Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 692
Old of course: for my own sixty-seventh birthday fell in when I was at Victoria on December 30, 1936.
It is amazing how the years slip away. I had got old and hadn’t noticed it. And, of course, there is always the regret for the wasted time, the things that one might have done.
Look at the Emperor Charles the Fifth of Spain; long before he was my age he had ruled over half Europe and retired into a monastery to pray, and I haven’t even started; and George III! At my age he’d been crazy twice, and had got over it. I haven’t.
Someone in Vancouver said to me that it made him feel old to think that so many of his friends are dead. I told him I had got past that. I am old enough to expect them to be dead and they keep getting resurrected. My trouble is resurrection. They suddenly appear in clubs and hotels and say, “Don’t you know me?” and I answer, “Go away; dematerialize yourself; don’t haunt me.”
I am sure that lots of other men of my age suffer from these cases of premature resurrection. Some of them peculiarly distressing. I recall the incident of my old friend Boygate of Montreal. I am sure he won’t mind, I mean wouldn’t have minded, my mentioning his name thus in print. I came into my Club one afternoon (the University Club, next door to McGill University, Quebec License), and it suddenly occurred to me how greatly I missed Boygate now that he was gone: I wished that while he was still with us, I had seen more of him, had taken more occasion to sit with him round the Club, of which he, like myself, was a charter member. I realized that I had always been too self-centred, too much in a hurry to break away, had all too little appreciated the company of my friends. Ah, well, too late to change now! And just while I was feeling these regrets, in he walked! “Boygate!” I exclaimed, shaking hands warmly while my eyes almost filled with tears. To think of it! Here he was alive again, either resurrected or never dead, it didn’t matter which. “Hullo! hullo!” he said warmly in return, “come on up to the lounge and let’s sit and have a talk.” “Boygate,” I said, looking at my watch, as the world of customary habit closed round me, “I’m sorry! I have to rush off to a meeting, — another time, eh?”
So what was the use of his resurrection after all. Life is like that. It’s well they don’t come back.
But mentioning my University, where I worked so long (thirty-five years) reminds me of one pleasant feature of my lecture tour. My old students! There they were all over the West, in every town, — waiting for me, in some cases I was told, laying for me. But in any case they were there. Not so many graduates perhaps from the faculty of Liberal Arts: Arts men find it harder to get work in the West now that there are so few livery stables. But men of the other faculties everywhere.
I struck, however, one or two perplexing cases of the identity of former students. Thus at Fort William, at the very beginning of my lecture tour, the barber who cut my hair called me “Professor”. He said, “I’ll trim it a little full over the ear, eh, Professor?” And I said, “Yes, either that or trim the ear.” Then noticing that he called me “Professor”, I said, “Are you from McGill?” He answered, “Yes, sir, I left in 1913, came right here to Fort William, got a chair here in six months and have done fine ever since! Two other boys came on the same train and have chairs down the street!” That looked fine as academic advancement, three appointments to chairs in one and the same town! But afterwards, I didn’t feel so sure, my ears were pretty well shrouded with towels. He may have said, “Montreal” and not McGill. Anyway, he and the other two boys, he says, are going back for a vacation “to see the old place”, some day, so one can watch for them and see where they go.
I had the pleasure of addressing a good many groups of McGill graduates either at dinners specially organized, or in conjunction with other organizations; I had also the still greater pleasure of meeting a lot of them personally in individual fashion. In some places McGill graduates are as thick as Milton’s autumn leaves in Vallombrosa (Saskatchewan), in other places rare as four-leaf clovers. But there are always a few: and they stand everywhere high in social credit, except in Alberta, where they keep away from it. Relatively to its size, there are more McGill men in Regina — the headquarters of the Police — than anywhere else. This may be just old habit: it’s hard to break with old associations.
Speaking in a general way one may say that in the West McGill predominates in medicine, Queen’s in the Church and Toronto at (not behind) the Bar. Thus McGill attends the sick and when McGill medicine has done its work, Queen’s buries them and when they’re buried Toronto divides up their estates among the three. It is what Adam Smith so happily called the Division of Labour.
I must not presume to give a full account of the various meetings at which I was the chief figure — what they call in the London pantomime the Principal Boy. But I may say a word or two here of the character of some of the gatherings.
At the dinner at Port Arthur it was realized that there weren’t enough graduates to go round. We made up a big dinner however by taking in graduates of Toronto, of Queen’s and of various American colleges. At first in the dark you couldn’t tell them apart. But presently you could see which were the Queen’s men by the way they stood up at once for Grace while the McGill men were still asking ‘What’s the matter?’ But when the drinks came round there was no doubt which was the senior college.
At Regina, which is as I say a great McGill centre, we had a very grand dinner, heavily attended and roaring with enthusiasm. I spoke, I remember, on The Value of Imbecility in Education. It was more or less the same kind of talk that I had given at Port Arthur under the title Our National Heritage. But I soon discovered and I recommend to others the proper method of composing a McGill speech. Announce it in the press under some such title as Spontaneous Idealism in Education. But when you speak, let the talk run something like this:
“Some of you, I suppose, can still recall dear old Dean Pat Johnson; let me tell you a story about Pat (Hoorah!) (Cheers) .... and before I touch on Idealism, gentlemen, I’d like to tell another story about King Cook, the janitor of the Medical Building (shouts of joy) .... Some of you — nearly all of you — recall Dean Moyse, Charlie Moyse! (Applause! shouts! tears! .... Someone tries to start Hail! Alma Mater — but gets it too low) .... And before I sit down, gentlemen, I’d like to ask you to rise, if you can — and drink if you can still hold anything to old McGill — applause! — dear old McGill.” (Shouts — our Alma Mater.)
Next day the Regina paper said, “Professor Leacock’s talk last night to the McGill graduates, a searching Analysis of Education (a subject entirely novel to them) was followed with rapt attention. The chairman in thanking the professor said that he had never listened to anything like it before and anyway he hadn’t listened to more than the first few sentences.”
But at Edmonton it was the other way. The graduates seemed overwhelmingly to be all Toronto men. As I have the good luck to be a graduate of four different Canadian Universities, I am able to be all things to all men.
So we had, at the Macdonald Hotel, a very grand Varsity Dinner. I made the same speech as at the McGill Dinner in Regina, but I called it “Our Ocean Empire.” I changed the text a little to make it run:
“I don’t know how many of you present remember our old president Sir Daniel Wilson (Cheers — we do!) — We used to call him “Dan” (shouts— “we did”) — and some of you recall Professor Chapman (Yes! Yes!) or perhaps I’d better just say Chappie (Hoorah!) .... At any rate I want to say that Old Varsity is just the same grand old college (Cheers and College Yells — V-A-R-S-I-T-Y).
* * * * *
I told a great many stories of old college days, at dinners and incidentally and obiter, but none that called forth kinder memory and warmer affection than my reminiscences of the lectures of a byegone and beloved Dean of Arts.
The Dean, as every one remembers, loved lecturing, in college and out of it. It was his life. And he never lectured with greater zest than when some local society invited him to deliver his famous lecture on Lichfield Cathedral. I always knew when such a night was coming because the Dean would spend that day busy over a huge map of the cathedral, with compass and pointers, remeasuring it. A real lecturer has a sense of responsibility. An error of the eighth of an inch might queer the lecture. The next morning he would come bustling into his office smiling and rosy with his triumph of the night before. “How did your lecture go, Mr. Dean?” I asked. “Marvelous! simply marvelous! never gave a better — or perhaps, if that’s exaggerating — not often. Everything just right — map up on the wall — good light on it — hall almost dark — lectured on, didn’t notice the time, looked at my watch — suddenly found I’d been lecturing an hour and a half! ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen,’ I said, ‘shall I go on?’ not a sound! absolutely absorbed! you could have heard a pin drop! lectured on another hour and then said, “Well, I’m afraid I must stop,” and had the lights turned on! The audience seemed just to start up into life — just like out of a dream! I heard one man near me say, ‘Good God! has he finished?’” ....
With that the Dean rolled up Lichfield Cathedral and put it away for the next time. But I used often to think how terrible it would have been if some one had dropped a pin during his lecture! What a crash!
Talking of stories to entertain an audience, I told one several times in the West that seemed to me amazingly funny, and all the more so because it was literally and exactly true, and needed no alteration or embellishment.
I always told it as if it had happened a night or two before in a rival town. People like that best. Local jokes beat all others. In Orillia, where I live, we like a joke on Barrie; and in ancient Rome they enjoyed a crack at Carthage.
But as a matter of fact this incident happened in the Ladies’ Club of a great American city, a beautiful new building, with all the equipment brand new, and a lovely auditorium with a brand new loud-speaker.
Before the meeting the lady-President said to me, “I must apologize for our loud-speaker. Don’t mind if it starts to make queer noises. There’s something wrong with it, but we don’t just know what it is.”
No, she didn’t know, and I didn’t know, and they didn’t know what was wrong with it, but a little later we all knew. The trouble was that there were two plumbers in the basement under the platform trying to connect up a furnace.
So the lady-President in beginning the meeting said, —
“Ladies, before I introduce the speaker of today I want to say a few words of warning. Our loud-speaker was just installed and I’m afraid,” — and here she assumed a manner of charming apology,— “I’m afraid it isn’t behaving itself very well”....
At that moment the loud-speaker broke in with a giant voice, —
“Get something under her and lift her up, — she’s not working right.”
There was a frozen silence, with ripples of giggles breaking the ice.
The lady-President said, —
“Ladies, I’m afraid” ....
And the loud-speaker shouted, —
“Stick a crowbar under her and get a purchase on her” ....
“Ladies, I must ask someone” ....
“She’s full of ashes, heave her up and shake the ashes out of her” ....
“Ladies, will someone please” ....
“It’s her tubes, — they’re not connected” ....
Then there was a click! Someone with emergency brains had cut off something. And in the dead silence that followed, I was able to begin my lecture on “Recent Advances in Human Knowledge.”
* * * * *
Such incidents unfortunately are few. Next time I go on a lecture tour I’ll carry my own plumbers, and my own barbers, and my own resurrection men, and have a good time all the time.
* * * * *
But to return, one final moment, to my college audiences. I found that college men — years out of college — grave and dignified, heavy and tiresome, are never tired of hearing again the old yarns of their college days and losing weight and dignity as they listen.... It is a solvent that breaks up the heavy sediment the years have laid and shows again the bright surface of what once was.
All that reflects in a broad way what we call “the college spirit”. You can’t call it forth by giving it a lecture on “Recent Progress of Thermodynamics.” What starts it into life is Memory — the vivifying picture that our imagination conjures up of the Days that Were! Always better and greater than the days that are — that wistful feeling towards the past that each of us carries within him — the call, back through the years, to a lost identity.
This college unity, college spirit, and with it the kindred link of the professions that spring from the college, is to my thinking the most binding tie that unites our otherwise divided country. In our economic life all is disunion — province against province and all against the Dominion, but we at least still have the bond of union represented by the common culture of our universities.
* * * * *
With that I leave My Discovery of the West.
FINIS.
Our British Empire
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER I
The Story of the Empire
Reaction of America on Britain — Revival of Maritime Spirit — Cabot and the Western Ocean — Newfoundland and the Grand Banks — Pilgrims and Virginians — West India Plantations — Loss of the Atlantic Colonies — The New Empire; Australia; The Cape; India — The Great Peace and the Free Trade Era — Expansion of Europe; Partition of Africa — The Twentieth Century; Imperial Federation and Colonial Nationalism — The Great War of 1914 — The British Commonwealth of Nations
THE rise and development of the British Empire is one of the great features of the world’s history. Its vast extent, its accumulated wealth and latent resources, its close association in language and culture with the United States of America, render it a chief factor in the situation of mankind today. In it and in its external associations lie the chief hopes for mankind tomorrow. As seen by many of us, it offers, especially in the light of these outside relations, a basis for an orderly and stable world of justice, peace and plenty.
Nor was this ever so true as now. In our present distressed outlook, all prospect of a world-wide federation is for the time lost. Such a bond of union would be a rope of sand. But there is real hope in the continued unity of the British Empire, associated with the United States, already deeply based in common sacrifice and mutual trust. To this fellowship honest men may rally, and from it peace spread about the world. It would seem, therefore, a proper moment to attempt a survey and presentation of the British Empire designed, in its degree, to present this prospect and to advance this hope.
The discovery of America woke the English people again to their old-time habit of the sea. This reaction of America upon England, as a consequence of their common history, has never been properly emphasized, never truly realized, as a factor in the rise of the British Empire. We always speak of America as the child of England, and of South Africa and Australia and New Zealand as later children of the mother country, without realizing that in a certain sense and to a certain degree modern Britain is the child of America, and at least is largely stamped with the lineaments of its overseas history.
The discovery of America remade English maritime life. Overseas adventure culled and winnowed the nation. English — we may here say British — character was refashioned in outlandish places and on the seven seas. If Clive made India, India first made Clive. Similarly the French in New France christianized the Indians but the Indians also Indianized the French. Paris taught the world its manners; but Dr. Franklin retaught Paris simplicity. The fate of America was in part settled at Minden and Quiberon and Plassey but the fate of England and France was in part settled on the Plains of Abraham. The Iroquois Five Nations helped to make the French Revolution; for they blocked the path of French occupancy of the best of America and thus helped to break the monarchy. In a still more subtle sense, unprovable but evident enough, British character responded more and more to the reaction of overseas adventure and overseas interest. The younger sons, with the quickened intelligence that goes with adversity, blew like thistledown over the open fields of opportunity. Navigation stimulated British science. Commerce made a new London, where even the simplest stay-at-home might see from his counting-house the forest of masts in the Thames, or wander, if he would, among the bales and boxes of the cargoes of aromatic spices of the East.
This reaction affected all aspects of national life. The Puritan brought to America his deadly seriousness and his long-winded piety, reimported back to England two centuries later in the chastened form of American humour. The quarrel over liberty and taxation began in America and spread to England, and culminated in the Reform Bill of 1832. A generation of English children stalked warily with Fenimore Cooper through the American forest, fearing to snap a twig. Another generation bedewed the pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin with its tears. After Uncle Tom and the Civil War the Massachusetts Public school, founded two and a half centuries before, came home to England in the Education Act of 1870. It had turned out that soldiers who can read and write are better equipped for war than illiterate peasants, and so England, with tardy footsteps, followed America. In our own immediate hour, the Hollywood film of the West, the sheriff’s posse, the Nevada saloon and the pursuit through the sage-brush, are bread and meat to the youth of England, while their seniors learn from America to eat Thanksgiving Turkey and to suffer oratory at lunch.... All this union and conjunction and reaction would be too obvious for narration, if we had not spent about a century in emphasizing differences, imagining grievances, exaggerating our disputes, with a mimic fight of a Genuine Eagle and a Real Lion as a side show to our politics.
