CANADIAN SOCIETY.*
LADY DIIFFERIN, encouraged by the reception of Our Vice- regal Life in India, has published her Canadian journal, written in the form of letters home, by far the most pleasant and readable form in which to preserve observations on a new country and people. The impression which the wife of a Governor-General must receive of the climate, scenery, and society of a country through which her husband made a sort of triumphal progress, must unavoidably be of a " bird's-eye " nature. Yet we can learn a great deal from such impressions,
when they are registered carefully by a lady who writes so observantly and well as Lady Dufferin. No other person, it must be admitted, has quite the peculiar advantages of the wife of a Governor-General; no other person is placed at the same convenient distance for viewing the panorama of society or the social kaleidoscope, or for perceiving the effect produced by climate on the social characteristics, social routine, and every-day life of a people. The Governor-General of Canada is neither so important nor so powerful as the Viceroy of India; both are independent in a sense, but the one is power- less and has no prerogative, while the other is not only inde- pendent and above parties, but can act on his own initiative to a considerable extent. Nothing is to be feared from, and not much is to be hoped for from a Governor-General ; people can come and go, pass and repass before him, without the feeling that he is a power, so much as troubling their minds at all. It is for this reason that Lady Dufferin's journal is permeated by the feeling that the people described in its pages were casual acquaintances and pleasant neighbours, not applicants for favour or hostages for good behaviour. Her husband was nothing more or less than a proxy for the English Sovereign ; he received just that amount of respect which would have been accorded to a portrait of her Majesty, had it been carried in procession through the principal cities of the Dominion. He gave the Canadians an opportunity of expressing their loyalty ; otherwise he was but as a figure dressed in borrowed robes. He was never allowed to listen to the Canadian Parliament debates, though his wife had the privi-
• (1.) My Canadian Joarnal, 1872-78. Extracts from my Letters Home, written while Lord Dafferin was Governor-General. By the Marchionesss of Dafferin and Ave,. London John Murray,—i2.) My Canadian Leaves : ui Account of a Visit to Canada in 1864-65. By Frances E. 0. bfonck. London Brielind Bentley and Sons.
lege; and the shadow of the bogey Politics never stayed in the same room with him. The only act which could possibly have been construed into a party inclination, was his refusal, in British Columbia, to pass under an arch bearing the superscription, "The Railway or Separation ;" though, indeed, he said he would do so if the " S " were changed to an "R." This particular heart-burning, indeed, is no more, for the great Inter-Oceanic Railway is now a fact. We get, there- fore, only side-lights on Canadian politics; but some of these are interesting, for we can read between the lines, and realise something of Canadian Parliamentary tactics, something of the exceeding bitterness of political questions, and some- thing of the wholesale jobbery that goes on in Canada. There is no reference to the last, we hasten to add, in the text, and, of course, it has largely increased since Lord and Lady Dufferin left Canada. As for the management of debates, the Canadians talk against time even better than our home speakers can, adopting, it must be allowed, childish methods of wasting time. Lady Dafferin was entertaining some Members of Parliament one evening at dinner, who were at liberty to come because they had left one of their party talking against time. They seemed to have had great faith in this gentleman, for they left him to do duty for an extra hour and a half, finding the hospitality of their hostess extremely enjoyable.
Lady Dufferin's account of her social duties, the continuous succession of dinners, receptions, visits to nunneries (the Governor-General inheriting the French monarchical privilege of entering such establishments), hospitals, prisons, and lunatic asylums, is simply astonishing. The performance of all these duties would have taxed even the Prince of Wales, and the writer of this journal seems to have stood the strain without a failure; and she had to do in addition, a great many household duties, rather more than her fair share, in fact. There was, we must remember, no recognised abode for a Governor-General at Ottawa, and when on visits he had occa- sionally to reside at hotels. The exhilaration of the climate, especially the winter portion of it, must have been a boon to any one accustomed to an English winter. To be able to toboggan and skate with her friends and children in the clear if rather bracing atmosphere of a really sunny Canadian winter's day, must have made up for much of the fatigue of the social round ; one cannot imagine a relaxation more invigorating. One has only to read an account of an "electrical evening," to realise the dryness of the air. On certain days, by rubbing one's feet on the carpet, you become "charged," and by holding a piece of wire in the hand, and touching a gas-burner, the gas is instantly lighted. The children, as the diarist relates, "were extremely fond of charging at some unsuspecting victim with a finger or a nose, which instantly emits a perfect flash of lightning." We are sorry to have to quote the following incident of cruelty to children :—" One day I brought the baby down to the drawing-room, and Fred (who had just been rubbing his feet preparatory to trying an electric experiment) kissed her, and gave her such a shock that she cried with fright." Let the British Matron be thankful that she has no such tempta- tion; as for us, the worry of life would become insupportable were the younger generation to amuse themselves by drawing sparks from us.
The Canadian manners were, no doubt, novel to Lady Dufferin, but though delightfully free, they were just suffi- ciently tempered with the respect due to a lady in her position, to avoid the accusation of rudeness. After all, it must be a much pleasanter task to entertain a people of such cheerful disposition, than to entertain, say, Anglo-Indian society. Lady Dufferin must have often compared the two; of course, the countries cannot for a moment be compared, still the etiquette of Indian society is a thing to be spoken of with bated breath. An American crowd (which is much the same as a Canadian crowd), says our diarist, is better dressed than an English crowd, though the best-dressed people do not com- pare with ours ; that, of course, we cannot expect. Canada, though an old Colony, has not been settled quite so long as England; as for the American women, indeed, they have almost the French knack of dress.
The winter is, on the whole, the best part of the Canadian climate ; certainly in Eastern Canada, the summer is a trying season, not by any means so dry as some suppose it. The summer in the North-West is, of course, a very different sort of affair, remarkably fine,—in fact, partaking of the nature of a drought. However, fine though the East Canadian winter may be, people must not forget that they have ears and noses, and must wrap themselves up. The brief sen- tence with which the diarist closes the entry for one day, "A lovely day—about zero," would be shudderingly suggestive to some of us, though in reality it is not so dreadful as it sounds. On a so-called " mild " day, when we may suppose the mercury was within "shouting range" of the freezing-point, guests kept telegraphing to know if they could bring their toboggans. As for the summer tempera- tures, we hear of 103° in the shade on the glorious 1st of June, though one year, even later than this, we hear of a severe frost.
The Governor-General's holiday during the fishing season was spent on the St. Lawrence, preferably at Tadoussac, at the entrance to the Saguenay River, and Gaspe, where the party seem to have enjoyed themselves immensely, and to have had capital sport, the fish being of a fair size; the biggest caught was about 35 lb. The tours might be included as partial holidays, though Lord Dufferin would not have described them so. They went to Boston, New York, Nova Scotia, New Westminster, San Francisco, and Fort Simpson. At Boston, Lord Dufferin was fortunate enough to meet at a club dinner, at Longfellow's invitation, the poet himself, Lowell, Emerson, Dana, Holmes, and others. Of Longfellow, Lady Dufferin speaks affectionately as "a most charming and loveable old man." The Western tour was the most interesting from every point of view. Lady Dufferin remarks on the wonderful clear- ness of the air of the prairie (she was at Cheyenne at the time of writing). "The curious thing is, that you see cattle apparently quite near, but on consideration you realise that they must be very far away, as you cannot make out the details." This deception is partly owing, as the writer herself adds, to there being no object by which to judge distances, such as trees or houses. A curious phenomenon delayed the train near here, —nothing less than a swarm of grasshoppers, who, being squashed on the rails, oiled them to such an extent that the wheels would not bite ! They were now at Ogden, not far from Mormondom, and going for a drive were pointed out the residence of a Bishop who owned eight wives and forty children. One of the reporters went to Salt Lake City and interviewed Brigham Young, finding, somewhat to his annoy- ance, that the prophet had married a relative. On hearing his name and district, the prophet exclaimed : " Oh ! I must have married your father's sister, but I had forgotten all about the family." "This reporter," adds Lady Dufferin, "thinks no name bad enough to employ to his new rela- tive." The American reporters, by-the-bye, had, even in the "seventies," earned a just reputation for "cheek," though, on the whole, they treated the Governor-General and his wife with some consideration. True, a Chicago paper said that she did not wish her " hubbie to go and see the nausty ' man, Brigham Young ;" that she and her husband went to bed early to "save gas ;" and that the party would go to the Centennial Exhibition if the "money held out." The Western or Grand Tour enabled Lady Dufferin to see the various tribes of Indians, with whom, indeed, she was not impressed; but then, the Indian is not seen at his best receiving a representa- tive of the Queen, and begging for food,—he has given up begging for land. Near Winnipeg they met a certain Mr. McKay, who gave them plenty of sport, and told how he made Tinto himself a tub in the ice, and a decoy, and shot sixteen swans, for which he received the rich and well-deserved reward of rheumatic fever. Lady Dufferin travelled too quickly to make the most of her opportunities for observa- tion, but she has plenty to say that is worth reading ; there is not much criticism of Canadian society, but more of American society ; the behaviour of American children was to her quite a startling "phenomenon," as it would be to most English ladies with children of their own.
My Canadian Leaves is a journal written by a lady in the year 1864-65. It is lively, chatty, amusing, and certainly possesses the virtue of candour. Mrs. Monck is refreshingly naïve in describing her mortal terror during the Atlantic voyage, and her general uncomfortableness whenever on the water. The journal, however, rarely goes beyond the home circle, except to include some general remarks on places visited or a little bit of gossip. At the same time, there are
pink sunset, "like the transformation-scene in a good panto- Loudon Cassell and Co.
mime; first everything is pink, then mauve, then grey." The leaven of anecdote is, however, more decided in the earlier work ; the writer was not a Governor-General's wife, and there is no restraint exercised in talking of persons. For these, among other reasons, My Canadian Leaves is more lively, more amusing, if indeed less valuable, than My Canadian Journal.
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