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Chapter 3

Relatives and Friends, 1885–1889

While Cody was going from strength to strength at the university, letters from relatives and friends kept him in touch with home. Family letters give glimpses of his appearance and demeanour in the late 1880s – “a great tall fellow” with a nose that “can be seen”; his brow in childhood, “a sunny frank one”; “still as modest and unassuming as ever,” chopping firewood for his father when he was home in the holidays in 1886. In short he was a most engaging young man.¹

An event occurred in 1885 that altered Cody’s relationship with his father. Elijah, now 41, married again. His second wife, Estelle Barker, was 30. Apparently, Cody did not get on with his stepmother. She was only thirteen years older than he, and he may have resented her as a young usurper. However, all parties to tried to make their relationship amicable. There are cordial letters from Estelle to Harry, Elijah was pleased that Harry called Estelle ‘Mother’ and wrote: “Our darling mother is doing everything possible to make home cheerful, and me comfortable she is so pleased at your calling her mother, in all your letters darling refer to her lovingly and kindly as she truly loves you.”²

Elijah strove for friendly relations between his son and his wife. In 1887, when Harry was coming home for Christmas, he sent him five dollars with the words, “Do not forget to bring some little thing for baby, a picture book or some little toy.”³ Despite his efforts, the situation remained brittle. Cody still came home for holidays, but he made the trip more palatable by going round by Galt on the way. After 1885 his visits to Embro were infrequent, and when he did come he often found the house of his Uncle Merv and his daughter, Phila, more congenial. He never felt really at home in the Cody house in Embro.

The rift between Cody and his stepmother was deep and permanent. There were several later indications of their estrangement. When Maurice, Cody’s son, was drowned in 1927, Elijah attended the funeral, but his wife did not. After Elijah’s death a tombstone was erected with his name upon it and room for Estelle’s name when she should die. Cody put up a stone in his mother’s name, with the inscription at the bottom, “erected by her only son.”

Except for its effect on Cody, Elijah’s second marriage was happy. There were four children – May, Frederick D., Maxwell B., and Ernest. Cody got on well with his half-brothers and half-sister. Since he was so much older they probably regarded him as a sort of uncle but they always enjoyed his visits. According to Cody’s wife Barbara, none of them looked like Cody but they all looked like his father.⁴

C.E. Silcox, the son of the Congregational minister in Embro, gave a pleasant picture of the Cody household at the time. Silcox was fond of Estelle, whom he called “Mother Cody.” He used to play with the Cody children, especially Fred, who was about his own age. Silcox and Fred used to visit Elijah in his office (he was town clerk at the time). Elijah would “lift us up on a great big desk and ask us to preach a sermon for him! It is reported that we used to preach quite vigorously at the mature age of five, announcing our text from the somewhat apocryphal book of Goliath, and usually concluding with the words ‘Whosoever believeth not, shall be damned.’”⁵

Cody’s letters from relatives and friends also dealt with the general issues of the period: elections in Canada in 1887 and in the United States in 1888; visits to Galt and Detroit by the famous abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher; and Shakespearean performances by the famous tragedians Booth and Barrett.

Elijah, who had close connections with the Presbyterians in Embro, kept urging Cody to cultivate friendly relations with Knox College. After Principal MacVicar of Presbyterian College in Montreal had visited Embro, Elijah wrote: “We had a fine treat last Sunday Principal MacVicar Montreal preached for Mr. Munro [the local minister] both sermons. Mr. Munro came over Saturday morning expecting you home and very kindly invited you over to spend Sunday with the Principal was that not very kind and thoughtful of him.”⁶ Perhaps Elijah and Mr. Munro were anxious to recruit such a promising young man for the Presbyterian ministry. If so, they were a bit late.

Letters from Elijah and also from Grandpa Torrance continued to be heavily political and Tory in tone. Thus, from Elijah: “[January 29, 1887] I have been away two days this week: one day at the Tory Convention at Woodstock”; “[March 4, 1887, after the general election of February 22] The Grits here feel pretty blue about the Elections. They were predicting about 40 majority for Blake – In the next house Sir John will have at least 30 majority.” There was one jarring note. Cody had been seeing a good deal of Edward Blake, the Liberal leader, probably because Blake was chancellor of the university and a strong Wycliffe supporter. Elijah wrote on June 15, 1886: “I am a little bit offended with you having so much to do with Ed. Blake.” In other letters in the period Elijah reported a conversation in Ottawa with J.C. Rykert, the Lincoln MP who had spoken fondly of Harry, and urged Harry to attend a Tory picnic.⁷ And so it went.

Grandpa Torrance was equally political. His Tory prejudice spanned the Atlantic. When Harry was disappointed in his examination results in 1888, Grandpa wrote by way of comfort that he should notice that “Beaconsfield – that shining light was hurled from power – by the despicable traitor Gladstone often, and our Old Chieftain John A. has suffered defeats.”⁸ Grandpa Torrance was not an educated man and made fairly frequent spelling mistakes, but he wrote with vigour, emotion, and intelligence. No doubt aware of Grandpas limitations, Cody loved the old man and cherished his letters along with those from other family members.

Grandpa was more strongly anti-Catholic than the rest of the family. He referred to “the means by which that pagan and Idolatrous Church has gained such influence and Exercised Such Tyranny over the masses.”⁹ Like other Canadian Tories, he showed signs of becoming a Canadian nationalist. When the University of Toronto appointed a Britisher as professor of political science in 1888, Grandpa wrote indignantly on July 10: “I am sorry to see – for the credit of Canada – that the chair of political science had to be filled by an Oxford man – but the day is not far distant when a professor’s chair will be filled by a young Canadian and that by acclamation – such is my prophecy.”

There was concern in Embro and Galt in the 1880s about the Darwinian controversy. When A.R. Wallace, Darwin’s famous colleague, gave lectures at the university, both Elijah and the Torrances were disturbed and wanted to know if Cody had attended. The Torrances took a particular interest in Cody’s welfare, both spiritual and physical. Grandpa wrote in 1886: “I know your religious views are orthodox and in you a fixed principal [sic] yet I must say that I have sometimes very anxious thoughts when I think of you, without an earthly guide, and at your particular age left to yourself to battle against all the temptations of a large city.” Grandpa continued earnestly, “I advise you hold no argument – nor enter into any controversy – with anyone holding what are respectably called peculiar religious views.”¹⁰

Grandma Torrance was equally solicitous, attempting to take the place of Cody’s own mother. She urged him to be careful in his choice of a regular church. “Try to find out the church that preaches the gospel faithfully no matter by what name high or low.” Grandma also offered advice in regard to Cody’s physical well-being. She urged him to be vaccinated, and not to go out at night for fear of “highwaymen.”¹¹

One of Cody’s brightest correspondents was his second cousin, Phila Cody. Phila was fifteen years older than Cody but she took a sisterly interest in him. She wrote chatty letters giving news about Embro and about her two brothers, Mill and Elijah, who were medical students in Illinois. She was perplexed about another brother, Stilson, who was not a total abstainer. She drew a picture of her life in a small town where the main interests appeared to be the local churches and the eccentricities of one’s friends and relatives. In November she was teaching school in Embro and living at home to keep her sister, Lottie, company. Lottie was something of a trial. “I’ll be a martyr for the sake of keeping Lottie’s tongue well oiled and I don’t want to ignore the fact that Stilson requires an occasional dressing [down] but he’s not the kind of fellow one likes to tackle.”¹²

Phila attended church in Beachville, six miles away, with her father and reported that the preacher was better than the local clergy. She was anxious that Cody should hear a prominent Toronto preacher who defended “the Mosaic account of creation in opposition to the evolutionary theory.” She approved of the sermon of a preacher she had heard in Embro: “It’s a treat to hear earnest thought and eloquence combined in our little hamlet.” But she added regretfully, “It seems to me it [Embro] is degenerating sadly in the temperance line.”¹³

Phila’s attitude to the theatre reflected her Protestant background. When a touring concert group came to town, it was denounced by the local clergy, apparently on the grounds that it included female dancers. Phila agreed with the clergy. She asserted, “My taste for the poetry of motion must be sadly deficient. I think I’d rather see a ‘Grace Darling’ or an Ellen Douglas propelling an oar with graceful sweep and strong full curves than to see lassies and lads dancing on a public stage.”¹⁴ Phila preferred to stick to Christian literature and wrote approvingly of George MacDonald,¹⁵ who she believed was “more Christian in tone than any novelist I ever came across.” She intended to read Kingsley’s Water Babies, which Cody had commended.

There was a strain of dry humour in Phila’s letters. When she witnessed an Orange parade in Paisley, Ontario, on July 12, 1887, a local citizen had suggested to her that people in the south (i.e., Embro) must be more civilized. Phila observed “... and judging from the vehicles and fantastic costumes that put in an appearance that day I should think they were.”¹⁶

Agnes Walls (Aggie) was a contemporary of Cody’s, although a bit older. She had taught school in the Embro area but at the time of her letters she was taking a business course in Detroit. Like Phila, Aggie had a kindly interest in Cody and she kept him informed about her doings in Detroit. There she heard Canon Ferrar, the great English theologian (March 1, 1886), saw Edmund Booth in Macbeth (October 14, 1886), missed Justin McCarthy, the Irish nationalist (February 3, 1887) but was reading his book, History of Our Own Times, and so on. Aggie was a girl of some initiative. It took courage to abandon her teaching career and go off to the big city. Having the same evangelical bias as the rest of Cody’s connection, she attended services at a mission conducted by W.S. Rainsford, the famous British evangelist, in St. George’s and other churches in Detroit. She was no doubt in favour of the Prohibition movement: “How does Toronto get on under its new mayor? Has the whiskey element got a foothold again?”¹⁷ Aggie was referring to the controversy in Toronto that culminated in Mayor W.H. Howland’s actively encouraging the vote for propertied women in Toronto municipal politics, especially as a bulwark against the “whiskey element.” There are signs of feminism in her letters. She expressed the view that instead of having only manhood suffrage, women of property should also be given the vote.¹⁸ Aggie herself was bent on self-improvement. She seems to have contemplated university training and asked Cody to help her in the study of German.

Unlike the rest of the Embro connection, Aggie favoured the Liberals. After the federal election of 1887 she wrote ruefully, “I suppose you crowed somewhat over the results of the Dominion elections. Well I am sorry to think you had cause for I thought John A. was going out, but he didn’t.”¹⁹ One cannot avoid speculation about Aggie’s attitude towards Cody. There is little in her letters to suggest that it was anything more than platonic, but even if there had been more to her regard, nothing came of it. Aggie disappeared from the Cody record after the 1880s.

Phila’s two brothers, Millwood and Elijah G., both became doctors in Illinois. Like Aggie, they kept Cody in touch with contemporary American affairs. Mill very much admired President Grover Cleveland, “the man of destiny,” and like Elijah G. thought he would secure re-election in 1888.²⁰ He didn’t.

Letters from Tom Des Barres at the university help to round out the picture of Cody’s background in the 1880s. He wrote of the matriculation results in 1886: “no Codys ... this year.” Of a YMCA supervisor, he said, “Gale took charge of the YMCA work but has not snap enough.” He described the Bishop of Rochester as “a Moody and Sankey – Temperance man, but not much of a speaker.” He was in Nova Scotia when an episcopal election was in prospect and described one of the candidates, Archdeacon Gilpin: “He is a very advanced Ritualist, goes in for Confession and dear knows what not.”²¹

Some of Tom’s sly digs at Cody suggest Cody’s diligence and what Tom regarded as excessive displays of erudition. On August 4, 1887 (just before Cody’s third year), Tom speculated, “From your account of work I fancy by this time if you have not melted, you have about finished your Third Year Classics,” and on September 12, 1887, “Please spare the classics in the next [letter] or else send a key to the last as I have not yet got it all translated.”

Des Barres wrote a vivid account of a missionary conference he attended in July 1888 at D.L. Moody’s conference centre at Northfield, Massachusetts. It was attended by a large delegation of students and evangelical leaders from Canada, Great Britain, and other countries as well as the United States. Des Barres’s comments were both critical and admiring: “All the British seem nice fellows, of course somewhat distant, but still I must say I prefer them much to the Yankees whom, however, I do not dislike”; “Foreigners are numerous they have a Frenchman, a Siamese quite a number of Japanese, a few Chinese, an Arminian [sic] from Asiatic Turkey.” Des Barres was impressed by Moody: “Moody is a very remarkable man ... He has also about the biggest heart of anyone I know. His humour is irresistible. He himself speaks very little. Last night he answered questions which had been handed in to him. I haven’t laughed so much in an hour as I laughed then for a long time. But yet it was good every word of it. He can be both amusing and instructive.”²²

Tom was less enamoured of Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Mission, being put off by his appearance and voice: “Dr. Hudson Taylor is a very short man – rather peculiar looking. He has a voice which might be called a whine in anyone else but in him could at worst, be only termed monotonous.” But Tom tried to be fair and ended by describing Taylor as a man of simple faith. There was admiration but also a suggestion of the patronizing in his final comment: “I think perhaps the chief influence he [Taylor] will exert here will be that excited by the simple purity of his character, rather [than] by anything he shall say.”

Des Barres was obviously moved by the conference, despite his air of sophistication. His comments were of some significance in Cody’s early career because they helped him to relate to the outside world of evangelical Christianity.