and felicitation that had come streaming in. “Many thanks for your kind congratulations,” George Brown replied to Luther Holton a few days after his return, “and I assure you my friends may well congratulate me, for I am a new man in mind and body and as happy as the day is long! ”46 He was cheerfully occupied with suppers and receptions, as he proudly introduced his wife into Toronto society, and at home he delighted in each cosy domestic detail of his new existence. He had slipped almost eagerly out of the ways of bachelorhood. Restored in health, he seemed to pour his old accustomed gusto into his marriage – all his whole-hearted capacity for enjoyment. Perhaps because marriage had come late, he prized it the more. And always there was a recurring sense of wonder and gratitude that this could have happened to him, that Anne was his. He could laugh aloud at the very joy of it.
Surely, he was a new man – and most of the remaking was Anne’s work. Oliver Mowat would one day write to her: “Since you became his wife, the softer side of his nature has been developed under your loving influence – himself becoming an increasingly gentle, kind and considerate person.”47 Yet Brown had changed in other ways as well. For one thing, his long ill-health had left a mark. True, he was well again, brimming once more with vigour and enthusiasm. But he would never have the old copious quantities of energy to burn, and, what is more, he seemed to realize it. He would seldom drive himself as hard as he had before, carrying on four or five jobs at once for months on end. He appeared less impetuous and impatient; he could even become detached, at times almost easy-going. Possibly his new engrossing centre of interest, his marriage, had much to do with this. Nevertheless, there was also some diminishing of his restless physical vitality (not that, compared with other men, he had grown quiet or sober!), and the fact that henceforth he was often subject to painful attacks of sciatica also seemed to point to some definite change in his constitution.48 More than marriage was altering George Brown.
Another influence stemmed from his experience in Britain. As he had indicated in his own words, his British visit had brought him a new sense of scale, of dimension in politics. He had seen Canada’s problems against a background of imperial issues at the very focus of the world. He had been struck by British ignorance of Canada, but no less struck by the magnitude and power of Britain’s political and economic life. And so the vehement battles of Canadian politics, once so all-absorbing, could come to seem more like parochial quarrelling – “merely partisanship”.49 Brown would not and could not throw off the views and habits of a lifetime. He believed intensely that honest politics and true patriotism lay in the maintenance of strong party principles; he would return repeatedly to attacks upon the expediency and corruption that pretended to some higher political morality than strict party loyalty. None the less, his mind had been opened to a possibility that for truly great ends it could be right to sink grave party differences. An able but restricted colonial politician had gained a new awareness that compromise and conciliation might be the way of constructive statesmanship.
Nor would the state of Brown’s own fortunes be without effect. He was becoming a decidedly wealthy man. Anne had brought with her a dowry of $120,000.50 His holdings at Bothwell would soon be valued at more than twice that amount, and there was still the Globe, in a flourishing condition.51 In Canada of the day, these total assets meant substantial wealth indeed. Previously, Brown had achieved business prominence and owned much property, but he had rarely known financial ease. Now there was far less strain of business problems tugging at him; and in this way, too, he could relax somewhat. He could afford to take his time and push less hard.
Altogether, this new Brown was a broader, more mellowed, less demanding individual. Of course he had not wholly altered. Directness, force, fire, determination, still were all present, and dogmatism and over-confidence might show themselves again. What mattered, however, was that Brown’s whole personality had been modified, if not shaped anew. And how much it mattered would be revealed by the events of the next two years.
4
The question now was, what should he do about politics? Before he had left Canada the previous summer, George Brown had planned to return to parliament after his holiday was over. For, however much a burden public life had seemed at times, he still had felt its obligations as unfinished business, and unquestionably he had known excitement and gratification as well as duty and dedication in his political career. Even at the time of his defeat in the elections of 1861, he had spoken only of staying out of parliament for the present. In fact, when he had gone to England, the Globe had announced that his intention was to seek re-election on his return to Canada, once a suitable opportunity should present itself.52
But that had been announced in August 1862. By January 1863, the new Brown had other ideas, and was by no means ready to return to parliament at all. He told Holton: “Entirely re-established in body and mind as I am, and free from nearly all business retardments, I have no desire whatever to enter parliamentary life, and would much rather accomplish through others what the country wants than be a prominent participant myself.”53 Doubtless he meant to work through his position of power at the Globe office. In any case, it seemed he felt no yearning for his former role as party leader. He had, he said, “chalked out a course for myself pretty clearly”.54 Perhaps he would be the judicious director off the parliamentary stage – the wirepuller behind the scenes, critics might charge. Yet, whatever happened, it appeared unlikely that Brown would pursue any course leading to the commanding position he had held in the Upper Canada Reform party between 1854 and 1861. He would be a power in Liberalism, but not an active commander – an overlord, perhaps, but not a captain in the field.
The reasons for the change were plain enough: his moderated outlook, his greater detachment, and, above all, his marriage. Past memories of all he had disliked in public life combined with his present consciousness of happiness, and made him shrink from the thought of losing one moment with Anne for the dubious pleasures of parliamentary existence: the bitter wrangles, the frustrations and disappointments, the long night hours, the loneliness of life in rented rooms at distant Quebec. In all this, the contrast between George Brown and his greatest rival, John A. Macdonald, was strikingly revealed. Brown did enjoy being with people, but in small circles of friends, and especially in his own home. He found little ease or pleasure in convivial evenings with political cronies at hotels or inns. Macdonald, on the other hand, not only had a natural zest for cameraderie, but also through his own domestic tragedy – the illness and death of his invalid wife – had long lacked any real home life, and had almost been forced to dwell in the public and political world.
Brown, however, cherished his own private world and meant to hold on to it. Furthermore, Anne herself wanted no less strongly to keep him with her.55 She did not comprehend the power of political demands, and what she saw of them repelled her: the noise, the violence, and the passions. Why should George go back to these, subject himself again to strain, abuse, and shock? He was a notably successful journalist; the Globe was his first care; and certainly they had money and position enough. No doubt, she did not actually demand of him that he stay out of public life. She was strong-minded, but not domineering, and would do as he wished in all the big things. But in this case she had only to reinforce his own wishes and confirm his own desire to stay home. Let others, who cared to, think that they were running Canada!
All this was true. Still, what should he do about politics – about the deep sectional discord in the Canadian union that still demanded remedy, the inept moderate Liberal government that hoped to find the solution in the futile double-majority principle; the inflated talk of an Intercolonial Railway, egged on by Grand Trunk interests, and the pressing need, instead, to acquire the North West before the Americans thrust into it? And what of the campaign for reform of the union that Brown had led in parliament for nearly a decade? Could he really withdraw now, before these issues had been settled, the answers gained? Could he work as effectively for them from the outside?
In a sense, duty and determination pushed him forward while inclination and contentment held him back. But there was more to it than this. Brown, after all, had been deeply involved in active politics for
