It was a new world, where nobody skated in the open, because of the impossibility of keeping the ice free from snow, and where skating was so universal an accomplishment that in the rinks people danced on skates as naturally as on their feet in a ballroom.
One soon took for granted the monstrous cold, learned to swathe in furs every time one left the house, even if it was only to go to the post, to wear thin boots, because they were always covered with “arctics” when one went out, and thin underclothing because one’s furs were so thick out of doors, and the houses so furiously hot indoors; to have double windows always closed, and hot air flowing into the room till the temperature reached 70° and over.
It is no wonder that ice-cream, as they call it, is a feature at dinner in winter in a Canadian hotel.
Outside, all the land was white, and all the sky was blue. Wrapped up in furs, people so despised the intense cold that there was not one closed sleigh—at Montreal in winter all the cabs were sleighs. By day we sleighed up the mountain for tobogganing and came back in time for tea-parties; by night we sleighed to dances or picnics. The merry jingle of sleigh-bells was never out of one’s ears; and everything was so delightfully simple—it was always beer and not champagne—and every one took an interest in Australia and Colonial poetry. The tea-parties were generally impromptus got up on the telephone. Every one in Montreal had a telephone, though it was only the beginning of 1889.
Lighthall, the Canadian littérateur, came to call upon us the very first afternoon that we were in Montreal, and he introduced us to our life-long friends, the Robert Reids, and the George Washington Stephens’s. Mrs. Reid and Mrs. Stephens were sisters. Mr. Stephens, the Astor of Montreal, shortly afterwards became Treasurer of the Colony. Lighthall introduced us also to Sir William Van Horne, the President of the great Canadian Pacific Railway, which led to important results. We only stayed in Canada a month then, but that was sufficient to convince me that I did not want to live in a climate where the cold was as dangerous as a tiger. It was brought home to me in an extraordinary way. I was out walking with Mrs. Reid’s daughter, coming back from a tea-party one evening. We saw a drunken man lying in the gutter. She said, “We must get a sleigh and take that drunk to the police-station. He will be dead in an hour if he lies there.”
When roused, he was sufficiently coherent to tell us where he lived, and we took him home. The cold was so intense that she found one of her ears frost-bitten before she got home; she had gone out in an ordinary hat instead of a fur cap, because it was a tea-party and near home. The unexpected delay in the open air to rouse the man, and driving him home, made her pay the penalty of risking a frost-bite. We knew that it was frost-bitten, because it had turned as white as if it had been powdered. The policeman took up a handful of snow, and rubbed it for her—another act of ordinary good Samaritanism in Canada.
We went straight down from Canada to Washington to see the change of Administration from President Cleveland’s regime to President Harrison’s. The climatic contrast was strong; Washington was as warm as Rome. Our arctics and furs looked simply idiotic when we arrived in the station.
The change of Administration in the United States is invested with a good deal of magnificence. All the important people in America, who can spare the time, go to Washington for it. There were many functions during our visit. We were President Cleveland’s guests at his farewell-party, and went to all the Harrison functions. Mrs. Cleveland had a delightful personality; she was very pretty, very elegant, very gracious, a tall woman, rather suggestive of the beautiful Dowager Lady Dudley, with brilliant dark eyes and a brilliant smile. Cleveland was not a pleasant man to meet. When I knew him he was a very strong man who had become very stout. Everything about him suggested power. His face, in spite of its fleshiness, was very powerful. He had a deliberate, rather ungracious way of speaking, and his silences, accentuated by rather resentful eyes, were worse. But a man who starts to sweep the Augean stable for America needs these qualities; and he undoubtedly improved the tone of the party opposed to him in the State by giving them an opposition which they had to respect. But he had no conscience in foreign politics.
The most interesting house we went to was Colonel John Hay’s. Hay was a millionaire twice over, and had been Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary. He was one of America’s best poets, and no man in the country was more renowned for his personal charm or his lofty character. He was afterwards Secretary of State, and Ambassador to Great Britain, and could have been either then, if President Harrison had been able to overcome Hay’s rooted objection to office. And Adalbert Hay, the American Consul-general, who did so much for captive Britons in the Boer War, was his son.
At Hay’s house you met alike the most famous politicians, the most famous members of the Diplomatic Corps, and the most famous authors and artists in America. There we met all the most distinguished members, perhaps I might say the leaders, of the Republican Party.