Canadian Houses
of Romance

by

XV

RIDEAU HALL AND EARNSCLIFFE

OUT of the woods surrounding Bytown, woods that were broken by shelves and gullies of rocks, and surrounded by three rivers, a lumber king, Thomas Mackay, chose an estate of ten thousand acres on a high and splendid point. The Rideau and the Ottawa met there, and he called his house for the former river, Rideau Hall.
     Perhaps the house did not, from the first, play up to its bold setting, but it was a fine Scotch-Canadian structure nevertheless, built of limestone, and two storeys high. It stood far on the outskirts of the energetic lumber and timber village that nearly a century ago was busy on the enormous enterprise of canal-making, which was to link it to Kingston and make Bytown an inland lake-port for fifty years. Ottawa had not been imagined; Canada, as we know it, hardly dreamed of. Mackay’s house stood solitary among the green woodlands with no premonition that, as the decades passed, it might lose its unique identity as a mansion and slip into a succession of many editions to be bound into one volume and called Government House. So successful was it as a mansion that shortly after its occupancy Mr. Mackay was induced by a relative, who wanted to live near the old home, to clear another [page 104] bit of land nearer town, overlooking the Ottawa, and build a similar but smaller house…And this house was Earnscliffe.
     Years passed. Bytown became an important centre, then a city, whose name was changed to Ottawa, and, at last, the capital of a new confederation—the Dominion of Canada.
     The old house was drawn into all this. It was not to be an outstanding mansion for nothing. In 1865 it was leased as the Governor-General’s residence, and two years later was bought outright. Then, indeed, its independent life was over.
     Official residences are generally either wholesale orders to architects, or cumulative growths. Rideau Hall, with not a moment’s hesitation, obediently stepped out of its firm Scotch-Canadian mould and became the small arena for a succession of vice-regal footsteps. Change after change crowded quickly upon it. In 1868, for the coming of Lord Lisgar, who followed the first Governor of the Confederated Provinces, Viscount Monck, a great stone wing was added, gardens with walks and ornamental shrubs were laid out, a conservatory was built, a lodge, and important iron gates, not to speak of a “suitable cottage” for the secretary.
     For Lord Dufferin, a ballroom was added, with a dais at one end, and in the ballroom great chandeliers were hung, windows were set high in the walls, oil paintings appeared—one of the still [page 105] youthful Victoria—and a fine “promenade” was run the length of the new wing…everything as it “was done” in the seventies.
     But the glorious eighties!…The Marquis of Lorne and the Princess Louise hallowed these improvements by their presence. Indeed, they transformed the new ballroom, twinkling then in oil lamps that had succeeded candlelight, into a little court…Ruffles and bustles and wide-swinging skirts, mutton-chopped gentlemen in baggy trousers, bowed and curtseyed before the dais and sauntered through quadrilles, or spun in the dizzy waltz feeling very royal. (“We tried to teach the aides the new reverse, but they thought it an American innovation.”)
     Difficult for the Stanleys to follows royalty! An era, too, of trying changes, such as the telephone, and the new gas for lighting, and the railroads increasing rapidly and going all through the North West, and Sir John A. Macdonald in power and the country simply losing its head…There was little time to improve Government House with so much going on.
     But the Aberdeens made earnest reforms. The drawing-rooms were crowded with puffed sleeves and demi-trains for morning and afternoon meetings…”Are our Domestics happy in our Service?”…”What of Native Industries?”…Lord Aberdeen built a chapel and installed an organ. [page 106]
     The Mintos were keen on winter sports, but not being reformers they left the house, and the open-air rinks and toboggan slides, and the quaint pavilion very much as they found them, and did not even put a fireplace into the cavernous waiting room for the skaters, but kept a sensible box stove for heating, which apparently remains there until this day…Beautiful daughters, and their youthful English friends, make a lovely memory of Rideau Hall during a régime in which the long reign of Victoria ended, and Edward VII came to the throne.
     Earl Grey built a room that is rather like him: panelled high in dark oak, crowded with books and lit by splendid windows that let in the romantic outlines of distant towered Ottawa.
     Then royalty again! When the Duke of Connaught arrived, in 1911, the old Mackay house slipped further and further out of sight under more improvements. A noble entrance front arose, crowned by an Attic pediment bearing the largest stone sculpture of the Royal Arms in existence; an Entrance Hall, paved of marble; a “terrazzo” and wide marble steps leading to the promenade. With her parents a new Princess had come to a new Canada from that which her aunt Louise had known…Let hammers ring and changes be made in Rideau Hall, disgraceful old pile!..We really should build a new Government House!…We are spending enough to do it…Does the Princess Patricia dance the Tango? Suppose Government [page 107] House should ban it!…In 1913 there was strange tension in the air…Then 1914…Clear everything out to make room for the Red Cross…The Princess Pat is embroidering her colours for the flag of her own regiment. Figures in khaki are crowding up and down the spotless Marble Front—every inch of the house is needed.
     The Devonshines came like calm after storm, and ready to listen to conversation. All sorts of plans were drawn up and considered, but none of them happened to touch the life of the old Mackay homestead.
     Then, Lord Byng of Vimy! His wife looked about the gardens and saw that they might be lovelier. After thinking it over she added the one thing which they have always lacked, the thing for which they were obviously intended in a region of waterfalls, rivers, and ridges of splendid stone—a rock garden. And she did a nobler thing than this—she renovated the kitchens.
     Thus Rideau Hall—a story of changing people and régimes—a shabby, rambling place in spite of its new front, a place that any self-respecting “realtor” would despise, because it has few, pitifully few, tiled bathrooms—indeed not one apiece for guests!…A place of small curtseying throngs, shifting and turning through the generations, and yet, at heart, a Canadian—perhaps even a Scotch-Canadian house! [page 108]
     Some faithful and unchanging inmates it possesses. One finds them standing solemnly all over the place, dotted here and there through the labyrinths of rambling rooms: solemn old sets of walnut, towering bedsteads that have loomed over generations of small human heads lying unconscious [page 109] in sleep, polished dressers and stiff Victorian chairs, solid old doors, of the original house, of native wood that gleams in warm reds and browns.
     I thought that here, more than in the portraits of her sovereigns and governors, does the intimate life of the house silently remain.

     When Thomas Mackay built his second, smaller, house, the Scottish lad, who was in after years to draw together the floating threads of Confederation, had not even arrived in the land of his adoption.
     By comparison with that of its ornate parent the outline history of Earnscliffe is brief. From the Reynolds family, relatives of the Mackays, Sir John A. Macdonald purchased the estate and took up his residence in 1883. On his death, in 1891, the house became the property of Lady Macdonald, upon whom Victoria bestowed the title of the Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe. She, on moving to England, leased the property first to Major General Herbert, at that time General Officer Commanding the Canadian Militia, and then to his successor, Major General Hutton. After this officer’s departure for active service in the South African War, the estate was purchased by Mrs. Charles Harriss, who, with her husband, the English composer and musical director, lived at Earnscliffe until her death in 1924. [page 110]
     As I drove in through the open gates on a winter morning, it stood shining in the sun, for the terrace windows look south over the Ottawa River and the Laurentian Hills. I knocked, and, as I stood at the door waiting to be let in, I felt curiously excited. The door was opened, and the great entrance hall was flooded in southern light. I was ushered to a room on the right, which I knew to be Sir John Macdonald’s study, where stood the present owner of the house.
     “I am immensely stirred at coming here,” ran my thoughts. “The very name of the house holds for me a lost magic: legendary tales of early childhood mixed with the first stories I ever heard, stories out of the Bible, stories out of Grimm’s fairy tales.”..I was caught in far-off childish things that took me strangely back to vague impressions: long silver rails flung over a great C.P.R. bridge, on and on interminably through the fabulous mountains of the West—to a moment, shivering in the icy woodshed of an Ontario house, watching a huge laurel wreath being slowly unpacked.
     “Good morning,” said Dr. Charles Harriss, coming forward.
     “Good morning,” I echoed.
     (The laurel wreath was prickly, and at night there was an endless aisle in the crowded Hall, and two other children bearing roses, and a tall knight in a fur coat holding my green laurel wreath.) [page 111]
     “Will you come nearer the fire?” asked my host.
     Suddenly the present asserted itself. I was standing in a beautiful room of primrose-coloured walls, white bookshelves, soft couches, a striking medallion in marble of Macdonald—a profile bringing out the amazing resemblance to Disraeli—a magnificent fire-place, the crackle of coal, the portrait of a beautiful woman over the fire-place—a wholesome, peaceful, harmonious room.
     “Not so much changed,” said Dr. Harriss, looking about him, “—the furnishings, possibly. Naturally, Lady Macdonald carried off her treasures. Here, in place of my piano, stood Sir John’s desk—near that window. There the daily conferences with Joseph Pope took place; and here, I suppose, he thought out his manifestos before the three important elections which were held during his occupancy of the house. The bookshelves are his; the fireplace was always here, though now we use a different mantel. Yes, it is a homelike room, a place of memories. It was dear to us for many years before we owned it; as it was, and is, to everyone who knew the old chief and to thousands of people who did not know him personally. When my wife heard, in London, that the Baroness Macdonald would like us to have Earnscliffe—well, of course, we thought ourselves fortunate.”
     I remembered that this was the study where, after strenuous days in the House, the family used to [page 112] gather in private after dinner on the few evenings when there was no entertaining to be done. I had read that the library just across the hall was used for more ceremonious occasions and that the great drawing-room, which I knew lay at the back of the house, was kept for formal affairs.
     We sat talking for some time. Dr. Harriss came in his youth from Oxford, embued with its traditions and those of his master, Sir Frederick Arthur Gor Ouseley, to make early Ottawa his home. We spoke of Canadian eras in music and in political life. It was strange to think of two creative minds, both [page 113] set in frail bodies, working out—rather, under the circumstances, fighting out—aggressive schemes for the recognition of statesmanship, and for the academic recognition of music, each one moving nearer to this peaceful place which was to be his home.
     “No story of Earnscliffe is complete without mention of my wife’s affection for it,” said Dr. Harriss. “Her devotion to its cause was absorbing, and she beautified everything that she touched.”
     And this, indeed, as we went from room to room, was self-evident. Nothing was needlessly disturbed, and the fabric of the house itself had everywhere been strengthened, renewed, augmented by some distinctive gesture that brought out its character. Earnscliffe has a distinctive character. It is an altogether friendly house, a house intended, because of its welcoming central hall and large rooms, to extend hospitality. It beckons its visitors to the allurement of a garden, set, as gardens should be, behind rather than in front of a house.
     The great pink-brocaded drawing-room, then, looks over the garden, the river, and the hills. Flaming sunshine lights up slim rose and gold chairs, and cabinets filled with treasures that would be the envy of any European museum of fine arts. On mantel and tables are Dresden china figures of the most ravishing contour and colour; small glittering boxes of gold and silver and mother-of-pearl and semi-precious stones; rare vases of exotic outline, [page 114] priceless fans; tiny ivory elephants, troops of them.
     “One for every European concert that my singers gave,” said my host.
     The library, to the left of the main entrance hall, is a delightfully proportioned room with mahogany and crimson furnishings. Tiers of bookshelves, filled with rare editions, line the walls, and here is the well-known portrait by Patterson of Sir John Macdonald.
     At the entrance to the dining-room are marble busts of Sir John and Lady Macdonald. One thought of the famous companion of this one of the first premier in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The dining-room has been redone since the Macdonald régime. It might belong to oldest England. It is panelled and raftered in heavy cut oak. The magnificent table and carved furniture date from 1610. There are tapestries heaven knows how old, and brasses and silver of great importance. An urn of brass, for instance, was owned and used by Alexander the Great. Behind the dining-room, lying between it and the study, is the little “waiting room” whence, in Sir John’s day, it is said that he used to escape to the garden when “hard put” by relentless callers.
     Up narrow, red-carpeted stairs are the bedrooms. One of them was the focus of every one, no matter to which political party he happened to belong, when [page 115] the most brilliant figure in the Canadian political world was fighting his last fight in the June days of 1891.
     The large room was silent and benign. I stood by the pleasant window looking over the front of the house to the entrance gates, where they used to post the doctors’ daily bulletins, and down upon the shade trees, where the telegraphers, wiring news of the chieftain’s condition around the world, had pitched their tents…The far-away early nineties seemed at the moment very near.
     Slowly, then, we came down the narrow red stairs to the primrose-coloured study again. How alive the room looked in the firelight—intensely alive!..A room of splendid echoes: friendships, camaraderies, active aversions, sorrow perhaps, but more than sorrow—joy! [page 116]

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