as they walked along the twilight shore of the Firth of Clyde, she agreed to marry him.27 It would turn out to be the climactic step in George Brown’s life.
He had gone with the Nelsons for a late holiday on Arran (Gaelic for “the lofty isle”), the picturesquely rugged island in the Firth of Clyde that was already noted as a summer resort. Here Anne and he spent a brief, idyllic courtship – here in the soft radiance of the warm west coast, where summer still lingered and where the glens of Arran tumbled down to quiet inlets of the sea. There was one day that stood out particularly in their memory, the day of their expedition to Lochranza at the far northern end of the island, when together they paused at such an inlet to watch a boy sailing on a plank in the shining, placid water, while a tiny white sailboat passed silently by.28 It was nothing and it was everything: a moment they would long hold in memory, because it was so completely their own.
It was afterwards, when they had just returned to Greenock (where John Nelson had his church as a Free Kirk minister), that George Brown asked Anne to marry him. This, too, he well recalled thereafter – “the dinner at John’s, the hope and the fear, the despair and the joy, changing every hour – until all was settled in that delightful walk along the shore”.29 For, marvellously, Anne had accepted him, and they could announce the monumental fact to the family. They began at once on plans for the wedding, and for George’s return to Canada with his bride.
Naturally, the arrangements could not be concluded overnight. Time was needed to prepare for a sizeable company to attend the wedding, to collect a properly complete trousseau for a bride departing for the wild New World, and to arrange for the voyage itself. Tom Nelson would accompany them to Canada; they would sail in the Scotia for New York early in December. But, meanwhile, there was a month and more before the wedding would take place.
They were back in Edinburgh now, and no doubt George Brown was of little more use than any other bridegroom before the wedding. He wrote affectionate little notes to Anne when they both came down with mild chills and worried about each other.30 He visited Alloa, his birthplace, some miles up the firth from Edinburgh.31 And he went back to London to deal with business for the Globe (probably to arrange more English correspondence for it), as well as to keep another appointment with the Duke of Newcastle.32 And then, at last, it was November 27, his wedding-day.
John Nelson officiated; Abden House was crammed with guests for the occasion.33 There was music and singing to follow; but the newly married couple left early by carriage in a sparkling fresh snow-fall, ostensibly bound for York. (Anne’s mother wrote just afterwards: “My firm belief is you did not go very far from Edinburgh – we will find out bye and bye.”)34 John Nelson gaily threw snowballs at George Brown as they departed – and was only sorry that his target was wearing a travelling cap instead of his new tall hat.35 A week later, Mr. and Mrs. Brown returned from their honeymoon to rejoin the Nelsons at Liverpool, this time to say good-bye and make ready to embark. On December 6, they and Tom Nelson were aboard the Scotia as she steamed out towards the wintry North Atlantic.36
Only one thing could have qualified George Brown’s complete happiness at that moment: the aching knowledge that his own mother would not be there at home to greet his bride. Yet he was sailing back to North America a different man from him who had disembarked in Liverpool a few months before: married, deeply contented, and very much in love.
3
It was a rough crossing. There were headwinds and much pitching about. Tom was miserably sea-sick, as were almost all the passengers, but George and Anne, with some special dispensation for the newly married, were wonderfully well, enjoying every minute of the voyage.37 They landed in New York on December 19, and naturally went to stay with George and Jane Mackenzie at their house on Seventh Avenue.38 A few days later the Browns and Tom Nelson went on by rail, but stopped, quite naturally again, to visit Niagara Falls – indeed, spent Christmas there.39 Then on the twenty-sixth they caught the Great Western for Toronto. But when they reached Hamilton at six that evening, a large party of George Brown’s Toronto friends came thronging festively aboard and bundled them off to a special train hired for the occasion. Among the group were Oliver Mowat, William McMaster and John McMurrich – two leading Toronto Liberal business men, recently elected to the Legislative Council – and Thomas Swinyard, the managing director of the Great Western.40 They told the surprised Brown and his still more startled wife that a huge public reception had been planned to greet them at their final destination.
At Toronto it was pouring rain; yet, none the less, as their special pulled into the Union Depot at seven-thirty, they found a mass of more than 5,000 people of all political opinions, jammed around the station in the wet black night to welcome them home.41 It was a triumphant, moving moment. Toronto was emphatically proud to have George Brown back; even his enemies had missed him. For the time being, differences, antipathies, were forgotten, as Grits and Tories, Orangemen and Catholics, lustily cheered the great man of the Globe. Oliver Mowat and the city alderman ushered him to the rear of the Depot to present a formal address from the citizens, while his wife was taken to a carriage. Brown was loudly called on to reply. He answered briefly, thanking them all for the “magnificent reception – as unexpected as it is gratifying”, and adding warmly: “I can only say that after six months’ visit to the noblest and best governed land on earth, I feel more than ever the necessity for Upper Canadians of all shades of political opinion to unite heartily in advancing the great interests of our country – to forget the minor differences which have so long separated us.”42 Then he, too, was taken to the carriage, to be escorted in a flaring torchlight procession through the rain and darkness to the home on Church Street.
There were bands blaring “Hail to the Chief”, and, for Anne, “Annie Laurie” and “Flowers of Edinburgh”.43 There were hundreds of hissing torches, Roman candles, and rockets; the streets were lit like day. Cheering wildly, the crowd pushed along the greasy sidewalks and muddy roadways, and people thrust heads and waving handkerchiefs out of upstairs windows everywhere along the route. The noise, the stark contrasts of light and darkness, the great distorted shadows on the buildings – it was all thoroughly exciting for Anne, but bewildering and a little frightening too. Of course she had known that her husband was a powerful figure in provincial public life. But the fierce clamour, the near-frenzy that so frequently surrounded public men in Canada, she could hardly have surmised. She would never be really at ease with George Brown’s political career, and perhaps her sense that Canadian politics were in some way a strange and savage rival pulling at him began in this torchlit, tumultuous night introduction to her new homeland.
At the doorway of 204 Church Street, Brown turned to answer insistent calls for some final remarks. He spoke his thanks again, and again significantly referred to the need for unity he saw on his return. “I come back,” he earnestly proclaimed, “with vastly enlarged views of the greatness of England and the British people. I come back too with a better knowledge of public affairs and with a more ardent desire to serve … I trust that in all the public movements we make in Upper Canada we will pay more regard to the lessons read to us by the mother land – and that whenever the great interests of Canada are at risk, we will forget our merely political partisanship and rally round the cause of our country.”44 That, he said, would be his new motto. Would he remember it? Here was a speculation for the future.
His father, Peter Brown, white-haired and frail, was waiting for him in the house – waiting there alone, without his wife of nearly fifty years. Tom Nelson noted George’s swift greeting: “Just, ‘O father!’ Not another word. I saw the tear in his eye and respected him for it.”45 But now father and son who had always meant so much to each other were reunited. And now, as well, there was a new era beginning in the Brown home, as Anne moved easily and affectionately into possession. The journeying and receiving were done. The next step was to pick up the ordinary threads of daily life.
One
