The Masques of Ottawa | Page 4

out of these little idiosyncracies, just
as legends wove themselves about John A. Macdonald, and Laurier. I
remember that the clothes Meighen wore the day I shook hands with
him were dingy brown that made him look like a moulting bobolink;
that he had not taken the trouble to shave because a sleeping car is such
an awkward place for a razor, and it is much better for a Premier to
wear bristles than court-plaster. Some one will be sure to remark that
the Premier travels in a private car. Arthur Meighen never seems like
that sort of Premier. One would almost expect him to choose an upper
berth because some less lean and agile person might need the lower.

No doubt much of Meighen's democratic gaucherie about garments
was abandoned at the Imperial Conference. He never could have worn
a dingy brown suit when he got the freedom of London. Upon some
State occasion the Premier may have worn the Windsor uniform. Not
without scruples. That uniform may not misbecome constricted Mr.
Meighen more than it did the spare Mr. Foster, or the lean Mr. Rowell.
But the Windsor uniform spells conformity, colonialism, Empire--not
commonwealth. And Mr. Meighen went to London to represent the
Commonwealth of Canada.
We were told by cable that the Premier took part in most of the sports
on board ship, and of course lost most of the events. Well, there is no
harm in a Premier beginning to be whimsically athletic near fifty. But,
unless now and then he could manage to win something it was
obviously only an attempt to make him interesting to the cables, on the
principle that a polar bear is prodded in a cage to make him perform for
the "lidy".
Weeks before he went the Premier foreshadowed the attitude he would
take at the Conference. Again and again it was repeated as he slowly
left the country, even pausing at Quebec to say it again; and thereafter
the cables took it up, repeating it over and over, until the people of
Canada began to suspect that the correspondents were almost as hard
up for news as some of them were during the war. Mr. Grattan O'Leary
knew he had a difficult character to popularize on the cable; a man who
until he became Premier, outside of Parliament was as diffident as the
hero in "She Stoops to Conquer"; at High School in the little stone town
of St. Mary's, Ont., so studious that he never could catch a baseball that
wanted to drop into his pocket; at college immersed in mathematics, at
Osgoode in law; as a young man opening a forlorn office in Portage,
still a sort of lariat town, when Meighen was shy of even a family
saddle-horse.
In Portage Meighen lived in a weather-boarded frame house, during the
time when in bigger Western towns other politicians were putting up
little palaces, causing their electoral enemies to wonder where they got
the money. In Ottawa when he became Premier he lived in one of the

plainest houses, with no decorative fads, no celebrated pictures, not
much music, but plenty of room for the juveniles; described by a
political writer who was there the evening of the appointment as "just
comfortable." He was at home that evening, discussing simply a
number of public matters, but not a word about the Premiership, till as
the visitor was rising to go and said, "Oh, by the way--permit me to
congratulate you," Meighen broke into his bewildered smile and said
bluntly, "Thanks!" He was not outwardly impressed by the least
impressive Premiership that ever happened. The nation had nothing to
do with it. Meighen had not been elected. He had drafted no platform
before he became Premier. He did it afterwards. All that happened was
a change of captains on a ship.
Meighen had been spiritual adviser to Borden in other remakings of his
Cabinet. This time he was not consulted. Sir Robert never had such a
predicament. In the words of the old song, "There were three crows sat
on a tree." The names of the crows were--White, Meighen, Rowell.
Their common name was Barkis. Which should it be? White
echoed--Which? So did they all. Great affairs are sometimes so
childlike. Meighen was willing to accept White as Premier. White had
been for years in the spotlight. Did he hope, or expect, that Sir Thomas
would refuse? We are not told. But he must have surmised. In any case
White was off the ship.
The choice came down to two. Here again it was a spotlight man--or
Meighen. Rowell had become famous when Meighen had not; but he
was a converted Liberal, and of only three years' experience. The
necessity was obvious. Sir Thomas, declining the leadership, must have
recommended Meighen,