Conor, where are you, you overpaid, overwhiskered boy?”
“I’m at my desk, sir.”
“Well, I need that list of—”
“Here it is,” Conor said, handing D’Arcy McGee a piece of paper.
“That’s better.”
Conor was back in Montreal, riding the tidal wave of McGee’s bombast. McGee had just read a proclamation written by General O’Neill, the Fenian commander-in-chief in New York, and he was furious. “‘Fifty thousand are ready’—what nonsense,” he bellowed. “I’d ignore the blather, but this talk of liberation can incite the people, the irresponsible meddlers.”
McGee was barely five foot three, but when on a rant, he seemed to tower over everyone—even Conor, who stood at least six inches taller. McGee was quick-tempered and fiery. Volcanic. He was constantly dishevelled, in his baggy suits, stained shirts and undone ties. His black hair was persistently askew and his beard in dire need of trimming. His dirty fingernails often sifted through his curly hair. His wife, Mary, told him he looked like an unmade bed. In fact, when once asked if she worried about him away from home so often with many single women about, she answered, “I take great comfort in his ugliness.”
McGee was running for re-election in Montreal West. Part of the riding was St. Ann’s parish in the Irish community of Griffintown, clustered between the railway tracks and the Lachine Canal. It was Montreal’s version of Ottawa’s Lowertown, but with more people, more spirit, more energy—and more tragedy. Typhus and cholera built up in the open sewers and spread through the crowded homes. In 1852 a fire destroyed half the buildings and left five hundred families homeless. Griffintown sat on low-lying land and was prone to flooding. The worst flood was in 1857, the year D’Arcy McGee moved to Montreal. McGee told his friend Father Dowd that God seemed to watch over Griffintown with Old Testament fury.
Men from Griffintown dug the canals, built the bridges and laid the railways. They worked terribly long days, raised strong families, kept the breweries and distilleries alive on Saturday nights and went to mass on Sunday mornings. They were D’Arcy McGee’s people. They welcomed him into their midst. They supported and encouraged him, and what was most important, voted for him with rare consistency. McGee had never lost an election in Griffintown. In fact, he had won a few by acclamation. But during the first election of the new Dominion, something was going dreadfully wrong. Griffintown was in turmoil, the people rebellious, and the little Irishman was in the campaign battle of his life. Conor noticed it as soon as he arrived from Ottawa. The city was tense, the people in Griffintown edgy.
“Think nothing of it, my bucko,” McGee told him. “It’s the weather. It’s so hot here that even the streets seethe with anger.”
Conor knew the problem was much deeper than that. By constantly attacking the Fenian movement, not only had McGee infuriated many in Griffintown, but he had given his opponent, Bernard Devlin, an election issue. “D’Arcy McGee works with Orangemen,” Devlin told the crowds. “He is anti-Ireland and anti-Catholic.”
McGee relished a good fight and revelled in the rough and tumble of an election, but the intensity of the Montreal campaign left him depressed. “Why do Irishmen have to fight each other with the fire of the devil?”
Conor knew it was a rhetorical question. He was learning when to listen and not answer—which with D’Arcy McGee was most of the time. Still, he thought he would try a line on him. “Sir, why not say that Fenianism is a rung on a ladder leading nowhere?”
McGee thought for a moment. “Change it to ‘intolerance’ and make it the first rung, and I’ll use it.” He smiled. “‘Intolerance is the first rung on a ladder leading nowhere.’ Have you been thinking of that one for a while?”
Conor tried to act nonchalant. McGee liked his sentence. He might even use it!
“Well done, boyo,” he said. “Well done.”
“Sir, I would prefer that you not call me that.”
McGee looked stunned. “I call you every name under the sun.”
“But not ‘boy’ or ‘boyo.’ And could you save ‘my bucko’ for your opponents?”
“Toughening, are we? Or getting more sensitive?”
“I went through some changes in Ottawa.”
There was a softening in the air. “How’s your da?” McGee asked.
“Fine, I guess,” Conor answered rather sheepishly.
“That’s not what I hear.”
“What do you know?” Conor asked tentatively.
“If you think he’s fine, I obviously know more than you.”
Conor just nodded.
“Listen to me, son. He deserves better.”
Better than what? Conor thought. Me? He felt like saying that Thomas hated McGee with particular passion, but he supposed he knew that. “We had a talk,” he said simply. “A fight, actually.”
“I heard it was more than a fight.”
“That’s true, I guess, but now I know more about what he went through.”
“You do, eh? No one can really know what an immigrant has been through. What pain. What sacrifices. Once you remember that, the better.”
He held his gaze on Conor so that the word “sacrifices” would not be missed. Then he was the old McGee again. He brandished a piece of paper with Conor’s writing on it. “Now get back to work. I’ll call you no names, but I swear it’s a wonder I keep you around. Your spelling is atrocious and your grammar worse.”
DURING the Montreal election, Conor stayed at Scanlon’s Hotel. Charles Scanlon was a McGee supporter, and he provided the room for a pittance. On free evenings, Conor pored over books and articles. He was reading Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. He liked the story, but most of all he liked that Verne was the most popular writer this year and that this was the book people were talking about. When he read, he also practised the language. McGee was right: he had much to learn about spelling and grammar. But it was mispronunciation that he worried about the most. He worked on this as he worked on everything else: with resourceful, and sometimes painful, diligence. In the privacy of his room, he would read each word out loud to ensure he said it properly. If he wasn’t sure of a word’s pronunciation, he would ask Mr. McGee.
A year ago, he called someone a “retrobate” trying to use a D’Arcy McGee–type word. “It’s ‘reprobate,’ you young fool,” McGee corrected him. And he called Conor a reprobate for a week. He was a tough teacher, but Conor was learning.
While D’Arcy McGee could help Conor with words, he was little help with etiquette. His table manners were atrocious. McGee ate with the same bluster as he conversed: elbows flapping like birds’ wings and his mouth overflowing with food. Conor was determined to learn the ways of the table. Sometimes he was invited to important dinners, but he would be seated at a table in the back with other assistants or with the press. He always watched John A. Macdonald. Macdonald seemed comfortable at the table. He was somewhat studied, but graceful and polished. But his good behaviour had its limits. By the dessert course, he often shocked the ladies with his stories and questionable jokes.
A mother might have taught Conor the niceties of manners and deportment. He pictured Margaret O’Dea hovering over her young son, sternly pointing at his elbows on the table as he sipped a root vegetable soup she had just prepared. The room would be tidy, with feminine touches: lace curtains, cut glass and maybe even figurines. He would obediently take his elbows off the table, and she would smile proudly. He imagined her reading to him at night. Could she read? Probably not. But she would have told him stories, nurtured him, comforted him—loved him. Instead, Margaret O’Dea lay on Grosse Isle in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. He had to teach himself.
Once a week when he was in Montreal, Conor walked along St. Catherine Street to dine at the St. Lawrence Hotel. In a freshly pressed suit, starched shirt and perfectly tied cravat, he was the picture of sophistication. He even sported a new walking stick. He would often bring a newspaper to give himself cover while he watched others. He studied the placement of the cutlery and when and how it should be used.
The hotel had a large American clientele. During the Civil War, many prominent Southerners stayed there. It was apparently the only bar in Montreal that served mint juleps. John Wilkes Booth had been a guest just before heading to Washington’s Ford’s Theatre to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Conor was no Southern sympathizer, but he admired the table manners of Southern gentlemen.
Conor watched a man in a white linen suit sniff the cork of a red Bordeaux—claret, the English said. The waiter poured an inch. The customer held the glass up, rolled the liquid in the glass and studied it in the light. He ate a small piece of bread. Then, finally, he took a sip. He seemed to savour his performance as much as he did the wine. He nodded at the waiter, who then poured the wine. This was hardly the way you served a grunt at Lapierre’s. Lesson for the night: choosing a wine is a ritual as much as a task. He would have to learn more about this. He studied how Americans cut their meat and then transferred their fork to their right hand to eat. The English would keep the fork in their left hand. He adopted the English system.
The waiter was a friend of his, a French Canadian who pretended to know the bayou when he addressed the Southerners. It was good for tips. He told Conor that the special tonight was beefsteak and onions.
“What’s special about it?”
“The price. I can get you an extra piece. No one will notice. The chef is already into the cooking wine.”
Lesson number two: it’s not just what you know, it’s who you know. But Conor already knew that.