Читать книгу Laurier in Love - Roy MacSkimming - Страница 9
ОглавлениеThis story owes its existence to an act of destruction. And so, this act of creation.
Although the story is my own, I appear only occasionally. What are we to make of that? A sad commentary on my significance! Yet I’ve always felt in danger of disappearing. Surrounded by the great and the near-great, I’ve sought my shadow within theirs. Perhaps this explains why I was so noisy, so obnoxious.
My father would have preferred I disappear altogether. My conduct, my very existence, embarrassed him. If only I’d been considerate enough to marry some nice respectable girl and move away to some obscure respectable town, where I could practise whatever law one practises in such places, too busy fathering children and supporting a growing family to make trouble, he’d have been far happier.
But I did nothing of the sort. I insisted on a public life. Ran for office numerous times, occasionally won. Wrote political manifestoes, essays, newspaper columns, editorials, letters to the editor— idealistic and scathing, hectoring and lecturing. Joined in founding the most principled newspaper of our age, in this or any other country. Married but had no children, never to become a plump and prosperous paterfamilias: but then there’s no money in either journalism or politics, at least if one is honest. I married a woman who was barren—or was the flaw in myself?—and whose own father turned out to be a small-time swindler and jailbird. But where’s the shame in that today, when the ancient civilizations of Europe are putting hoodlums, thugs and buffoons in charge of their destinies?
And so I’ve remained uncompromised, owing nothing to anyone but God. With no one to protect. Free to set down this story of the great and the near-great, who have so much to protect, so much to hide.
In the process I’ve set myself a single standard. I can’t say whether it’s a literary or a moral one, but in either case it’s necessary. It is this: while describing people and events—people and events that may be familiar to you—I will write about them with rigorous objectivity. I will tell the truth, as revealed to me over time by those most closely involved, without letting it become distorted by my personal biases. And it’s known I have some.
You may find the story doesn’t always flatter one Sir Wilfrid Laurier, seventh Prime Minister of Canada. My absence of illusion about Laurier doesn’t result from being his political enemy— although I was—but from knowing the great man too well. Although very few ever became intimate with him, I came close enough to realize Sir Wilfrid was scarcely the high-minded idealist, selfless statesman and perfect gentleman many Canadians imagined. He was, after all, the Quebec politician who best knew how to keep Quebec in its place. In my language we have a word for that.
But enough: I said I wouldn’t let my biases seep through. For now I will disappear. I’ll be as impartial as I can toward the two most important (although not the only) women in Laurier’s life, his faithful wife, Zoë, and their dear “friend,” Émilie Lavergne. I will tell my story through their eyes, based on their own accounts, confided to me later in life. Madame Lavergne and Lady Laurier knew their secrets were safe with me.
I am the only one who could have written this story, the only one with the requisite knowledge. Whether I have any insight into that knowledge I leave for you to judge. By the time I return, you’ll have made up your mind.
