn of 1858 to discuss various matters, including the first serious proposal for the union of the provinces. An inexperienced minister in a weak minority administration, the Colonial Secretary, Sir Edward Lytton, had no intention of touching an issue that might blow up in his face. The delegates, who were joined by ministers from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, also sought financial support for the construction of an intercolonial railway but, again, faced with a crisis in India, the Conservative government had no money to spare. Lytton had the good sense to extend courtesies to the visitors to make them feel that their mission had been worthwhile. Prior to their planned return to Canada, Cartier and Ross made a short trip to Paris, leaving Galt in London to tidy up minor items of business. It seems that the colonial visitors had already made a visit to Knebworth, Lytton's country house in Hertfordshire. Now, "finding I was alone", Lytton "was kind enough to invite me again to Knebworth, where I spent two days this week and had much conversation with him. … It is a high honor and no small advantage to my business". The Colonial Secretary would be better remembered as the novelist Bulwer Lytton, although his writing survives principally in the much-derided opening phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night". Just as Francis Hincks could be situated within the British social structure as the son of an Irish intellectual, so it helped that Alexander Galt was the son of the "Ayrshire novelist", the now even-more-forgotten John Galt. Lytton was separated from his wife, and Galt found the house "'triste'". He enjoyed exploring the gardens, but was puzzled to encounter an unexpected example of Victorian sentimentality, a pets' cemetery: a tombstone for a dog seemed "odd". Knebworth was close to Hatfield House, "one of the finest show places in England". There, Lady Salisbury showed him the tree under which Elizabeth I had been sitting when she learned that her sister had died and she was now Queen of England. Exactly three hundred years later, the tree still flourished.
Lytton's junior minister, the young Lord Carnarvon, made clear in his diary that the decision to offer hospitality to the visiting Canadians was a conscious strategy. He was "convinced" that "a Colonial minister in this country with sufficient tact … might produce an influence on the minds of Colonists which as yet has had no precedent".[4] Carnarvon endorsed a familiar complaint of visitors from the overseas Empire: "they know no one of any position and … receive none of the courtesies and attention which can so easily be paid", their experience of the Colonial Office was purely formal, especially when "the Secretary of State can give them but five or ten minutes conversation". It helped that Carnarvon was the owner of Highclere, one of England's grandest mansions. He invited Cartier, Galt and Ross and "fortunately succeeded in amusing and pleasing them". Indeed, the Canadians "were agreeably and easily disposed to be pleased with any civilities on our part". He was equally successful in entertaining the Nova Scotian premier Charles Tupper, ("Nothing could exceed his kindness", Tupper wrote), and the New Brunswickers Albert J. Smith and Charles Fisher.[5] (Smith would prove less susceptible to English charm in 1865.)
Visits to Knebworth and Highclere did not represent the limits of British official hospitality. To their consternation, Galt was told at short notice that the three Canadians were to be received by Queen Victoria herself – a problem as Cartier and Ross were on their return journey from France and could not be contacted. "We were all at sea to know what we should wear, fearing we should be obliged to exhibit ourselves in all the toggery of a Court dress", but the presentation was informal and the colonials were spared pantomime flummery and permitted to appear in everyday garb ("frock coat, and black cravat"). They travelled by train to Windsor by train, in the company of Gladstone who, although not a supporter of the Conservative ministry, had accepted a non-political mission to the Ionian Islands and was about to set off. Galt reported to his wife back home that the Queen was "dressed in a green silk dress, handsome but plain, nothing to distinguish her from any other lady. She is rather short, but has a very good face and fine eyes, and her manner is very agreeable. Prince Albert is a very handsome man, speaking with a slight accent." Lytton formally presented the Canadians. "We were most graciously received by Her Majesty, who permitted us to kiss her Royal Hand, which by the way is a small one, though not as pretty as your own." It was at this audience that Cartier was said to have defined himself as an Englishman who spoke French. During some polite but formal conversation about Canada that followed, John Ross was emboldened to suggest "that we hoped to see Her Majesty in Canada. She laughed very heartily, saying she was afraid of the sea, but she thought it very likely some of 'the children' would visit Canada." The prediction came to fruition two years later when the Prince of Wales, the future king Edward VII, toured the provinces.[6]
Alexander Galt was the recipient of further courtesies during a later visit to London in the winter of 1859-60. By now recognised as a competent and responsible finance minister, he was given the unusual distinction of being invited to sign a special autograph book at the Bank of England, made up of pages of blank banknotes. Signatures were usually only requested from crowned heads: Galt was assured that he was only the second commoner to be so honoured. Unfortunately, the £1,000 banknote that he so delightedly signed would not become legal tender.[7] These gestures were to some extent attempts to mollify and even pacify colonial visitors disappointed in key aspects of their missions: Lytton in 1858 refused to back Confederation; Gladstone, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, blocked any move to finance an intercolonial railway in 1859-60. Indeed, Carnarvon made it clear that hospitality was used in 1858 to cushion the blow of rejection. "Failing however as the Canadian ministers did in the political objects of their mission, I do not think that they returned home altogether discontented."[8]
Mobilising support for Confederation In 1864-5, metropolitan social artillery was extensively mobilised with the more positive intention of demonstrating the breadth of support of the movement for the union of the provinces, a project that was now backed by an almost united British elite. In Canada, the initiative had been taken by a coalition ministry explicitly formed to tackle the province's constitutional problems.[9] Potentially, the weakest link among its four key members was the newspaper editor-turned-politician George Brown, tactfully described by the Governor-General, Lord Monck, as "an able and earnest man, but rather impulsive". A middle-class Scot who had emigrated to help pay off his father's debts, Brown was a dogmatic Free Churchman, whose sense of insecurity about his background and lack of formal education made him an intolerant bully. To copper-bottom his identification with the Confederation project – for Brown hankered after a smaller-scale bivalved federation of Upper and Lower Canada – his new allies dispatched him to Britain in December 1864 to brief the British government on their plans. The British elite decoded the messages and responded accordingly. Brown received "a wonderfully gracious reception" at the Colonial Office, and was the unofficial guest of honour at a "grand party" given by the Colonial Secretary, Edward Cardwell, where he hobnobbed with admirals and cabinet ministers. In business talks, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the mighty Gladstone, was "immensely civil" – and Brown pronounced himself to be an effective intellectual sparring partner with this Oxford-educated financial genius. The octogenarian Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, kept himself a little aloof from day-to-day business, but Brown dropped a hint that he would like to meet him. He was duly invited to spend two days at Broadlands, the veteran statesman's Hampshire mansion, where the editor of The Times, J.T. Delane, was also a guest. The unpredictable English winter put in an appearance that seemed to threaten plans for a walk in the park, but Palmerston memorably jested: "You don’t mind snow, do you?" Brown returned to Canada, "enchanted with his visit".[10]
The wooing of George Brown was a prelude to the full-scale assault and flattery that engulfed the four Canadian leaders who travelled to Britain in May 1865 for more detailed negotiations, particularly on the vexed subject of defence. This time Brown was accompanied by Cartier, Galt and John A. Macdonald. "Civilities of all kinds continue to pour in upon us," Brown reported to his wife, who had been left behind in Canada: "we are great people – very." He enjoyed passing patronising judgements on the mighty personalities of the Empire: the Conservative leader, the Earl of Derby was "a very agreeable old fellow", while Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, was "a specimen of fossilized humanity". They were not only presented at Court, but required this time to wear dress uniform and were instructed on how to kneel before their sovereign, a ritual that left Galt "with a slight mental doubt about the tenacity of my breeches". On their arrival at Buckingham Palace they were further alarmed to learn that the Queen proposed to receive them first: "all the Dukes & Duchesses had to give way & open up a passage for us – very much to their astonishment". The middle-aged George Brown had recently become a father for the first time, and the royal family quickly divined that he was besotted: Queen Victoria suggested that he should bring his wife and daughter to Balmoral on their next visit. The Prince of Wales, now married, treated the Canadians as old friends from his North American tour, tactfully ignoring the complication that Macdonald had briefly walked out of the official party in a dispute over recognition of Canada's Orange Order. "It seems odd to be visiting on such comparatively easy terms our future King and Queen," Galt noted. The Danish-born Princess Alexandra, who had "the nicest possible foreign accent", even attended a banquet when heavily pregnant. Four days later, she gave birth to her second child, the future King George V. She replied to Canadian congratulations – allegedly – that she was one ahead of Mrs Brown in the motherhood stakes. "Not bad that – for a Princess!", Brown gleefully reported to his wife.
The full range of social and intellectual hospitality was literally thrown at the four Canadians. London hostesses opened their doors, and an aristocratic Colonial Office mandarin shepherded them through glittering receptions given by the Duchess of Wellington, the Marchioness of Salisbury and the Countesses Stanhope and Waldegrave. Sir Edward Lytton renewed the courtesies of 1858 with a literary dinner party at which they met Charles Dickens. Oxford University conferred an honorary degree on Macdonald, who would briefly enjoy being announced at official functions in Canada as "Dr Macdonald", before his academic honours were overtaken by a knighthood. There was a musical evening at Buckingham Palace, and a memorable day at the Derby, "the Saturnalia of the lower classes", where the delegates armed themselves with pea-shooters and engaged in mock combat with fellow revellers in the traffic jams on the return journey to London. More hard-nosed than the star-struck George Brown, Galt reacted to their welcome with some ambivalence. The fact that the visitors were "treated quite as if we were ambassadors and not as mere Colonists as we have always been called" underlined the importance of their mission, but he suspected that "it bodes no good, however flattering it may be". At a second Buckingham Palace ceremony, the delegates were presented along with members of the diplomatic corps. The not-very hidden message behind British enthusiasm for Confederation was the signal that Canada would have to find its own place in the world. Discussions with the British government on defence against the United States proved distinctly unsatisfactory.[11]
There were fewer festivities surrounding the visit to London of British North American delegates in the winter of 1866-7 because they had come for a working session that culminated in the drafting of the British North America Bill for passage through Parliament. As the legislation moved from the Lords to the Commons, five of them were summoned to a series of private audiences with the Queen. "It is an important measure and you have all exhibited so much loyalty," she murmured to Macdonald, who took the opportunity to pledge that the new Dominion was resolved "to be under the Sovereignty of Your Majesty and your family for ever". Charles Tupper of Nova Scotia assured her that her transatlantic subjects would be gratified to learn of her support for Confederation. She responded: "I take the deepest interest in it because I believe it will make them great and prosperous."[12]
The British charm offensive was also mobilised, this time with more emphasis on the noun than the adjective, to neutralise opponents of the Confederation project who crossed the Atlantic to plead their case. When New Brunswick's anti-Confederation premier Albert J. Smith arrived in London to explain the reluctance of his province to commit itself to a union with the unstable Canadians, social pressure was not especially effective. Smith had built his political career on resistance to privilege and proved relatively immune to flattery. Indeed, in describing Cardwell as "extremely pleasant and agreeable", he almost certainly misinterpreted the Colonial Secretary's courtesy as an assurance "that no attempt will be made to force us into the scheme". However, Palmerston told him that Confederation would be the "pivot" on which any future British defence initiative would have to be built. More influential was a meeting with the leader of the Conservative opposition, Lord Derby, who proved to be a rather less agreeable old fellow than he had seemed to George Brown. Derby's minority administration had refused to back Confederation in 1858-9, but now he made clear that a future Conservative ministry would show no sympathy for New Brunswick particularism. Smith's position was, in any case, complex, since he was sympathetic to a union of the provinces although critical of the terms agreed at the 1864 Quebec Confederation. Nonetheless, the lack of support he encountered behind the formal politeness of his welcome in England may have helped steer him towards the search for appropriate formulae to cover his retreat.[13]
Smith of New Brunswick was followed in 1866 by Joseph Howe of Nova Scotia, leading a delegation protesting against the inclusion of his province in Confederation which was partially undermined by the ruthless use of official courtesy. "Nothing could be more gracious and kindly than our reception", he wrote of his first interview at the Colonial Office. "He went away I think in good humour," noted Lord Carnarvon, who was now the Colonial Secretary in Derby's third minority Conservative government.[14] But the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Frederic Rogers, had advised Carnarvon to dissemble, advising his minister that it would be best to adopt the pose "of a person who has still to ascertain whether the result which he thinks abstractly best can ... be reduced into practical shape." This would encourage the dissident Nova Scotians to believe they might still win over the British government and, hence, divert them from a more public campaign against the project. "Remember that just at present Howe does not know exactly what to strike at", Rogers advised, since he was carefully kept in the dark about the actual details of the British North America Bill which were then in the last stages of negotiation. "I am glad of the opportunity which has made me acquainted with one who has played so continuous & leading a part in British North America as yourself,’ Carnarvon wrote to him a few days later. Duly flattered, Howe was inveigled into putting his objections to the union of the provinces, which he was more than happy to do, only to be told a few weeks later that his case had been dismissed. At that point, as his modern biographer put it, "Howe realized that he had few cards left to play".[15] However, the following year, he returned to Britain to plead for Nova Scotia to be released from the new Dominion. Carnarvon's successor, the Duke of Buckingham, invited Howe to his country estate, Stowe, one of the most magnificent of England's great houses, where he engaged in three days of unofficial talks with his Nova Scotian rival, John A. Macdonald's ally Charles Tupper. Arguably, Howe had already recognised that Confederation was irreversible and was seeking formulae that would provide him with a graceful retreat. More to the point, it would take a further eight months of manoeuvring before Nova Scotia received the face-saving bribe of "Better Terms". Nonetheless, the Stowe talks – convened by Buckingham, an initiative that Howe could hardly rebuff – were an important step in the process of accommodation. Put simply, it was difficult for a colonial politician to be the guest at one of Britain's greatest ducal palaces without making some concessions to the wishes of his host.[16]
Two peoples or two species? It will be apparent that these civilities were extended to visiting Canadian politicians in regard to the offices they held, and much less as personal courtesies. Nor could they do much to bridge the gap between contrasting cultures. "England is an aristocracy," Goldwin Smith pointed out in 1863, "while the whole frame of society, to which political institutions must conform, is in Canada democratic."[17] "We are two peoples to all intents and purposes", Richard Cobden insisted.[18] Essentially, the people of the provinces were – or were becoming – North Americans. Some, especially in the Maritimes, came from families who were several generations removed from Europe, while others, notably in the province of Canada, were recent migrants from the British and Irish lower classes. Both groups tended to be relatively indifferent to the pretensions of its aristocratic elite. In 1854, the Duke of Newcastle was interested in a pamphlet advocating a union of the provinces by the Nova Scotian judge, Alexander Stewart. An official warned the Colonial Secretary that Stewart displayed "the forwardness, & pushing qualities of the Yankees": if given any encouragement, "he will not be easily shaken off".[19] The grandparents of Albert J. Smith had fled to New Brunswick as loyalist refugees, but they had brought with them a North American sense of equality. In 1862, Smith was censured by the Duke of Newcastle, in his second term at the Colonial Office, allegedly for using his position as Attorney-General to secure favours for clients. He hit back in a ferocious open letter, expressed in terms that an English duke was not accustomed to hear: "my character and reputation are as dear to me, as yours are to you.... I am responsible for my official conduct to the Legislature and people of the Province, and not to you."[20]
Friction over status was to be expected. Returning to London in 1852 as Premier of the Province of Canada, Francis Hincks felt slighted by what he perceived as a lack of respect shown to him at the Colonial Office. Sir Edmund Head, the governor of New Brunswick, who was on leave at the time, tried to soothe ruffled feathers. "I do not think the people at the Colonial [O]ffice ever felt that in theory Hincks's position with regard to Canada, as the Queen's sworn counsellor, was the same as Lord Derby[']s or Sir John Pakington['s]. There was certainly no intention to annoy or insult him in any way." (Derby was Prime Minister at the time; Pakington Colonial Secretary.) But that was precisely the point at issue: as Sir Wilfrid Laurier would put it in 1907, "We are all His Majesty's governments."[21] On a mission to London as Premier of Nova Scotia in the winter of 1861-2, Joseph Howe complained at the absence of any kind of welcome appropriate to the office he held. The Duke of Newcastle was apologetic, attributing the deficiencies in official hospitality to the abandonment of social activity during the period of mourning for the death of the Prince Consort. He charmed Howe – and delighted Mrs Howe – by inviting the couple to stay at Clumber, his Nottinghamshire mansion, where he personally gave them a tour of his family portraits by candle light.[22] However, even a well-meant gesture could backfire. The prickly Edward Blake was conscious of his standing as an able lawyer, and sensitive about his status as a colonial offshoot of the Protestant Irish gentry. On a visit to London in the early eighteen-seventies, he was "extremely displeased that the officials did not at once know who he was". On learning that there was an offended Canadian dignitary on the premises, the junior minister, Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen, decided that informality and charm would repair the damage. He breezed into the waiting room and greeted Blake with the cheery question: "Well, I hope our old friend Sir John Macdonald is getting along all right." Given Blake's bitter feud with the Dominion's first Prime Minister, this was hardly tactful.[23]
However well intentioned, the affability of the British elite represented a condescending assertion of superiority. In 1868, the Duke of Buckingham vetoed a proposal to give members of the newly created Dominion cabinet the style of "Right Honourable" because it would be "inconvenient" to accord them a rank equal to that of the statesmen of Great Britain.[24] Goldwin Smith was almost certainly correct when he asserted that it was impossible for the "aristocratic ministers of England" to " love a society founded on equality", although he may have exaggerated when he claimed that "[t]here lurks in their hearts" the belief that the United States and Canada, "this great group of commonwealths, founded on social equality, the native growth of the New World, is a monstrous and unnatural birth, which, if we will only wait a little, will creep back into the womb".[25] However, it was certainly true that privilege of entrée into "this magical little circle they call 'society'", although much enjoyed by the recipients, did not in itself create lasting bonds. George Brown was briefly dazzled but concluded in 1865 that the people he met were "a different race from us, different ideas, different aspirations". He was glad of the experience, but "it takes no hold of your feelings or even of your respect". Much as he enjoyed name-dropping the mighty personages who praised Canadian statesmanship and endorsed the Confederation project, he resented "the cool assumption of superiority over the middle classes" that he encountered among them all.[26] On a visit to Windsor Castle in 1875, Canada's second Prime Minister, Alexander Mackenzie, encountered a duchess who confided to him that it was "a very trying thing now to deal with society. There are so many people forced upon you whom you don't want to see, people who have no position." Mackenzie, who had started life as a stonemason, was not impressed.[27]
From time to time, the British elite came into direct contact – or collision – with real-life Canadians in circumstances which forced them to realise they were dealing with Britishness of a different species. Of the Duke of Newcastle, it was said that "he did not remember his rank unless you forget it".[28] He encountered some annoying status amnesia when he accompanied the Prince of Wales on the transatlantic royal tour of 1860. In mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, the Orange Order had been effectively driven underground, banned from marching or displaying any public symbolism. However, the Orange Order was a legal body in the British North American provinces, and Orangemen vied with Catholics to demonstrate their loyalty to the Crown. Newcastle, who acted as guardian to the Prince, was determined to ensure there were no sectarian overtones to the visit of the future king, for instance refusing to allow him to land at Kingston because he would have been obliged to pass under an Orange arch to enter the city. To avoid a repetition of the episode, Orange leaders in Toronto agreed to remove controversial mottoes from the arch that they had constructed across the Prince's route, enabling the city's mayor, Adam Wilson, to assure the Duke that his terms had been met. However, Newcastle was furious when he observed that the shorn structure still carried a picture of William III, the King Billy of Orange mythology. He believed he had been tricked by Wilson, a man who had arrived in Canada from Scotland at the age of sixteen, worked his way through a lawyer's office to become a Queen's Counsel, and the first elected mayor of his adopted city. Wilson was apologetic, even deferential, in response, blaming himself for a failure in communication. However, he defended the presence of King Billy as a royalist gesture and not at all a sectarian provocation. Newcastle "swore roundly that the Mayor was a damned blackguard and a liar", adding – significantly in the context of this survey – "that if Canada could only be kept on such terms as dealing with fellows like him, it was not worth keeping".[29]
Improved transatlantic communication began to encourage small numbers of English and Scots – those wealthy enough to afford the journey – to visit Canada. Their encounters with this strange Canadian breed could be both perplexing and entertaining. The serious-minded Conservative MP, W.H. Smith, who had made his fortune from railway bookstalls, thought it his duty to tour the new Dominion in 1872. By and large, he was impressed by what he saw. "The people are very 'English', live a family life, conduct their religious services exactly as we do; dress as we do, and with one or two additions to the course, they eat and drink as we do…. What I am seeing here impresses me with a sense of the great changes which are coming over society." But the external impression masked an absence of the cloying deference that he was used to at home. On a Saturday night at his Montreal hotel, he ordered an early morning bath for the following day, which would require hot water to be delivered to his room in canisters. At 7 a.m., he rang the bell to remind the staff, who proved unresponsive. At 7.20 he complained again: "I ordered a bath; a long time ago, and it has not come yet." "How long?" he was asked by an elderly attendant. "More than half an hour." "Oh, I don't call half an hour a long time." "Don't you?", replied a by-now irritated Smith: "then we do in our country." "Ah, but it is Sunday morning, you know." "Well, never mind, bring the water and the towels." "You can't have any towels. The chamber-maid keeps them, and she has gone to breakfast." Canada, Smith ruefully concluded, was "a free country".[30]
In 1873, the young Lord Rosebery undertook a North American Grand Tour that brought him to Ottawa during the political crisis of the Pacific Scandal, in which Macdonald was charged with awarding the contract for the transcontinental railway to the businessman who had financed his election campaign the previous year. Rosebery dutifully based himself in the strangers' gallery of the Dominion House of Commons, enduring rather than enjoying the marathon orations delivered by Canada's legislators. One displayed "a skill almost miraculous" as "he plodded steadily over the beaten track without for an instant getting out of the footsteps of his predecessors". Rosebery likened him to "an intellectual egg dancer, skipping lightly about without even grazing the shell of a thought". Hence he was not in the happiest frame of mind when an unidentified "Canadian gentleman" asked his opinion of Canadian parliamentary debate. He replied that the orations were longer than those at Westminster and that "speeches of four or five hours were almost unknown in England". His interlocutor "compassionately" replied that "in England you have no speakers whom you could listen to for four or five hours". Rosebery "mildly suggested" the name of Gladstone, then regarded as the titanic political force of the English-speaking world. His new Canadian friend interrupted "firmly but kindly" to correct him: Britain had no public speakers who could measure up to Ottawa standards. "What was I to say?", a bemused and amused Rosebery wrote in his diary.[31]
Macdonald to Thompson, 1897-1894 Even Sir John A. Macdonald could raise eyebrows with occasional ventures into Canadian informality. In 1880, British territorial claims as far north as the Pole were transferred to the Dominion. The junior minister at the Colonial Office, Mountstuart Grant Duff, was taken aback by Macdonald's celebratory comment at a London banquet: "When we got that we thought ourselves some pumpkins."[32] But Macdonald was generally regarded by the British elite as both the most impressive and the most loyal of the Dominion's politicians. Even Dilke grudgingly (if dismissively) acknowledged that "few countries have abler statesmen than Sir James [sic] Macdonald". Carnarvon was more enthusiastic. Observing Canada's Prime Minister on his home ground during a visit to Ottawa in 1883, he noted: "The more one sees of him, the more remarkable he is. Of all the Colonial Ministers he emphatically merits the name of Statesman", and Macdonald was "a really great" example of the breed.[33] Macdonald's stature increased after his recovery from the Pacific Scandal and his return to office in 1878. The five visits to London that he paid between 1879 and 1886 were marked by a new level of recognition by the British elite. The Canadian Prime Minister's reasons for travelling were varied. In 1879, his priority was to explain the Dominion's new protectionist tariff policy to suspicious metropolitan politicians, and to broach his plan to appoint a quasi-diplomatic agent, who would eventually emerge under the grandiose style of High Commissioner. He also wished to collect the Privy Counsellorship that had been promised to him for his services in securing Canada's agreement to the terms of the 1871 Treaty of Washington, but which he had been signalled to defer until the stink of the Pacific Scandal died away. In 1880, his concern was less with the government than with the money market, where he sought backing for the Pacific railway project. In 1881, he came to recover from illness: Gladstone's private physician ordered complete rest and a simple diet, which made it difficult for Macdonald to accept the offers of hospitality that now showered upon him.[34]
One complication that limited the British charm offensive in 1879 was the timing of Macdonald's visit, since he could not get away until the close of the Ottawa parliamentary session in early summer – which was, in any case, the best time of year for a calm ocean voyage. Disraeli, Britain's veteran Prime Minister, was vexed by his appearance at a time when Society had deserted the capital for continental travel and the grouse moors: Macdonald "ought to have been festivaled and banqueted, but what are we to do with guests who will visit London in August?" He filled the void by inviting Macdonald to make an overnight visit to his country home, Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire, and he formed a positive impression of his guest. "He is gentlemanlike, agreeable, and very intelligent, a considerable man, with no Yankeeisms except a little sing-song occasionally at the end of a sentence." Disraeli was certainly intrigued to check reports that "the Canadian Chief" was his younger lookalike. ("I think there is a resemblance.") Nonetheless, the visit left the ageing statesman "very exhausted", but there were "many grave reasons" for avoiding causing offence by seeming to ignore the Empire's second-ranking Prime Minister.[35] One reason for Disraeli's gesture was his annoyance that Queen Victoria had omitted to invite Macdonald to dine with her when he had travelled to her Isle of Wight holiday home to be sworn a member of the Privy Council, which made him Canada's first Right Honourable politician. In 1884, that omission was rectified when Macdonald was invited to dine and sleep at Windsor Castle: the Queen described him as "an interesting, agreeable old man".[36]
Macdonald certainly valued his entrée into the highest circles of British political life. He cultivated the connection with Carnarvon, even though the former Conservative Colonial Secretary seemed destined to be in opposition for the long term after the Liberal triumph of 1868. "We are glad to know that we have in you a friend – I may almost say a friend in need – for we greatly distrust the men at the helm in England who cannot, I fear, be considered as appreciating the importance of maintaining the Empire as it is, intact." He was particularly critical of the Gladstone government's decision to withdraw British troops from Canada at a time of threatened Fenian attack from the United States, but "we intend, with God's blessing to keep our country, if we can, for the Queen against all comers".[37] The two agreed to share confidential information, and Carnarvon invited Macdonald and his wife to Highclere in 1879, "one of the swellest places in England", as Sir John proudly informed his sister.[38] He even hinted to his constituents at Kingston, Ontario in 1871 that he might have been awarded a peerage for his part in negotiating the Treaty of Washington had he asked for one.[39] "I do not think there is anything in the World, equal, in real intellectual pleasure, to meeting the public men of England", he wrote to his friend James Gowan that year. Nor were his pretensions entirely without justification: Carnarvon, visiting Ottawa in 1883 thought Macdonald's "knowledge of affairs in England and of parties there was remarkable".[40]
However, privately Macdonald recognised that there were unspoken limits to his metropolitan relationships. When Gowan planned a transatlantic visit in 1883 and asked him for a letter of introduction to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Derby, Macdonald replied: "I don't think I can take that liberty with him. I have never been on such terms with any Cabinet Minister in England, as to warrant me giving letters [of introduction], & I think it would not be well taken if I did so."[41]
Macdonald's own reservations would be illustrated by the gentle rebuff that he received in what may have been his only informal approach to Lord Salisbury, who had emerged as Conservative leader after Disraeli's death in 1881. In 1885, Macdonald supported moves within the Catholic Church to make Archbishop Taschereau of Quebec Canada's first cardinal. During his midwinter visit to London, he secured the support of Cardinal Manning, and lobbied Salisbury, who was briefly Prime Minister of a minority administration. Salisbury promised to use the good offices of the British government in its indirect relations with the Vatican, using a prominent Catholic layman, the Duke of Norfolk, as its channel of communication. The campaign was a success, and Taschereau's red hat was announced early in 1886. By then, Salisbury had failed to win a majority at the polls, and Gladstone had formed his third ministry, which aimed to carry Irish Home Rule. Ever the politician, Macdonald – loyal Protestant, freemason and one-time Orange activist – was determined that his Conservative party should reap credit for having discreetly engineered the archbishop's promotion. His already visceral dislike of Gladstone had been deepened by the Grand Old Man's sudden espousal of an Irish parliament, and he did not wish the new ministry "to gain any kudos here in Canada from the fact that the appointment was made after they took office". As he explained to Salisbury in April 1886, "it is of some political importance that it should be known that the Conservative Government, of which you are [recte, were] the honoured head, interested themselves in securing the honour to Canada. My object in troubling your Lordship just now is to know how far I may venture to state your action in the matter."
Macdonald's tone was deferential: there is no evidence that he had ever had more than formal contact with Britain's opposition leader. Yet there can be no doubt that he had crossed a line that he would have been wise to respect. In seeking to block Gladstone's Home Rule, Salisbury had to engineer a broad coalition of outraged Conservatives and dissident Liberals. This involved the tacit mobilisation of the underlying Protestant culture of England and Scotland, while treading carefully to avoid inflaming its intransigent and mercurial offshoot in Ulster. In the spring of 1886, Salisbury certainly did not need it to be known that he had lent any kind of support to the glorification of Catholic pomp anywhere in the Empire. His reply was prompt and reassuringly informal: "Dear Sir John, I am very much obliged to you for your very friendly letter." He was glad about the red hat, and insisted that he had no problem with "the French Canadians knowing that in such a matter they had our active sympathy, but" – and it was very large 'but' – "we have some very odd people at home who might be scandalized if you went into any details". "Dear Sir John" was a flattering formula – "Dear Sir John Macdonald" would have represented a snub – but it would obviously be impossible for Canada's Conservative leader to make much of the supportive role of the Salisbury ministry without supplying detail. The tone of Salisbury's reply would probably have been unthinkable twenty years earlier but, all the same, it was a rebuff.[42]
It was a measure of the pressures on Macdonald and his divided Dominion through his last five years in office that there were no more visits to Britain. His death in 1891 heralded a period of instability in the leadership of Canada's ruling Conservative party, and it was not until 1894 that his eventual successor, Sir John Thompson, crossed the Atlantic, to discuss an agenda of relatively minor problems with the struggling Liberal ministry headed by Gladstone's reluctant heir, Lord Rosebery. Canada's Prime Minister received "shoals of invitations" but Thompson, overweight and overworked, heeded medical advice to rest and maintain a low profile. However, there was one formality that could not be evaded. Like Macdonald before him, Thompson was to become a Privy Councillor, making him only the second "Right Honourable" Canadian. On 12 December 1894, he took the train to Windsor, dressed in the required black knee breeches and black silk stockings, to be sworn in by the Queen in person. In 1879, Her Majesty had dismissed Macdonald after the ceremony but, for Thompson, this omission was repaired by an invitation to luncheon. Canada's Prime Minister was evidently overawed by the thought of accepting his sovereign's hospitality. On being seated at the table, he fainted, and was helped to an anteroom by the Marquess of Breadalbane, whose rank of Lord Steward of the Household made him a kind of aristocratic maître d'hôtel. Restored by a glass of brandy, Thompson became apologetic. "One does not faint on purpose. Pray don't distress yourself", Lord Breadalbane reassured him. Thompson returned to the luncheon table, to find that the Queen's personal physician, Dr James Read, had been summoned to sit beside him. Ominously telling his companion that he had a pain in his chest, Thompson slumped against the doctor and died instantly, "before he tasted the cutlet or whatever was placed before him", as Breadalbane would somewhat unfeelingly recall.[43]
Reflections It was almost half a century since Earl Grey had arranged invitations to a Buckingham Palace ball for Francis Hincks and Sir Allan MacNab during the Canadian crisis of 1849 – for Hincks as a reward for briefing British ministers on the new responsible government regime, for MacNab as a bribe and a signal that he should dilute his hostility to it. In 1858 and 1861, Lytton, Carnarvon and Newcastle had extended hospitality as personal initiatives. From 1864 to 1866, the social artillery of the British elite was mobilised in support of the Confederation project. The first years of the Dominion saw its leaders firmly confined to Ottawa but, from the middle of the eighteen-seventies, Canadian leaders with the awkwardly unfamiliar title of Prime Minister began to visit Britain, and their emerging dignity came to require, if perhaps a little haphazardly, appropriately ceremonial acknowledgement. Sir John A. Macdonald was recognised as by far the ablest of them, to be feted and honoured accordingly. Yet Macdonald himself was wary about presuming that these official connections might be exploited for the advancement of himself or his friends. The tragedy of Sir John Thompson's death may be taken as evidence that their Canadian recipients did not feel at ease with the rituals of British esteem. Yet his death marked the transition in relations between the two countries in another way. Escorting the Prince of Wales on his colonial tour in 1860, the Duke of Newcastle had insisted that the ban on the Orange Order in British law overrode the inconvenient fact of its legality in Canada. By contrast, when, in 1894, the head of the Church of England was informed that her dramatically deceased Canadian Prime Minister was a member of the Church of Rome, she not only summoned the parish priest in the town of Windsor to the Castle to perform the Last Rites, but commanded members of the Royal Household to attend the prayers for the dead as a mark of respect. (Until 1965, when Elizabeth II broke precedent on the death of Churchill, protocol forbade the monarch to attend the obsequies of a subject.)
At Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1897, Laurier took London by storm. The first of four visits to 1911, three of them for Imperial pageantry and all of them accompanied by intergovernmental conferences, it is best considered as the curtain-raiser to twentieth-century British-Canadian relations. Official hospitality – even public adulation – now very firmly constituted part of the institutional courtesies. Laurier would ruefully comment that the British Empire might or might not need a new constitution, but the Jubilee guests most certainly would if they were to survive the marathon that was becoming something close to ordeal by banquet. This increasing degree of official welcome naturally reflected the greater importance of Canada to Britain, as a wartime ally and a potential trading partner in time of peace. Macdonald had been formally honoured with an overnight stay at Windsor Castle; Mackenzie King would accompany George VI and his family on a picnic at Balmoral. The British political elite recruited from a wider social base, but this did not necessarily lead to greater mutual understanding: Laurier found himself locked in polite but acid combat with a Midlands industrialist, Joseph Chamberlain. The traditional ruling class responded to a changing world by masking its caste pretensions behind a more easy-going projection of noblesse oblige: in 1923, Mackenzie King bemused and embarrassed Curzon by effusively thanking him for being nothing like the 'very superior perzon' of popular legend. Yet, at personal level, relationships between British and Canadian leaders were neither straightforward nor even particularly intimate, even where considerable common ground might have been expected. This would be true of the time of Borden and Asquith (both lawyers) through the confrontations between Baldwin and Bennett (both businessmen) to the era of Thatcher and Mulroney (both superb and charming political operators).
Improved transatlantic communications encouraged visits in both directions: in 1927, Stanley Baldwin became the first occupant of Ten Downing Street to tour the Dominion while in office. Yet ease of movement also tended to blur the boundaries of definition. Canadians such as Donald A. Smith (Lord Strathcona) and Hamar Greenwood became active in British public life. For a brief few months in 1922-3, Britain even had a Canadian-born Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law, while R.B. Bennett retired, largely unnoticed, to the House of Lords. By contrast, Canada's emerging mandarin elite included several powerful figures who had studied at Oxford, a vantage point that gave them both an entrée to the British power structure and a sense of detachment from the social exclusiveness that underlay its Imperial values. The ambiguity of definition may be illustrated by the contrast between two notable personalities of the first half of the twentieth century, Beaverbrook and Massey. Max Aitken crashed his way into British public life (and the peerage), but somehow remained an outsider close to the centre of power. Vincent Massey was a Canadian nationalist, the Dominion's first diplomatic representative in Washington and the country's first home-grown Governor-General, but his privileged lifestyle and patrician manner famously made even British aristocrats feel like country cousins in his company.
Fundamentally, the problem was that, while Canadian politicians defined themselves as 'British', their metropolitan counterparts could never grasp that they were British in a subtly different and specifically 'Canadian' way.[44] In the United Kingdom, Britishness evolved as an umbrella concept that emphasised perceived virtues common to English and Scots. In British North America, it reflected an autochthonous amalgam of Scots, English and Irish Protestant qualities into something wholly new and hence specifically Canadian. The common elements in Great Britain were essentially Protestant, and were forged in eighteenth-century wars against France. The Irish element reinforced the Protestant theme in Canada, as the prominence of the Orange Order indicated, but the fact that the Canadian-British identity was directed against the United States, with a vehemence that so alienated Charles Dilke, made its tentative endorsement at least indirectly acceptable to French Canadians. In face-to-face contacts, the problem was that Canadian politicians who were forged in their own definition of being British found themselves predominantly and often uncomprehendingly dealing with Imperial statesmen who embraced a particular kind of Englishness. As Lester Pearson observed in the mid-nineteen thirties, it was "not easy to convince the Englishman that a British-American is anything but in transit from the 'British' to the 'American'", a particular challenge since Canadian representatives in the United Kingdom had to demonstrate that Canada could "work out her national American destiny as a British state within the Commonwealth".[45] Hence it becomes possible to understand how two of the most vocally pro-Empire of Canadian Prime Ministers, R.B. Bennett and John Diefenbaker, proved the most difficult for British governments to deal with. It explains, too, how and why so many of Canada's 'British' symbols were so easily peeled away in the nineteen-sixties and were transmuted into the new emblems of the Maple Leaf era. At interpersonal levels, the twentieth century would see a considerable measure of Commonwealth indifference replace the awkward formalities of Imperial deference. That is another story, but one that would evolve from the basis of condescending Victorian hospitalities.
ENDNOTES
[1] [E.G. Wakefield], A View of the Art of Colonization… (London, 1849), 147.
[2] A.G. Doughty, ed, The Elgin-Grey Papers 1846-1852 (4 vols, Ottawa, 1937), i, 355, 360; D.R. Beer, Sir Allan Napier MacNab (Hamilton, Ont., 1984), 259-62; Ged Martin, "Gladstone and the limits of Canadian self-government, 1849: the Rebellion Losses Bill in British politics": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/358-gladstone-canada-1849.
[3] Doughty, ed, The Elgin-Grey Papers 1846-1852, ii, 715,736.
[4] P. Gordon, ed., The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon... (Cambridge, 2009), 105, retrospective entry, 1 July 1859. The ellipsis should be explained. Professor Gordon's version gives "sufficient tact and etc." This makes no sense, and it may be that Carnarvon referred to "sufficient tact and wit" (my emphasis). Unfortunately, I am unable to check the original. I have criticised both the transcription and the editing of this volume, which appeared in the Royal Historical Society's Camden Series: "Carnarvon Diaries: Camden Series, volume 35. Comments and Corrections": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/304-carnarvon-diaries-camden-series-volume-35. It remains a serious failure on the part of the Royal Historical Society that it has not yet commissioned a new and enlarged edition of the Carnarvon diaries that would both embrace and correct the late Professor Gordon's work.
[5] Gordon, ed., The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 105, retrospective entry, 1 July 1859; E.M. Saunders, The Life and Letters of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Tupper... (2 vols, London, 1916), i, 61-2. Highclere would become known to 21st-century television viewers as Downton Abbey.
[6] O.D. Skelton (ed. G. MacLean), Life and Times of Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt (Toronto, 1966 ed., cf. 1st ed. 1920), 100-1; Library and Archives Canada [LAC], Galt Fonds, 27/1, A.T. Galt to Anne Galt, 8 October 1858 (typed copy). Gladstone did not mention his Canadian travelling companions in his diary. For the tour of the provinces by the Prince of Wales in 1860, I. Radforth, Royal Spectacle… (Toronto, 2004). For the story about Cartier's self-definition, E.W. Watkin, Canada and the States … (London, [1886]), 499.
[7] LAC, Galt Fonds, 27/2, A.T. Galt to Anne Galt, 13 January 1860.
[8] Gordon, ed., The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 105, retrospective entry, 1 July 1859.
[9] I draw here upon Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67 (Vancouver, 1995), which discusses the impressive historiography dealing with the origins of the Dominion of Canada.
[10] Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67, 262-3; J.M.S. Careless, Brown of the Globe, ii.... (Toronto, 1963), 175-80.
[11] Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67, 263-5; Skelton (ed. MacLean), Life and Times of Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt, 163-75; Careless, Brown of the Globe, ii, 195-7; D. Creighton, John A. Macdonald: the Young Politician (Toronto, 1952), 411-17.
[12] J.K. Johnson, ed., Affectionately Yours … (Toronto, 1969), 104; Creighton, John A. Macdonald: the Young Politician, 462-3; Saunders, The Life and Letters of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, i, 140-3.
[13] Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67, 265-6.
[14] Gordon, ed., The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 139, 18 December 1866.
[15] Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67, 266-8; J.M. Beck, Joseph Howe, ii... (Kingston and Montreal, 1983), 211-14.
[16] Saunders, The Life and Letters of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Tupper, i, 164-5. Beck, Joseph Howe, ii, 234 and K.G. Pryke, Nova Scotia and Confederation 1864-74 (Toronto, 1979), 68. Neither Beck not Pryke attached much importance to the visit to Stowe.
[17] G. Smith, The Empire ... (London, 1863), 138-9.
[18] Letter of 20 March 1865, written less than two weeks before his death. J. Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London, 1905 ed., cf. 1st ed., vols, 1881), 934.
[19] Born in Halifax in 1794, Alexander Stewart had worked his way up through the legal profession and taken a prominent part in colonial politics. He was a made a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1856. Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67, 212; J. M. Beck, "Stewart, Alexander", Dictionary of Canadian Biography, ix: https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/stewart_alexander_9E.html.
[20] Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67, 266; C. M. Wallace, "Smith, Sir Albert James", Dictionary of Canadian Biography, xi: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/smith_albert_james_11E.html.
[21] LAC, Elgin Fonds, EP 398, Head to Elgin, 8 September 1852; J. Schull, Laurier... (Toronto, 1966), 464. In 1907, Australia's Alfred Deakin similarly complained that Colonial Office staff reacted to his concerns with "a certain impenetrability; a certain remoteness ... a certain weariness of people much pressed with affairs". Such attitudes stemmed from an innate sense of class superiority, as Lester Pearson noted with distaste in the 1930s. They persisted into the 1970s among some Foreign Office personnel. N. Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience (London, 1969), 141; J. English, Shadow of Heaven... (London, 1990 ed., cf. 1st ed. 1988), 192.
[22] Beck, Joseph Howe, ii, 157. Candles, of course, would have been the only convenient source of light on a midwinter evening.
[23] C.W. de Kiewiet and F.H. Underhill, eds, Dufferin-Carnarvon Correspondence (Toronto, 1955), 81.
[24] Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67, 141.
[25] Goldwin Smith, The Empire, 138-9.
[26] Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67, 264-5.
[27] D.C. Thomson, Alexander Mackenzie: Clear Grit (Toronto, 1960), 240.
[28] F.D. Munsell, The Unfortunate Duke... (Columbia, Mo, 1985), 2.
[29] Radforth, Royal Spectacle, 188-93. Newcastle himself broke one of the rules of Victorian etiquette: "pas devant les domestiques". He lost his temper when servants were present, thereby risking the leaking of the story.
[30] H. Maxwell, Life and Times of the Right Honourable William Henry Smith, M.P. (2 vols, London, 1893), i, 217, 209-10. Charles Dilke had been a brief and unsympathetic visitor in 1867. His Ottawa hotel accommodated him in an overflow building "made of half-inch planks, with wide openings between the boards". His visit coincided with the resignation from the cabinet of Alexander Galt, and "indescribable chattering and bawling" filled the annexe. Dilke was unimpressed by Canadian 'loyalty' to Britain, which "appears to consist merely of hatred towards America". C. W. Dilke, Greater Britain ... (2 vols, London, 1868), i, 77-8, 80-1. Influential visitors to Ottawa generally accepted the hospitality of the Governor-General: two future British Prime Ministers conducted romances at Rideau Hall. Churchill failed in his pursuit of Lady Pamela Lytton in 1900; Macmillan successfully wooed Lady Dorothy Cavendish after the First World War.
[31] A.R.C. Grant with C. Combe, eds, Lord Rosebery's North American Journal – 1873 (London, 1967), 69-71.
[32] M.E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1873-1881 (2 vols, London, 1898), ii, 245.
[33] Dilke, Greater Britain, i, 77; A. Hardinge, ed. E. Carnarvon, The Life of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert Fourth Earl of Carnarvon 1831-1890 (3 vols, Oxford, 1925), iii, 92.
[34] Macdonald's visits to Britain are outlined in D. Creighton, John A. Macdonald: the Old Chieftain (Toronto, 1956), 264-74, 295-9, 312-16, 390-7, 440-4. My entire lack of medical training has not prevented me from pronouncing on "John A. Macdonald, Alcohol and Gallstones": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/310-john-a-macdonald-alcohol-and-gallstones.
[35] Creighton, John A. Macdonald: the Old Chieftain, 273-4; Marquis of Zetland, ed., The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield (2 vols, London, 1929), ii, 236-7; G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli ... vi (London, 1920), 477.
[36] G.E. Buckle, ed., The Letters of Queen Victoria: Second Series... (3 vols, London, 1928), iii, 583. Creighton was a mighty biographer with a comprehensive command of available sources, but it is interesting to note his omissions: Queen Victoria's comment on his hero was not quoted. Macdonald also stayed with the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) at Sandringham. On the nomination of the British Prime Minister, Gladstone (whom Macdonald deeply distrusted), he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, the highest award in British chivalry short of the highly select Orders of the Garter (for England) and Thistle (for Scotland). The verdict of the former Governor-General, Lord Lorne, that "no one, except a foreign potentate, has ever had such a reception" perhaps said less than it may seem to convey, since no other class of official visitor would come from overseas. Creighton, John A. Macdonald: the Old Chieftain, 392.
[37] Macdonald to Carnarvon, private, 14 April 1870, J. Pope, ed., Correspondence of Sir John Macdonald (Garden City NY, 1921), 132-4.
[38] J.K. Johnson, ed., Affectionately Yours, 139.
[39] Ged Martin, Favourite Son: John A. Macdonald and the Voters of Kingston, 1841-1891 (Kingston, 2010), 94.
[40] LAC, Gowan Fonds, M-1898, Macdonald to Gowan, private, 27 June 1871; Hardinge, ed. E. Carnarvon, The Life of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert Fourth Earl of Carnarvon 1831-1890, iii, 92.
[41] LAC, Gowan Fonds, M-1898, Macdonald to Gowan, 6 November 1883.
[42] Macdonald to Salisbury, 9 April; Salisbury to Macdonald, private, 15 April 1886, Pope, ed., Correspondence of Sir John Macdonald, 377-8; D. C. Lyne, "Sir John A. Macdonald and the appointment of the first cardinal", Journal of Canadian Studies, ii (1967), 58–69.; Ged Martin, "'Mrs G. was practically his keeper': John A. Macdonald on Gladstone": https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/364-macdonald-on-gladstone.
[43] P.B. Waite, The Man from Halifax … (Toronto, 1985), 418-25; J.C. Hopkins, Life and Work of the Rt. Hon. Sir John Thompson... (Toronto, 1895), 440.
[44] The argument here draws upon L. Colley, Britons (New Haven. Conn., 1992), seasoned with C.P. Champion, The Strange Death of British Canada... (Kingston and Montreal, 2010).
[45] Undated memorandum, c.1935-6, C. Bissell, The Imperial Canadian ... (Toronto, 1986), 56.