The year 1936 began for the Tweedsmuirs with a sense of foreboding, since King George V was not well, and nor was Johnnie, who had to be invalided back to England from Uganda because of persistent amoebic dysentery. The King died on 20 January and JB was genuinely sorrowful, for, during the Great War, he had had the opportunity to see his best qualities. He wrote later: ‘What struck me was his eager interest, his quick apprehension and his capacious memory … I was not less impressed by his courage. He never lost heart, and his fortitude was not a dead, stolid thing, for there was always something about it of the buoyant and the debonair.’6 In a letter to Charlie Dick, he wrote: ‘I feel his death like a personal bereavement, for he was an old and kind friend to me, as well as a beloved master.’ He went on, insincerely, considering what he already knew about the Prince of Wales, ‘But I think I shall be very happy with his successor.’7 The King’s death caused an upsurge of genuine popular grief in Canada, as well as sympathy for Queen Mary, who had left a fragrant memory from her visit in 1901. Canada sincerely mourned the man who had been King during the travails of the Great War.
The first time JB opened Parliament, on 6 February, was thus a muted affair. The quiet at Government House rather suited JB, since his health was always better when he was not subjected to elaborate, drawn-out meals, and he could also settle into an organised pattern of working. But it was the worst time of the year for Susie, confined to overheated rooms (so different from Elsfield Manor, which was decidedly underheated), with the snow piling up outside, in a house draped on the outside with black crêpe. She also felt keenly the isolation, brought on by the rigid rules of Court mourning. It meant no dinner parties or levées for six months, only ‘missionary teas’. She had to have her clothes dyed black.
The ADCs and Beatrice Spencer-Smith found it hard to find things to occupy her, and she was difficult to cheer up. She missed her children, over whom she constantly worried. She felt herself too old for skiing and violent exercise, so she couldn’t enjoy much of what Ontario offered in winter. She was in her early fifties, detached by shyness from the crowds of strangers that so energised her husband on their visits away from Ottawa. She became withdrawn and uncommunicative and, not surprisingly, was viewed with an unsympathetic eye by some of the courtiers who surrounded her.
She missed her friends, as well as all those undergraduates with whom she had had such stimulating conversations around the fireside at Elsfield. She told her brother-in-law, Walter, four years later: ‘The snow has descended upon us, which always makes me feel very queer and a little mad!’8 Her predisposition to depressive episodes seems to have been promoted by lack of daylight. If past experience was anything to go by, JB will have worried about her a great deal, but kept those anxieties away from the public gaze. There are, however, telling descriptions of the effects of depression on both the deracinated French Canadian, Galliard, and the sick Leithen, in JB’s last novel, Sick Heart River.
The restrictions imposed by Court mourning ensured that JB had plenty of leisure to get on with his biography of Augustus. Writing a serious work of non-fiction so far from his books at Elsfield was less than ideal. Although he did borrow books from the Classical library at Université Laval, close to the Citadel in Quebec City, he also enlisted the help of an Oxford friend of Johnnie’s, an Italian Renaissance scholar, Dr Roberto Weiss, as well as Professor Hugh Last of Brasenose, to answer points of scholarship by correspondence. Nevertheless, it was a welcome recreation that first winter and spring, improving his rusty Latin so much that he declared he was almost thinking in the language.
In March 1936 the Tweedsmuirs made a tour of the Eastern Townships, a predominantly French-Canadian industrialised region on the east bank of the St Lawrence. In one week JB made thirty-two speeches in English and seventeen in French. ‘I found myself,’ he told his brother, ‘at one moment driving in state in a sledge, accompanied by an old bishop in a tall fur hat, and at another rigged up in full miner’s costume in the bowels of the earth among Nova-Scotian mine captains. I dined with an eminent lumber magnate, and was given Coca-Cola to drink; while lunching at one convent, we had cocktails and an excellent dry champagne! The total impression was of immense warmth and friendliness.’ He was happy in the company of French Canadians, attributing that, inaccurately but understandably, to his Scottish blood. In return they appreciated his interest and his catholic tastes: ‘on lit Proust à Rideau Hall’ was the surprised comment of the politician and scholar, Fernand Rinfret. He found the senior Catholics, such as Cardinal Villeneuve, cultured and wise. ‘There is something great about a communion which gives such beautiful serene faces to the men and women who have spent their lives in its service.’9 JB thought French Canadians, generally, were courteous and dignified, and the farmers never boorish. He was to pocket these experiences and transform them into something romantic in Sick Heart River.
It was on this trip that Shuldham Redfern discerned one particular and unexpected difficulty concerning the Governor-General, namely that his:
… musical sense is not on the same level as his literary ability. He is familiar with the tune of ‘God Save The King’, but there is another patriotic refrain called ‘O Canada’, which the Army authorities, in a misguided moment, decreed should be treated with almost the same respect as the National Anthem, and the Governor-General conforms as a matter of courtesy. At least that is his intention, but whether this melodious expression of patriotic sentiment is blared forth by a brass band and full supporting chorus, or by a piano, a violin and a flute, out of time with each other, and starting at different points … it is the duty of someone on the Staff first of all to recognise it, and then to convey the information to His Excellency, by which time the flute may have passed the finishing post!’10
That month, Pelham Edgar, a Professor of English at Victoria College, Toronto, paid a visit to Rideau Hall on behalf of the Canadian Authors’ Association, with an idea that had been germinating since they had first heard that the famous novelist had been appointed Governor-General. The CAA saw an opportunity to interest their Honorary President in helping to establish national literary awards. The valuable Prix du Québec (also known as the Prix David) for French-speaking writers had been in existence since 1922, but there was nothing comparable for those who wrote in English. JB was enthusiastic about the idea, for he had been an early advocate of the development of distinctive national literatures in the British imperial possessions. How could it be otherwise with someone whose sense of Scottish identity was without doubt promoted by the strength and diversity of Scottish literature?
He would not or could not endow the prize, however. As William Deacon, the literary critic of the Globe and Mail, recalled to a friend in 1940: ‘The deal we finally struck with him [Tweedsmuir] was simple. He gave us the name of his office to use in perpetuity. We bear all the cost and run it to suit ourselves.’11
Initially, there were only two Governor General’s Awards categories – fiction and non-fiction – and all were Anglophone, since the French-Canadians were not inclined to get involved with another prize. Two bronze medals were awarded. In 1937, a poetry or drama category was added and, that year, the awards ceremony took place in the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall. JB delivered a peroration on the value of great poetry, entitled ‘Return to Masterpieces’, emphasising that ‘Canada must make her own music.’12
In 1959 the administration of the ‘G-Gs’ was taken over by the Canada Council for the Arts and, at that point, French-language productions became eligible for prizes, and cash prizes were substituted for medals.* Writers who have won include Margaret Atwood, Rohinton Mistry, Stephen Leacock, Leonard Cohen, Alice Munro, Carol Shields and Mordecai Richler. In the words of Joanne Larocque-Poirier of the Canada Council: ‘If today Canadian voices in literature are heard throughout Canada and around the world, it is in no small measure due to the support of these Awards and the legacy left by John Buchan.’13 Intriguingly, the Canadian astronaut, Robert Thirsk, a distant connecti
on of the Buchan family, took two ‘G-Gs’ prize novels into space in 2009.14
It is no wonder that JB was not keen to fund a literary prize. There was a great deal already that he had to pay for: staff wages, ‘stores’ (wines, gifts, including 30 cigarette boxes and 100 ashtrays), the car he bought from Lord Bessborough, as well as a new Buick and a ‘bus’. Nothing – entertaining, travelling, clothes – could be done on the cheap. Susie’s thrifty instinct for a bargain had to be headed off by the senior ADC, the Canadian Colonel H. Willis-O’Connor, for fear that if she spent too little on jewellery in an Ottawa shop, the fact would find its way into the newspapers. At the same time, although there were still substantial royalties from book sales, JB knew these would decline, since there would be no more novels, after The Island of Sheep in 1936, until he came home. He was also forbidden by Buckingham Palace from doing any journalism, or from signing any film deal, if the film was to be released while he was Governor-General.
During the period of Court mourning, JB could only see people unofficially, but he found that very helpful for getting to know the politicians individually. He told Sir Henry Newbolt in March that he liked the ones he met. ‘I think they have the spirit which will solve all their problems – and these are big enough in all conscience.’ (All nine provinces were running a substantial deficit as a result of the Depression.) ‘The old trouble is the size of the land, which makes a common national feeling difficult, and inclines to provincialism.’15
At the same time he was getting to know the diplomats in the British High Commission, as well as those in the foreign embassies. Norman Armour, the head of the American Legation, was a highly civilised man with an aristocratic Russian wife, née Princess Myra Koudasheva, whom he had daringly smuggled out of Russia after the Revolution and then married. The Armours would become about the closest friends the Tweedsmuirs made in Canada. The strong mutual regard was useful, since JB was quietly working to effect a meeting with President Roosevelt that summer in Canada and then, if possible, accompany him back to the United States to stay a few days at his country house on the Hudson River.
Gradually, and much encouraged by JB, Susie began to get out and speak at meetings of, for example, the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women, a cause in which her mother was involved, as well as the many Women’s Institutes in Ontario and further afield. The Women’s Institutes provided cosy, small-scale gatherings of respectful, courteous women, who were eager to change their communities for the better; they provided a mutually beneficial environment in which Susie’s best qualities were exhibited. In that milieu she gradually lost her shyness and became an accomplished impromptu speaker.
Canadian countrywomen had already started to put together local histories, but her support expanded the movement substantially and, after JB’s death, they were named ‘The Tweedsmuir Village History Books’. They survive to this day as ‘Tweedsmuir Community History Books’ and are a rich source of historical information for family genealogists, social historians and schoolchildren, as well as of pride for the communities to which they belong.
At the same time, Susie was encouraged by JB to write a novel, the first time she had attempted one for an adult readership. The Scent of Water drew heavily on her experiences doing voluntary work in the Welsh valleys, and was published the following year by Hodder and Stoughton.
In early April, Johnnie finally arrived in Canada, looking so thin and haggard that he had to introduce himself to his mother at Halifax. He was in desperate need of recuperation in a cooler climate, since he had very nearly died in Africa. At the end of that month, Mrs Buchan and Anna also arrived for their first visit, a stay of nearly three months, with Walter arriving later to enjoy some fishing with his brother, and then escort the women home. These Buchans were very popular at Government House since they were lively, accommodating, and stood on little ceremony. Guests were particularly charmed by the ‘old lady’, who would sit comfortably knitting in the drawing room, eager to talk to anyone who came up to her. One visiting British politician remembered that ‘she showed a vivacity which many a young girl might envy … She stayed up long after her son had gone to bed.’16 She also stoutly refused to curtsey to her son, giving him instead ‘a kindly nod’.
After their departure, Susie’s mother arrived. She was also popular with the staff, despite being more stately than the Buchans. Beatrice Spencer-Smith, an amused spectator, wrote to her mother: ‘Mrs G. is very nice to me – she is rather a melancholy companion – every sentence begins “Of course I can’t help regretting such-and-such.” ’17 The family spent a few days in June on a boat on the River Saguenay, but the cruise was rather spoiled by JB becoming ‘very seedy’. It was something of a relief when they finally arrived in Quebec for their summer stay.
The Citadel, protected on the landward side by massive ramparts was, and is, the headquarters of the regular Royal 22e Régiment, known as the Van Doos. The Governor-General’s summer residence was (and is) at the east end of the officers’ quarters, a grey building of the Regency period, perched right on the top edge of Cap Diamant, close to the Plains of Abraham, with truly remarkable views down the St Lawrence River, past the Île d’Orléans, away north to the Laurentian Mountains, and across the river towards Maine. The grounds were circumscribed on the landward side by the Regiment’s parade square, but on the St Lawrence side the house had a glass-sided conservatory and a fine viewing terrace, like the deck of a ship.
JB liked to point out to his guests the view of the St Lawrence River bending away right-handed towards the sea and say, ‘Ah, what must the French have felt every spring when the ice melted and they saw the spars of ships coming round the corner and wondered if it was the French fleet or the English…’18
Susie enjoyed their time at the Citadel best, since they were away from the heat and humidity of Ottawa, and the house, though smaller than Rideau Hall, had a very agreeable atmosphere. The landscape was more varied than around Ottawa, the drives they took out into habitant country were a novelty, and Susie always had a great liking for French Canadians, helped by the fact that she spoke excellent French. Moreover, friends from Britain were most likely to come out to stay in the summer. Charlie Dick, for example, visited in 1936 and preached a sermon ‘by vice-regal command’ at St Andrew’s Church in the Upper Town.
Susie was sufficiently alarmed about her husband’s health after Sagueney to ask the Professor of Medicine at McGill Medical School, Dr Jonathan Meakins, to come from Montreal to examine him. After JB endured another bad attack a few days later, Meakins sent him to hospital in Montreal for extensive tests. It was crucial at this point that he should recover quickly, since President Roosevelt’s first visit to Canada was now fixed for 31 July. Meakins gave him a dietary regime from which he was not allowed to depart, but one which he considered tolerable. He was told, however, he must rest after meals, lying on his left side, something he did conscientiously for the rest of his life.
JB’s illness meant the postponement of his trip to the Maritime Provinces (a tour that he made the following June) and it nearly scuppered the visit by President Roosevelt as well. Despite last-minute anxieties,* however, this did come off when the President, with his son James and daughter-in-law Betsey, arrived at Wolfe’s Cove, having sailed up the coast from Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where the Roosevelts had a summer home.
The President was accompanied by an entourage of such size and complexity that it made the British courtiers boggle. There were four ADCs, three private secretaries, the Chief of the Secret Service (a Colonel Starling who said that, like John the Baptist, he was ‘always going before’), sixteen press men and photographers, and ten policemen, toting pistols, a sawn-off shotgun and a Thompson machine gun.
The President was met at the station by JB in full dress uniform, together with the Prime Minister and a host of Canadian dignitaries. JB and Roosevelt, together with his constant attendant, Gus, were installed in the first motorcar and, as they moved off, a contre
temps developed between the mounted cavalry escort of the Royal Canadian Dragoons and an American policeman as to whether horses or their motorcar should go just behind that of the Governor-General. A horse kicked the police car, which then drove into it, prompting a ‘G-man’ to draw a gun on the escort, whereupon he was ‘pinked’ in the arm by a trooper with his drawn sabre. Presumably honour was satisfied, for the incident ended there. Like the characters in an H. M. Bateman cartoon, the Governor-General and President remained blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding behind them and went on smiling and waving to the crowds.
The party proceeded smoothly to the Wolfe-Montcalm memorial near the Dufferin Terrace, overlooking the St Lawrence River, where they were greeted by a twenty-one-gun salute, demanded by protocol when a Head of State came to visit. The addresses of welcome were broadcast across Canada, the United States and Britain. Once the party arrived at the Citadel, they enjoyed a state luncheon, after which the press took photographs of the President, his family, Mackenzie King and the Tweedsmuirs on the Citadel terrace. Yousuf Karsh lingered in the background, then asked whether he could take one more picture. They agreed to stand in a formal grouping, and then relaxed, since Karsh pretended he had finished. While JB was telling the President one of his Scottish stories, Karsh got the characteristic picture he wanted.
The President and JB went out for a drive on their own and then, after tea, the party left once more for Wolfe’s Cove. Roosevelt had been no more than eight hours in Canada, but in that time a mutually useful connection had been made and the Tweedsmuirs were invited to come to Washington the following year. As JB told the King, the President had specially wanted to talk to him about how, if he won the next election, he wanted to make a great push ‘towards the pacification of Europe’, possibly inviting the Great Powers’ leaders to a conference. ‘Such an appeal by the head of the United States could scarcely be disregarded, especially as the President is, with all his limitations, an extraordinarily dynamic and persuasive figure…’19 Roosevelt had made it plain that he was no more interested than JB in keeping to the strict protocols governing what the Governor-General should or should not concern himself with.
Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps Page 41
