and then, later that day, meet the same people elsewhere for dinner. Often they accepted written invitations to a meal at Lord Strathcona’s fine house. The wealthy, bearded financier had come a long way since he toiled for three decades as a Hudson’s Bay Company trader in Labrador and acquired what Governor General Lord Minto contemptuously referred to as a “squaw wife.”
Invariably, the menu was extensive. On Tuesday, January 3, 1893, for example, eighteen people assembled around the Van Horne dining table to consume a dinner of consommé, boiled cod with anchovy sauce, partridge pâté, ox tongue with mushrooms, saddle of mutton, turkey with celery sauce, potatoes, peas, celery root, English pheasant with port-wine sauce, frozen chestnut pudding, celery and cheese, Neapolitan ice cream, pineapple water-ice fruit, coffee, and tea. Meals of this nature, not to mention Van Horne’s unrestrained appetite, no doubt accounted for his growing portliness and the onset of type 2 diabetes.
Among the guests entertained by the Van Hornes in Montreal was James J. Hill. When visiting Montreal in June 1906 to attend Bennie’s wedding, the railway titan arrived on his two-hundred-and-forty-three-foot yacht. Another notable visitor was Rudyard Kipling, who, in 1907, gave rousing speeches on imperial unity across Canada. To provide for their comfort, Van Horne arranged for the famous English author and poet and his wife, Cattie, to have the use of a special private car for their transcontinental train trip. Other visitors included Pauline Johnson, the celebrated Métis poet and entertainer, the popular literary figure Gilbert Parker (later Sir Gilbert), and the American muck-raking publisher Samuel McLure. Canadian artist Wyatt Eaton stayed at the Van Horne mansion for months on end and painted portraits of both Van Horne and Addie.
Among the several art critics who made their way to the Van Horne home was the prominent American Bernard Berenson and his wife, Mary. After one of their visits to Montreal, Mary unburdened herself in a letter to their friend and patroness Isabella Stewart Gardener, the well-known Boston art collector. It was indeed fortunate, wrote Mary, that Isabella had decided not to accompany them on this trip because all they had found in Montreal was provincialism. It was everywhere, but especially in the homes of the Square Mile millionaires, who built “hideous brownstone houses” and “hung in their multifarious and overheated rooms a vast collection of gilt-framed mediocre pictures.” Only time spent with Van Horne would have redeemed their visit, she said, but regrettably they could not see him because he was laid up with “inflammatory rheumatism” — a condition that incapacitated him for months during the winter of 1914– 15. The Berensons did, however, meet Bennie Van Horne, now thirty-six years old, whom Mary described as “a powerful and intelligent man.”
“Powerful” and “intelligent” are not the usual adjectives applied to Van Horne’s only son, who had a good mind, but was spoiled and cynical. Perhaps because he was the only son to survive early childhood, Bennie (“Benj” to his intimate friends) became the victim of his parents’ overpowering and ultimately destructive love. From his earliest years, he was the centre of attention, doted on by his mother, who fretted about him constantly, and continually instructed by his father, who expected great things from him. Unfortunately, Van Horne never seemed to learn that he could not micromanage people’s lives the way he could a railway. Although Bennie graduated from McGill University with an applied science (engineering) degree and, like his father, was an accomplished artist, he never realized his potential. He was essentially unmotivated, lazy, and spoiled. Except for a brief time when he was gainfully employed on one of his father’s projects in Cuba, the Cuba Railroad, he remained at home, a ne’er-do-well, drinking too much, running up bank overdrafts, and gambling.
In 1906, Bennie married Edith Molson, the only daughter and first child of Dr. William Alexander Molson, a member of the large Montreal brewing family, and Esther Shepherd, the daughter of R.W. Shepherd, who owned a steamship line. Van Horne was delighted with this match, which linked the Van Hornes with one of Montreal’s most respected, wealthy, and powerful families. Moreover, he was fond of his daughter-in-law. After their honeymoon, however, the couple moved into the Van Horne mansion. Van Horne, it seems, was incapable of weaning Bennie from his close control, and Bennie was unable to steer a course of his own.
The marriage produced one child, William, who became Van Horne’s adored grandson. Van Horne liked all children, but the love he lavished on this child was beyond reason — and once again destructive. The boy was only eighteen months old when his grandfather began to mould his tastes. As he later wrote, “I wished him to have artistic tastes, so I carried him around to see the pictures. He noticed things in them from the start. Already he can tell ships and birds and the sea, he calls them by name, pats them.” When away from home, Van Horne wrote regularly to William, except on a few occasions when the most urgent business scuttled his good intentions. No matter where he travelled, people always inquired about the grandson. Unfortunately, like Bennie, young William developed into a self-centred, pompous child.
Young Addie, in contrast, had no demons to fight. She was a shy woman who inherited her father’s big frame and beautiful blue eyes. And she adored her father — they shared an abiding interest in art and identifying and collecting fungi. When Addie was twenty years old, she accompanied her Aunt Mary on a grand tour of Europe. Writing to her brother from Europe in September 1888, Mary told Van Horne that she had decided that his daughter should extend her planned sojourn in Europe in order to see as much of the continent as possible. Hitherto, she explained, young Addie had led a quiet, retiring life, but after her return from Europe she would “have to go into society, where she will meet people who have had all the advantages that travel can give.”
After her mother’s death in 1929 and the death of her brother, Bennie, in 1931, Addie stayed on in the family home on Sherbrooke Street West and continued to manage the Covenhoven estate, which she had inherited from her father. In addition to supporting various charitable activities, she also maintained her father’s renowned art and porcelain collections. Even when her eyesight began to fail, nothing gave her more pleasure than to show appreciative visitors around these collections. She knew the location of every exhibit and, when she was almost blind, she drew on her encyclopedic memory to describe the history and features of individual pieces in loving detail. Young Addie died in 1941, after having been ill for some time. She was seventy-two, the same age as her father at his death.
Van Horne with small William, the grandson whom he spoilt shamelessly.
Courtesy of the Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal, 11-172901.
9
The Artist and Collector
Van Horne had a deep love of beauty and art. As a small child, he had drawn pictures on the whitewashed walls of the family home in Chelsea, Illinois. In later life, whenever time permitted, he got out his brushes and tubes and painted a picture — one of his favourite pursuits. At Covenhoven he built a large, well-lit studio in which he produced realistic, somewhat ethereal landscapes, rich in browns and yellows. Often these canvases were inspired by the woods, fields, and shores all around him on Minister’s Island.
A rapid painter, Van Horne would frequently complete his canvases — usually large oils — in a single evening from notes he made earlier in the day. He did not labour over his work or spend much time thinking about it in advance because he believed that great art resulted from feeling, not intellect. As he expressed it, “There is no place for intellect in art. Art is wholly a matter of feeling. As intellect enters art goes out…. All of the great artists who acquired temporary fame but subsequently lost the esteem of the world were intellectual. Many of the great artists have been weak-minded or lunatics, or sodden with drink or debauchery.” Commenting on the speed with which his friend painted, Robert Wickenden said, “Sir William
