At first I thought it was going to be a complete frost – Susie awaited me in a typical shabby but large country house drawing room, alone, with a dog. She has grown very ample, and carries a faint flavour of Lushingtons. But by degrees we got warmer; and there was a dinner party – the Camerons, Isaiah Berlin, an Oxford undergraduate, a son, a daughter, and the daughter of Marnie – if you remember Marnie. Happily John was in London being given a dinner, or seeing the King, and it wasn’t so bad. They’re rather out of elbows, and have holes in the carpet and only one family W.C.
She twitted Susie about her grandeur, argued with Isaiah Berlin, and talked about films and modern poetry with William, ‘who is a simple, and rather shaggy’, a description of him that none of his family would have recognised.100 William remembered the occasion as the only time he had ever seen Virginia Woolf roar with laughter – when he almost fell out of the car.
The departure from England was delayed by the Canadian election, which had been called for 14 October, so they did not sail before late October, almost the last moment to get to Quebec before the St Lawrence River froze for the winter. This delay made life harder for the Tweedsmuirs, who were suffering a severe bout of Heimweh, and it also gave Mrs Buchan the opportunity to write a number of rather lowering, if characteristic, letters:
‘I wonder when exactly you leave for Canada. I must try to be brave. I don’t know what life will be to me without you.’101 ‘I am afraid Walter is going to miss you terribly, he doesn’t make friends [which was plainly untrue, since he was both genial and open-hearted] and you are everything to him and Anna says it is just past words.’102 ‘The longer I live I regret more and more my lost opportunities of being a good wife to the best of men and a good kind mother to wonderful children. Now I can only be a burden but none of you makes me feel my uselessness.’103
On 18 October, JB wrote to her from Upper Grosvenor Street:
Leaving Elsfield was a sad business. It was a lovely autumn morning, but what between weeping maids and choking men I have never enjoyed anything less. Susie wept all the way to London, but recovered after that. Aunt Mamie [the Countess of Lovelace] came to luncheon to say goodbye [going off to govern a colony being something her family were accustomed to doing] and I had a most emotional farewell to Stanley Baldwin in the afternoon. He said he had no words to say what I had been to him in the last eight years. I feel rather solemn at leaving such a grave situation on this side.104
*Plural voting, where graduates had two votes, one in their home constituency and one in their old university, was not abolished until 1948.
*John Buchan, ‘A Lucid Interval’, collected in The Moon Endureth, William Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1912.
*Ellen Wilkinson, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough, was introduced to JB by Lady Astor, when he was showing the famous American aviator, Charles Lindbergh, round the House of Commons. ‘Lindbergh was an interesting and charming youth, but I confess that at that moment I was more concerned in taking stock of the Scotchman’s rugged, unusual face. Buchan is delightful to meet.’ ‘Men in the Commons’, Evening News, 8 May 1928.
**Clement Attlee, later 1st Earl Attlee, was Labour Prime Minister between 1945 and 1951.
*Basil Liddell Hart put it on the reading list in his book, The Future of Infantry.
*JB collaborated with the Reverend George Adam Smith in writing The Kirk in Scotland: 1560–1929, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1930.
*A nomadic tribe who persecuted the Israelites – rather an unkind family joke.
*‘To my friend Aircraftman T. E. Shaw’.
*T. E. Lawrence to JB, 25 September 1931, NLS, Acc. 11627/51. Julius Caesar was a short book published in March 1931 by Peter Davies, one of J. M. Barrie’s informally adopted children, after whom Peter Pan was named, and a man much encouraged by JB.
**The phrase comes from a soliloquy by Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Act One, Scene V.
*The Magic Walking Stick, Hodder and Stoughton, 1932.
*A song of 1907, ‘On the Road to Mandalay’, from a poem by Rudyard Kipling.
*This annual Assembly, with its associated pageantry and entertainment at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, survives to this day.
*Much to the surprise of the King’s Private Secretary, Sir Clive Wigram.
**Patrick Duncan, one of Milner’s Kindergarten, who had settled in South Africa, was chosen in 1937.
*The land at Carterhope and Fruid did indeed pass to him on the death of one of his uncles in the late 1930s; it was compulsorily purchased in the early 1960s, so that it could be flooded to make Fruid Reservoir.
*In 1928, Eric Mackenzie had written to JB, whom he did not then know, to correct him on an arcane piece of topography in Montrose.
*Now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
**Mrs Charlett came back to Elsfield Manor in 1940 and went through the Second World War and beyond as the cook.
*Charles Paget Wade, an eccentric collector of treasures.
9
Canada, 1935–1937
The substantial entourage that left for Canada on the Duchess of Richmond on 25 October 1935 consisted of the Tweedsmuirs, Alastair, aged seventeen, Beatrice Spencer-Smith, a schoolroom friend of Alice’s, who had agreed to be Susie’s lady-in-waiting, two aides-de-camp – one military and one naval, Captain John Boyle and Lieutenant Gordon Rivers-Smith – and the Elsfield staff. The ship was held up by fog in the Atlantic, and arrived more than eight hours late at Wolfe’s Cove, Quebec City. In September 1759, General James Wolfe’s army had rowed with muffled oars to shore and landed close by, before scrambling up the precipitous Heights of Abraham to fight the decisive battle against the French. This time, bells pealed and ship sirens boomed and the Citadel and Old Town were lit by a flaming red sunset.
The party was met on board by the Prime Minister, together with the Chief Justice, the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec Province and the Premier of Quebec. They stepped ashore in the early evening, and JB, dressed in his heavy uniform of scarlet, blue and silver, with a helmet hat complete with white swan feathers, reviewed a guard of honour. The party was then driven in a cavalcade by torchlight to the white limestone Hotel du Parlement in rue des Parlementaires, where he was sworn in by Mr Justice Rinfret, judge of the Supreme Court. JB replied to the many speeches in both English and French, much to the satisfaction of the Québécois, although opinions differed as to how good his accent was.
Their late arrival ensured there was no chance of their getting to Ottawa on Saturday and, since Canada was still in many places Sabbatarian, it was not thought suitable to arrive in the capital city on a Sunday. They therefore slept the night in what was grandly called ‘the Governor-General’s Train’, parked in a siding outside Quebec City and, on Sunday, went by motorcar to Cap Tournamente on the north side of the St Lawrence River. Here they watched the flocks of grazing Greater Snow Geese, 20,000 pure white birds, at the only place they halt on their autumn migration south from the Arctic to the Carolinas.
The ‘Governor-General’s Train’ was, in fact, two luxuriously fitted-out carriages, in a brown and cream livery, attached to an ordinary scheduled train. The cars had been built in the mid-1920s for the use of senior executives of the Canadian Pacific Railway and contained bedrooms, bathrooms, sitting room and dining room. These cars were subject to the usual bumpiness, rattling and go-slows of Canadian trains at the time, but this was the only way that the Governor-General had any hope of crossing the vast distances in Canada,* and the Tweedsmuirs always travelled perfectly happily in them.
When they arrived at Ottawa next morning, an enormous crowd had assembled to meet them at the station, where JB reviewed yet more troops. They drove to Government House in an open landau, with outriders and a cavalry escort, the streets lined with people, calling out ‘Good luck, John!’
‘We are going to be a very happy and contented household, I think, and all the appurtenances of this house are the last word in comfort,’ JB wrote to his mother. Alastair, after his ‘dog-kennel
at Eton’ had a sitting room, bedroom and bathroom to himself, while, as was customary, Their Excellencies had their own separate bedrooms and sitting rooms.
Rideau Hall, in the smart suburb of Rockcliffe close to the Ottawa River, had been erected by Thomas Mackay, a timber magnate, but it had been the Governor-General’s residence since 1867, the time of Confederation. It is a heavily built, grey limestone building with a rather portentous portico, but with well-proportioned and spacious rooms, large enough for enormous gatherings. James Cast, who was a most superior butler, said that it was something ‘after the Windsor style’.1 The house was very comfortable for its time, but not very up to date. Hilda Grenfell’s daughter, Frances, stayed there for several months in 1938, and remembered the household, including ‘Their Exes’, standing around the wireless set in the passage off the front hall, listening to the Grand National broadcast from Aintree. The house had no far prospects but it had (and has) substantial wooded grounds, where roamed enchanting coal-black squirrels. It also had pretty gardens, with extensive heated greenhouses and a kitchen garden, which provided flowers and produce for the house all year round – no easy matter in a climate where there is snow on the ground for a third of the year.
On the day that JB arrived in Ottawa he was photographed for an official portrait by Yousuf Karsh, a young man who had been a refugee from the Turkish oppression of Armenians in 1918, and had made his home in Ottawa. Karsh recalled in his 1946 book, Faces of Destiny, that ‘although he [JB] wore a habitually grave expression, a gay sense of humor lay behind the mask, and he had the best and largest fund of Scotch stories of anyone I have ever known. On the first occasion, he greeted me with, “I hear you’re quite an expert at this job. You’ll need to be – to make me look the part.” ’2 This was the start of many photographic sessions, and a close working friendship between the photographer and the Tweedsmuirs. Karsh took their photographs many times between November 1935 and January 1940, and very quickly became ‘By Appointment’ to them, as he had been to their predecessors, the Bessboroughs. Karsh also helped to shape the public’s mental image of JB after his death, since his photographs were used for the back of Penguin paperbacks of JB’s books after the Second World War.*
JB settled down quickly to a strict pattern of work. After breakfast, he would go to his study, where Shuldham Redfern would discuss with him the events of the day, show him the mail and any invitations, and give him papers to sign. JB was a good delegator and paid Redfern the compliment of never reading what he was signing, so the business was soon over.
If the Governor-General accepted a speaking engagement, he would call for Lilian Killick and dictate there and then what he was planning to say. The speech would be typed up, filed, and later given to the press just before it was delivered, without notes, when it rarely altered much, if at all, from the printed script.
In his speeches, JB tried to keep a strict curb on his opinions, since he was not supposed to say anything not put in his mouth by a government minister, confining himself to what he called ‘Governor-Generalities’. But even these had more heft, style and, most importantly, wit to them than Canadians were accustomed to. Mackenzie King was a very dull speaker and JB’s predecessor, the Earl of Bessborough, had not been noted for his eloquence. JB could also adapt easily to his audience: light and witty for the Winter Fair in Toronto, scholarly and serious-minded for the universities.
He kept to his usual practice of not working after luncheon, going for a walk, a drive, skating on the skating rink in the park,* or even, in the early days, skiing, an occupation that the King had told him (through his Private Secretary since the monarch never communicated directly) was no sport for a middle-aged man. After tea, JB would entertain a guest for informal talks in his office – the Prime Minister sometimes walking in through the garden door about 5 p.m. – until dinner. If no one had been invited to dine, he would read with Susie in one of the sitting rooms. Dinners with invited guests were usually very formal: one evening in December 1935, for example, ‘Their Exes’ entertained eight premiers of provinces and their wives.
At least once a week, when Parliament was in session, he would go to the Governor-General’s office in the East Block of the Parliament Buildings, where he was ‘at home’ to any Senator or Member of Parliament who wanted to talk to him. This was a tradition much valued by the politicians, especially the newer ones, since the Governor-General was of course above party politics, but could give sage advice from his experience if asked. The perspicacious Tommy Lascelles wrote in 1931 to a friend that there was plenty of rancour between the parties in Canada, but that they were all astonishingly patriotic: ‘… no nonsense about Monarchy, and the Monarch’s representation, being a creed outworn. It is a red-hot article of faith.’3
Thanks to the strong Scottish heritage in Canada, almost everywhere they travelled they found a St Andrew’s Church where they could attend Sunday service, and it was normal practice for JB to read the lesson. In Ottawa, they generally worshipped at St Andrew’s Church on Kent Street, which the Prime Minister also attended, and JB, when ordained an Elder, helped to serve Communion. In June 1937, JB spoke at the Fifteenth General Council of the Alliance of Presbyterian Reformed Churches where the enormous audience must have been surprised at the depth of learning and commitment exhibited by a public figurehead. Instead of airy platitudes, he gave them a learned and humane commentary on the challenges facing Presbyterianism, the importance of changing in some particulars, if not in essentials, where necessary, and the benefits of working towards Christian unity: ‘The task of religion is to spiritualize life, and in this task its foe is not science and the questioning powers of the mind, for science itself is a spiritual activity. The danger comes from the applications of science which have so marvellously elaborated the material apparatus of life and which may lead to an undue exaltation of mechanism. To counteract this peril there is need of a simpler and intenser evangel, freed from the lumber of a theology which itself can be a mechanical thing. The duty of re-statement is always with us…4
Prominent people, as well as personal friends travelling through, would stay at Rideau Hall. The Tweedsmuirs entertained 400 guests in three and a half years. Amongst the many were the film star Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, Prince and Princess Chichibu of Japan and a young German diplomat, Adam von Trott (later executed for his part in the July 1944 plot against Adolf Hitler). But JB also invited Canadian political leaders such as Henry Wise Wood, the populist agrarian politician from Alberta, and young people from organisations like the League for Social Reconstruction.
Although ‘His Ex’, as he was known by his staff, was occupied enough, there was very little for ‘Her Ex’ to do. The ‘Green Book’ advised that, in addition to the functions she would attend with her husband, she would fulfil a number of independent engagements, usually to do with women’s and girls’ organisations, but that she wouldn’t be expected to say much, if anything. For an intelligent but shy woman, who thrived in small groups rather than great gatherings, such a prospect cannot have sounded at all alluring. For someone who had happily relaxed into the quietude of rural life in Oxfordshire, the constant comings and goings at Rideau Hall, the lack of privacy (she, like JB, couldn’t even go for a walk in the park without the accompaniment of an ADC), and the separation at night from JB, must have been sad burdens. She referred to herself as ‘a Court card, with no back’, observing action that scarcely concerned her, moved here and there in a stately round of small duties, which were apt to be stupefying. Her lady-in-waiting, Beatrice Spencer-Smith, was much too young to be a proper companion for her, and had all youth’s lack of sympathy for the difficulties encountered by the middle-aged.
Furthermore, Tommy Lascelles had rightly warned the Tweedsmuirs against developing a Rideau Hall coterie, to avoid jealousies. They were only allowed to accept dinner invitations from those of ministerial or ambassadorial rank. This made it hard for Susie to meet potential friends.
Although ‘Their Exes’ turned out to
be noticeably less formal than their predecessors, there were certain adamantine rules of protocol, set down in the ‘Green Book’, which JB could not ignore, but which tended to hide him behind a cloak of formality, and irritated his children in particular. He always entered a room before anyone else. Men walked backwards out of the room, with a bow. This custom was carefully upheld by Colonel Eric Mackenzie, the Comptroller of the Household, but not everyone appreciated the comical absurdity of it. Revealingly, JB gave up the practice of walking in front of his wife into a room, after he saw King George VI let Queen Elizabeth through when they stayed at Rideau Hall in 1939.
Long before JB arrived in Canada, he had worked out that the cardinal duty of the Governor-General was to get to know all kinds of Canadians, and to show them the different parts of Canada, to help foster a unity in a collection of independent-minded provinces, different from each other in climate, topography, preoccupations and outlook. This would require tours of substantial length and complex organisation. After Christmas 1935, having visited Montreal and Toronto, he wrote to Walter to tell him of the trips he planned to make the following year: the country areas of northern Ontario to see the gold mines; Quebec City to stay in the Citadel; the Maritime Provinces in July; and a long tour of the drought-affected Prairies in late summer. He thought the last the most important, since the people were having such a terrible time and, moreover, there was the greatest preponderance of people of non-British descent. ‘I propose to cut loose from my special train and, with one A.D.C., to go touring the back parts, taking my own sleeping valise with me and picking up a lodging where I can. This has never been done before by a G-G, and I think it is the only way to get right down among the people … There is not much I can do, but I can at any rate show that the King’s representative is deeply interested in them.’5 This ambition was impracticable, not only because Mackenzie King would have thought it a derogation of his viceregal dignity, but also because of his unpredictable state of health. The optimistic side of JB never wanted to feel he was circumscribed, but he was. And it got worse.
Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps Page 40