The Imperialist (40 page)
Authors: Sara Jeannette Duncan
“That seems to be the popular view,” said Lorne.
“And a very reasonable view, too. But I’m not going to embark on that with you, old fellow – you shan’t draw me in. I know where you are on that subject.”
“So do I – I’m stranded. But it’s all right – the subject isn’t,” Lorne said quietly; and Hesketh’s exclamations and inquiries
brought out the morning’s reverse. The young Englishman was cordially sorry, full of concern and personal disappointment, abandoning his own absorbing affairs, and devoting his whole attention to the unfortunate exigency which Lorne dragged out of his breast, in pure manfulness, to lay before him.
However, they came to the end of it, arriving at the same time at the door which led up the stairs to the office of Fulke, Warner, and Murchison.
“Thank you,” said Lorne. “Thank you. Oh, I dare say it will come all right in the course of time. You return to England, I suppose – or do you? – before you go in with Milburn?”
“I sail next week,” said Hesketh, and a great relief shot into the face of his companion. “I have a good deal to see to over there. I shan’t get back much before June, I fancy. And – I must tell you – I am doing the thing very thoroughly. This business of naturalizing myself, I mean. I am going to marry that very charming girl – a great friend of yours, by the way, I know her to be – Miss Milburn.”
For accepting the strokes of fate we have curiously trivial demonstrations. Lorne met Hesketh’s eye with the steadiness of a lion’s in his own; the unusual thing he did was to take his hands out of his pockets and let his arms hang loosely by his side. It was as tragic a gesture of helplessness as if he had flung them above his head.
“Dora is going to marry you?”
“I believe she will do me that honour. And I consider it an honour. Miss Milburn will compare with any English girl I ever met. But I half expected you to congratulate me. I know she wrote to you this morning – you were one of the first.”
“I shall probably find the letter,” said Lorne mechanically, “when I go home.”
He still eyed Hesketh narrowly, as if he had somewhere concealed about him the explanation of this final bitter circumstance. He had a desire not to leave him, to stand and parley – to go upstairs to the office would be to plunge into the gulf. He held back from that and leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms and looking over into the market-place for subjects to postpone Hesketh’s departure. They talked of various matters in sight, Hesketh showing the zest of his newly-determined citizenship in every observation – the extension of the electric tramway, the pulling down of the old Fire Hall. In one consciousness Lorne made concise and relevant remarks; in another he sat in a spinning dark world and waited for the crash.
It seemed to come when Hesketh said, preparing to go, “I’ll tell Miss Milburn I saw you. I suppose this change in your political prospects won’t affect your professional plans in any way – you’ll stick on here, at the Bar?”
It was the very shock of calamity, and for the instant he could see nothing in the night of it but one far avenue of escape, a possibility he had never thought of seriously until that moment. The conception seemed to form itself on his lips, to be involuntary.
“I don’t know. A college friend has been pressing me for some time to join him in Milwaukee. He offers me plenty of work, and I am thinking seriously of closing with him.”
“Go over to the United States? You can’t mean that!”
“Oh yes – it’s the next best thing!”
Hesketh’s face assumed a gravity, a look of feeling and of remonstrance. He came a step nearer and put a hand on his companion’s arm.
“Come now, Murchison,” he said, “I ask you – is this a time to be thinking of chucking the Empire?”
Lorne moved further into the passage with an abruptness which left his interlocutor staring. He stood there for a moment in silence, and then turned to mount the stair with a reply which a passing dray happily prevented from reaching Hesketh’s ears.
“No, damn you,” he said. “It’s not!”
I cannot let him finish on that uncontrolled phrase, though it will be acknowledged that his provocation was great. Nor must we leave him in heavy captivity to the thought of oblivion in the unregarding welter of the near republic, of plunging into more strenuous activities and abandoning his ideal, in queer inverted analogy to the refuging of weak women in a convent. We know that his ideal was strong enough to reassert itself, under a keen irony of suggestion, in the very depth of his overwhelming: and the thing that could rise in him at that black moment may be trusted, perhaps, to reclaim his fortitude and reconsecrate his energy when these things come again into the full current of his life. The illness that, after two or three lagging days, brought him its merciful physical distraction was laid in the general understanding at the door of his political disappointment; and, among a crowd of sympathizers confined to no party, Horace Williams, as his wife expressed it, was pretty nearly wild during its progress. The power of the press is regrettably small in such emergencies, but what restoration it had Horace anxiously administered; the
Express
published a daily bulletin. The second election passed only half noticed by the Murchison family; Carter very nearly re-established the Liberal majority. The
Dominion
dwelt upon this repeated demonstration of the strength of Reform principles in South Fox, and Mrs. Murchison said they were welcome to Carter.
Many will sympathize with Mrs. Murchison at this point, I hope, and regret to abandon her in such equivocal approval of the circumstances which have arisen round her. Too anxiously occupied at home to take her share in the general pleasant sensation of Dr. Drummond’s marriage, she was compelled to give it a hurried consideration and a sanction which was practically wrested from her. She could not be clear as to the course of events that led to it, nor entirely satisfied, as she said, about the ins and outs of that affair; this although she felt she could be clearer, and possibly had better grounds for being satisfied, than other people. As to Advena’s simple statement that Miss Cameron had made a second choice of the Doctor, changing her mind, as far as Mrs. Murchison could see, with out rhyme or reason, that Mrs. Murchison took leave to find a very poor explanation. Advena’s own behaviour toward the rejection is one of the things which her mother declares, probably truly, that she never will understand. To pick up a man in the actual fling of being thrown over, will never, in Mrs. Murchison’s eyes, constitute a decorous proceeding. I suppose she thinks the creature might have been made to wait at least until he had found his feet. She professes to cherish no antagonism to her future son-in-law on this account, although, as she says, it’s a queer way to come into a family; and she makes no secret of her belief that Miss Cameron showed excellent judgment in doing as she did, however that far-seeing woman came to have the opportunity.
Hesketh had sailed before Lorne left his room, to return in June to those privileges and prospects of citizenship which he so eminently deserves to enjoy. When her brother’s convalescence and departure for Florida had untied her tongue, Stella widely proclaimed her opinion that Mr. Hesketh’s engagement to Miss Milburn was the most suitable thing that could be
imagined or desired. We know the youngest Miss Murchison to be inclined to impulsive views; but it would be safe, I think, to follow her here. Now that the question no longer circles in the actual vortex of Elgin politics Mr. Octavius Milburn’s attitude toward the conditions of imperial connection has become almost as mellow as ever. Circumstances may arise any day, however, to stir up that latent bitterness which is so potential in him: and then I fear there will be no restraining him from again attacking Wallingham in the papers.
Henry Cruickshank, growing old in his eminence and less secure, perhaps, in the increasing conflict of loud voices, of his own grasp of the ultimate best, fearing too, no doubt, the approach of that cynicism which, moral or immoral, is the real hoar of age, wrote to young Murchison while he was still examining the problems of the United States with the half heart of the alien, and offered him a partnership. The terms were so simple and advantageous as only to be explicable on the grounds I have mentioned, though no phrase suggested them in the brief formulas of the letter, in which one is tempted to find the individual parallel of certain propositions of a great government also growing old. The offer was accepted, not without emotion, and there, too, it would be good to trace the parallel, were we permitted; but for that it is too soon, or perhaps it is too late. Here, for Lorne and for his country, we lose the thread of destiny. The shuttles fly, weaving the will of the nations, with a skein for ever dipped again; and he goes forth to his share in the task among those by whose hand and direction the pattern and the colours will be made.
BY JANETTE TURNER HOSPITAL
O
ne might think that a 1904 novel about Canadian politics would present itself today as a curio: dated, quaint, but nevertheless of historical interest. To make such a judgment of Sara Jeannette Duncan’s work, how ever, would be as foolish and inaccurate as to consider
Emma
passé because marriage is no longer the only suitable pursuit for young women. Jane Austen springs to mind as one reads
The Imperialist
, for it is a witty novel of manners whose finely nuanced observations of political foibles and social vanities transcend time and place. In a sense, we all live in the little town of Elgin, Ontario.
Nor are the political and nationalist concerns of the citizens of Elgin at the turn of the century as dated as one might expect. For those citizens, and for Duncan, the term “imperialist” had a specific political and economic meaning. The imperialists believed that trade preferences should follow the lines of historical and emotional allegiance rather than those of geography; in other words, that Canada should support favourable trade ties with England, and should be very wary indeed of throwing in its commercial future with the United
States. This continues to have a decidedly familiar ring to Canadian readers, and variations on Lorne Murchison’s passionate election speech to the citizens of Elgin will very likely recur as often in the future as they have in the past.
But the alternative before Canada is not a mere choice of markets; we are confronted with a much graver issue. In this matter of dealing with our neighbour our very existence is involved. If we would preserve ourselves as a nation, it has become our business, not only to reject American overtures … but to keenly watch and actively resist American influence, as it already threatens us through the common channels of life and energy. We often say that we fear no invasion from the south, but the armies of the south have already crossed the border….
The question of the hour for us … is deeper than any balance of trade can indicate, wider than any department of statistics can prove … The question that underlies this decision for Canada is that of the whole stamp and character of her future existence.
Today
The Imperialist
seems remarkably foresighted in predicting England’s economic decline and the shift of energy, initiative, and fiscal strength to its former colonies. But the reviewers of the time could not conceive of political and monetary intelligence residing in a woman, even if she did have the distinction of being the first female journalist to work in the editorial office of the Toronto
Globe
(writing her column, tellingly, under the pseudonym Garth Grafton), and even if she was one of the first two women in the parliamentary press corps.
“Even when our sisters and wives make a conscious effort to compass the mystery [of politics],” wrote the
Globe
reviewer without intentional self-parody “their success is but partial. That is about all that could be said of the political passages of
The Imperialist
.” And
Canadian Magazine
noted that the theme of imperialism was “a huge undertaking for any author, especially a woman, and if the reader finds difficulty in seeing clearly what [Duncan] is trying to say, he will kindly remember that a woman attempting politics must be judged leniently.”
In a pattern by no means unfamiliar to Canada’s contemporary novelists, Duncan had to console herself with the much more favourable
New York Times
review, but then she had already learned that the only way to get a position at the Toronto
Globe
was to get one first at
The Washington Post
.
Biographies have made us familiar with the author’s adventurous life: the childhood in Brantford, Ontario; the large family; the sibling deaths; the daring forays into American journalism in New Orleans and Washington; the return to Canada with stints at the
Globe
, the Montreal
Week
, the Ottawa parliamentary beat; the marriage to Everard Cotes, curator of the Indian Museum in Calcutta; the life henceforth spent shuttling back and forth between India and England; and the writing, the one connecting thread in a much-dislocated existence. Nineteen novels were produced, and of these
The Imperialist
, the only one set in Canada, is outstandingly the best. Ironically, not a word of it was actually written in this country. The novel, so confident in its Canadianness and so passionate in its author’s sense of Canadian identity, was begun in England late in 1901, and finished at Simla in the foothills of the Himalayas. By that time, Duncan had been living in India for ten years and had that sharpness of focus,
that detailed accuracy of recall, and that intensity of affection for a place and a time that only distance and loss can bring.
The Imperialist
is a novel about passionate yearning and about the way in which intense longings are often thwarted by concepts of duty. It is about idealism and the inevitable poignant bruising of ideals against abrasive realities. It is, in a sense, about the author’s pining for Canada while marital obligation kept her in India. Duncan had idealized the exotic life of foreign travel, yet looking out on the Himalayan foothills, she found that Anglo-Indian life under the Raj was smaller and pettier than life in Brantford, Ontario. She longed for home and recreated it.
In Elgin, all the significant people yearn for something that will never be quite attainable. The yearning itself is like a private treasure to which they cling tenaciously; they will damn their own chances of happiness in its interest. Yearning seems more important than attainment. The large Murchison family yearns for a special kind of distinction in the town, and so cherishes its imposing house (in spite of the financial anxiety and the constant labour it involves). The Murchisons also cherish the physical and social distinction of being “on the edge of town” though the family members are conscious that this means walking a fine line. The Murchisons “had produced nothing abnormal, but they had to prove that they weren’t going to.” Lorne Murchison, eldest son and political candidate, the “imperialist” of the title, has such a pure and intense vision for the future of Canada that it overrides all political pragmatism and costs him the support of his own party. Advena Murchison and Hugh Finlay, the intellectual and high-minded lovers, have so exalted a view of sublimation and sacrifice that they would perversely commit their own lives and the lives of several others to a course of misery except
for a comic accident of fate. In this novel, the pretensions and blindnesses of visionaries are gently pricked, but visions are still acknowledged to be splendid energizing things.
Visions are also subject to the acute eye of the much-travelled comparativist, and the author’s
aperçus
keep giving the reader little shocks of delight. Perhaps Duncan had in mind Henry James (whom she knew) and herself when she made this precise observation of differing American and Canadian attitudes to England:
It is the American who takes up his appreciative residence in England. He comes as a foreigner, observant, amused, having disclaimed responsibility for a hundred years. His detachment is as complete as it would be in Italy, with the added pleasure of easy comprehension. But homecomers from Greater Britain [i.e., the British colonial empire, including Canada] have never been cut off, still feel their uneasy share in all that is, and draw a long breath of relief as they turn again to their life in the lands where they found wider scope and different opportunities, and that new quality in the blood which made them different men.
Duncan was very conscious of “that new quality in the blood.” Proudly Canadian, she suffered from no lack of a sense of clear cultural identity, and the calibration of the subtle shadings that distinguish Canadian, English, and American ways of seeing is an abiding preoccupation of her writing. Her instinct is to debunk, to prick pretensions on all sides, but her ironic wit is always tempered with affection and gentleness. She notes the mild culture shock of the Elgin merchants on a trade delegation to London, the slight blow to their habitual self-esteem;
she is also, however, aware of the resilience, the self-reliance, the “new quality in the blood” that keeps those Elgin heads held high. No one has better expressed the simultaneous sense of colonial malaise and slightly amused indifference that the Canadian or Australian or Indian feels for English snobbery and class-consciousness:
They were influential fellows at home, who had lived for years in the atmosphere of appreciation that surrounds success; their movements were observed in the newspapers; their names stood for wide interests, big concerns…. It may very well be that they looked for some echo of what they were accustomed to, and were a little dashed not to find it … no heads turned in the temperance hotel when they came into the dining-room…. It would be misleading to say that they were humbled; I doubt whether they even felt their relativity, whether they ever dropped consciously, there in the Bloomsbury hotel, into their places in the great scale of London. Observing the scale, recognizing it, they held themselves unaffected by it; they kept, in a curious, positive way, the integrity of what they were and what they had come for; they maintained their point of view. So much must be conceded. The Empire produces a family resemblance, but here and there, when oceans intervene, a different mould of the spirit.
Sara Jeannette Duncan was herself cast in “a different mould of the spirit,” and was its proud celebrant. Daydreaming in a town where “no one could dream with impunity … except in bed,” quietly persistent in her difference while knowing that “a difference is the one thing a small community … will
not tolerate,” the girl who grew up in Brantford has captured the essence of small-town Ontario and put it permanently and lovingly on the literary stage.
The Imperialist
is an expatriate’s testament of desire, her tribute to her home and her country.