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THE WORLD IN A CITY
Edited by Paul Anisef and Michael Lanphier
Toronto is arguably the most multicultural city in the world. The proc-
ess of settlement and integration in modern-day Toronto is, however, in
many ways more difficult for recent immigrants than it was for those
arriving in previous decades. Newly settled immigrants face a multi-
tude of challenges, including access to health care, education, employ-
ment, housing, and economic and community services.
The World in a City explores Toronto's ability to sustain a civic society
in the face of profound demographic change. The essays in this collec-
tion highlight the need to pay more attention to certain at-risk groups
and stress the importance of adapting policy to fit the changing settle-
ment and clustering patterns of newcomers. Throughout the volume
the concepts of social exclusion and integration are examined and
employed to analyse the various challenges facing newcomers. The
authors' research findings demonstrate that there are many obstacles to
providing opportunity for immigrants, such as low resource bases and
inadequate service delivery. Together the authors make a convincing
case that by providing a level 'playing field' for its newly arrived
inhabitants, and recognizing the particular needs of new communities,
the city of Toronto can encourage social and economic growth that
would be of immense benefit to the community as a whole.
PAUL ANISEF is a professor of sociology and associate director of the
Centre of Excellence for Research in Immigration and Settlement (CERIS)
at York University.
MICHAEL LANPHIER is professor emeritus of sociology and senior scholar
at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University.
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THE WORLD
IN A CITY
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Vll
REFERENCES 479
CONTRIBUTORS 523
INDEX 529
Acknowledgments
Avison, Gerald Tulchinsky, June Beynon, Dan Hiebert, Brian Ray, Roderic
Beaujot, and Daiva Stasiulis. The editors are most appreciative of the
encouragement and sustained support from their spouses - Etta
Baichman and Caroline Lanphier - and from their families throughout
the months and years as this project grew to fruition.
THE WORLD IN A CITY
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Introduction:
Immigration and the
Accommodation of Diversity
INTEGRATION PERSPECTIVES
When, for example, immigrants or refugees are not given a usable politi-
cal status, it is an active exclusion, and this applies to many of the depriva-
tions from which minority communities suffer in Europe and Asia and
10 Paul Anisef and Michael Lanphier
New types of occupations may arise while others wither. Certain new-
comers may find a niche, while others may see their jobs disappear
because of structural changes or adjustments in society. It is important
to note that only present conditions and the history of those conditions
are available from which to make inferences regarding future direc-
tions. Though one hesitates to predict outcomes, the authors will assess
possible scenarios of change. The clarity of these assessments depends
on the adequacy of available research. While, in many areas, the chapters
that follow leave no doubt about the extensiveness of our findings to
date, others leave some questions unexplored or unanswered and await
further contributions from researchers and members of the many diverse
groups constituting the greater Toronto community.
The objective of this volume is to explore the settlement and integra-
tion of immigrants in Toronto within the social exclusion/ inclusion
framework outlined in the previous section. The World in a City is
organized under specified domain areas (i.e., economy, housing and
neighbourhoods, education, health, and community) as established by
the Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settle-
ment (CERIS). Research in each of these areas provides a provocative
and insightful investigation of how immigration-intake affects struc-
tural arrangements within the metropolis and the effect of those ar-
rangements on the lived experience of immigrants and their social
networks. The first two chapters survey immigration and ethnic groups
in the Toronto metropolis, in each successive chapter the discussion
turns to ways in which the process of integrating diversity takes shape
in a particular domain.
In chapter 1, Harold Troper provides a historical overview of immi-
gration to Toronto since the Second World War, focusing on the manner
in which immigrants have been envisioned as fitting into Canadian
cities. One example of this is the widespread public support for Prime
Minister Mackenzie King's national immigration policy that targeted
only 'desirable future citizens' - code words for light-skinned Europe-
ans. Changes to this policy occurred with the unfolding of the 1950s,
when post-war prosperity in Western and Northern European coun-
tries slowed Canadian-bound immigration to trickle; only then did
Canada begin accepting Italian immigrants and members of other groups
previously deemed unworthy of citizenship. The 1960s brought the
federal government's white paper on immigration, a document that
called for removing racial criteria while simultaneously attempting to
restrict regulations on family reunification. But by this time, Toronto
Introduction 13
at the global and national levels as well as at the local level, especially
by shifts in Toronto's housing market. The much more restrictive
opportunities in the rental market, particularly in the 1990s, mean
that many lower-status immigrants and refugees have been excluded
from appropriate housing and struggle to make advances in their
housing careers. The authors conclude that without serious efforts by
various levels of government towards expanding the supply of low-
income housing, there is little possibility of improving the housing
circumstances of Toronto's newest and most impoverished immigrant
groups.
In chapter 4, Valerie Preston, Lucia Lo, and Shuguang Wang investi-
gate the economic domain and provide an overview of the ethnocultural
composition of Toronto, as well as the federal legislative and policy
changes that resulted in increasing numbers of immigrants. The au-
thors use both government-collected administrative and census data
and independently collected information from the period 1971 to 1996.
In analysing a number of pertinent issues, such as unemployment and
poverty rates, the period of immigration, and socio-economic status,
Preston, Lo, and Wang provide insight into the economic activities of
immigrants and their effects on the Toronto economy. They highlight
the experiences of various immigrant groups, some relatively success-
ful and others still struggling The chapter begins by describing the
make-up of Toronto's immigrant communities, differentiating them by
immigration classes as well as by the usual categories of ethnic origin
and time of arrival, and then goes on to examine immigrants' economic
contributions through a tax-benefits analysis of the workers and the
job-generating abilities of the entrepreneurs.
In examining recent data on jobs created in Toronto by Somali and
Chinese immigrants, Preston, Lo, and Wang debunk the myth that
immigrants 'take away' jobs from native-born Canadians. Subsequent
sections of the chapter examine the industrial division of labour among
immigrants, taking into account their entrepreneurial activities, earn-
ings, unemployment, and poverty rates, and comparing them with
those of the native-born population. The authors find that long-stand-
ing patterns of stratification are mirrored in employment data that
show the high concentration of immigrant women in service industries
and the overrepresentation of immigrant men in fields such as con-
struction and transportation. Since there is a high concentration of new
Torontonians of both genders in the manufacturing sector, one can see
the relative vulnerability of certain groups in an environment marked
Introduction 15
Harold Troper
no Canadian city, except perhaps Montreal, could claim the same urban
status as New York or Chicago. For the most part, Canadian cities -
with notable exceptions like Hamilton, Ontario, and Sydney, Nova
Scotia - were less industrial hubs than they were regional administra-
tive and commercial centres feeding off an agricultural or extractive
industrial hinterland. In Toronto, few could envision any good coming
out of immigrants piling up in their city, especially those of a non-
Anglo-Saxon lineage. It is true that immigration officials at the national
level actively sought out immigrants, but Canadian immigration policy
of the day deliberately and systematically sought to stream non-British
and non-American immigrants away from cities into non-urban and
labour-intensive industries like railway construction, mining, lumber-
ing, and, most particularly, farming. Indeed, until well after the First
World War, farming and the wealth it generated were regarded as not
just the bedrock of Canadian economic and social development, but the
very raison d'etre for encouraging large-scale immigration - the immi-
gration of agriculturalists (Gates 1934).
Farming was hardly an easy life. The unforgiving Canadian climate,
unstable markets for farm produce, and marginal lands unyielding to
the plough too often drained immigrant muscle, resources, and hopes.
As a result, in spite of hard work, it was not unusual for farm incomes
to fall far short of that necessary to sustain a family on the land.
Conditions were often so difficult that in the years before the turn of
the century, tens of thousands of immigrant farmers and Canadian-
born agriculturalists alike, unable to find alternative employment,
turned their backs on Canada and took refuge in factory jobs or
sought out more congenial lands in the United States. So pronounced
was the outflow of population to the United States that one wag
claimed Canada's story was foretold in the books of the Bible: 'It
begins in Lamentations and ends in Exodus' (Hamilton 1952,69; Hansen
and Brebner 1940).
This changed with the turn of the century. The completion of the first
Canadian transcontinental railway, built with borrowed capital and
cheap imported labour, opened the vast Canadian prairie to expansive
agricultural settlement. The time was right. A seemingly unquenchable
European market for Canadian raw materials and agricultural prod-
ucts, especially grains, coincided with a major population upheaval in
Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe that cut millions of people loose
to seek homes in the New World. The result was unprecedented Cana-
dian economic expansion propped up by a huge wave of immigration
24 Harold Troper
The Second World War and its aftermath are a critical watershed in the
history of Canadian immigration and of immigration into Toronto.
While many policy planners initially feared that the end of the war
would throw Canada back into the job-hungry Depression of the 1930s,
the exact opposite took place. A surprisingly smooth transition from
wartime to peacetime production found a new urban industrial base -
the product of massive wartime industrial investment - retooling to
satisfy pent up consumer demand for goods and services that had been
denied to Canadians as far back as the beginning of the Depression. In
addition, a huge export market quickly opened up as Western Europe
began its massive post-war reconstruction. Rather than a shortage of
jobs, within a year or so after the war's end, Canada faced a surging
demand for labour. Labour-intensive industry, much of it in and around
cities like Toronto, demanded that Canada's doors to immigration be
reopened.
In truth, however, when immigration was first reopened, the govern-
ment sought to hold the line against the wholesale entry of non-British
or non-Western Europeans. Prime Minister Mackenzie King was only
reflecting the national mood when he observed that 'the people of
Canada do not wish to make a fundamental alteration in the character
of their population through mass immigration.' Discrimination and
ethnic selectivity in immigration would remain. 'Canada is perfectly
within her rights in selecting the persons whom we regard as desirable
future citizens. It is not a "fundamental human right" of any alien to
enter Canada. It is a privilege. It is a matter of domestic policy' (House
of Commons, Debates, 1 May 1947: 2644-7). Nor was Ottawa congenial
to the notion of renewed immigration by people who were regarded to
be least likely to fit in. Immigration officials - who still understood their
duty to be to guard the Canadian gate against all comers - were par-
ticularly unsympathetic to any liberalization of guidelines when it
came to allowing in the groups against whom immigration barriers had
been carefully erected in the first place: Asians, and Southern and
Eastern Europeans. The officials, who could not see beyond their own
28 Harold Troper
family units or, if the male head of household was the first to migrate, of
men who made reunification with family a first priority (lacovetta
1992).
Unschooled in large city ways, most Italian immigrants to Toronto
located in residential working-class pockets along major public trans-
portation arteries and took up lower-status manual - but often union-
ized - labouring jobs in construction and related industrial sectors. For
many immigrants from Italy, residential property acquisition and or-
ganizing chain migration to ensure reunification with kin were their
twin priorities. Home ownership and a widening circle of kin also
served to prop up the integrative process. Family often took in family
and together the extended family formed a social and economic unit,
pooling capital and resources, networking together for jobs, caring for
one another's children, sharing information, and serving as a secure
base for personal interaction and emotional strength. As the numbers
of Italians in Toronto increased, so did their institutional presence.
Italian grocery stores, cafes, food wholesalers, and newspaper publish-
ers, along with Italian parishes and social clubs, gave Italian neighbour-
hoods a distinctive flavour and streetscape, and even a distinctively
ethnic subeconomy.
Other immigrant groups followed suit. As Italian immigration con-
tinued, Greeks, Portuguese, and the peoples of the Balkan peninsula
began arriving in Toronto in large numbers. Each group was unique in
its historical self-definition, cultural traditions, institutional organiza-
tion, and economic priorities; at the same time, each adopted many of
the same family-based economic and social integrative strategies so
characteristic of post-war Italian immigrants (lacovetta 1992; Harney
1998).
America? How was it that in less than one generation Toronto's public
face shifted from the defence of Anglo-conformity to a celebration of
the mosaic? Put simply, by the late 1960s, the past was cut loose, made
dysfunctional both by the onslaught of city-bound immigration and the
mediating force of governments awakened to the fact that political
power was increasingly in the hands of a new and pluralist urban
electorate that was made up more and more of immigrants and their
children. If it would take time for its importance to soak in, the election
of Nathan Phillips - a Jew and a child of immigrants - as the first mayor
of the 1960s Toronto was a telling barometer of the effect that immigra-
tion was having on the municipal polity; it represented something of a
civic revolution of the mind.
The revolution was of many parts, but had its genesis in the late
1940s with the redefining of community through the introduction of a
distinct and separate Canadian citizenship. Until 1947 there was no
such thing as Canadian citizenship; people living in Canada were le-
gally designated British subjects who were residents of Canada, not
Canadians. Pressure for change began in the post-war period and the
name most associated with that change was Paul Martin, a Liberal
backbencher who was appointed secretary of state towards the end of
the war. In his autobiography, he claimed to have previously flirted
with the notion of a distinct Canadian citizenship, but his total conver-
sion to the necessity of separate citizenship came during an official visit
to recently liberated Europe in 1945. In France he visited the Canadian
military cemetery at Dieppe where, walking amid the rows of graves,
some still fresh with wooden markers, he reported being deeply moved
by the incredible diversity of names found among the Canadian fallen -
names which spoke to the pluralism of origins that even then made up
Canadian society. Martin later wrote, 'Of whatever origin, these men
were Canadians.' They had fought and died for Canada; they deserved
to be remembered as Canadians. In their memory, Martin claimed, he
championed the creation of a Canadian citizenship (Martin 1983,437).
Without negating Martin's contribution, it has to be acknowledged
that other factors prodded the government towards instituting a sepa-
rate Canadian citizenship. Certainly, there was desire to build on pride
at Canada's major contribution to the Allied war effort - distinct from
that of Britain's - but there was also a desire by Ottawa to carve out an
independent place for Canada in the post-war United Nations and in
the family of nations. An independent Canadian voice would be well-
served by having a separate Canadian citizenship. On the domestic
36 Harold Troper
The committee soon got an earful. Italian, Jewish, and Eastern Euro-
pean ethnic leaders, particularly in Toronto - now home to large and
increasingly resourceful post-war immigrant and ethnic communities -
were outspoken in their hostility to any reduction in family sponsor-
ship. They warned politicians that enraged ethnic voters would neither
forgive nor forget any political party that slammed the door on their
kith and kin. Mainstream churches and the Canadian Labour Congress
joined the chorus of those demanding a broadening, not a narrowing,
of family reunification provisions of the immigration regulations. Mem-
bers of Parliament from Toronto, especially those from immigrant-
heavy ridings, who feared that campaign contributions and ethnic
votes would go elsewhere, waded in on the side of family sponsorship.
Ducking the political buckshot, the federal government set aside the
proposed changes, at least as recommended in the white paper. Instead,
Ottawa tinkered with the regulations. The list of those family members
entitled to entry into Canada as first-degree relatives was narrowed. At
the same time, however, a new class of immigrant, a nominated class,
was announced. Nominated immigrants, primarily non-dependent fam-
ily members who seemed likely to integrate well, were given priority in
immigration processing. Their Canadian sponsor or nominator was
also relieved of some of the legal and fiscal liability assumed in the case
of sponsorship of immediate family. As a result, family migration was
not curtailed. It was restructured and, to some degree, expanded. For
years to come, the largest single subset of immigrants arriving in To-
ronto would continue to be family or other sponsored categories (Sta-
tistics Canada 1990).
There was another and, conceivably, more significant impact of the
sponsorship battle. Thoughtful political observers of the day may have
sensed the emergence of a newly empowered urban immigrant and
ethnic political constituency, largely based in Toronto. In the white
paper debate, that constituency seemed to be serving notice that it was
prepared to take its place as a player on the Canadian political stage.
But was this particular political victory an aberration, a one-time
single-issue success by a coalition of otherwise disparate ethnic groups?
Political commentators were unsure and began discussing a possibly
fundamental and far-reaching shift in urban politics. One thing was
certain, though, in Toronto, yesterday's immigrants were emerging as
political, social, and economic powerbrokers in their own right - a
'third force' whose origins were neither English nor French (Porter
1972; Burnet 1976,1979; Troper 1978; Breton 1979; Lupul 1983).
Immigration into Toronto since the Second World War 41
THE next morning, a little before eleven, the wonderful Miss Perry,
accompanied by the admirable Mr. Bryant, was approaching Apsley
House when the figure of a solitary horseman was to be seen. It had
a combination of unexpectedness and familiarity which fixed Miss
Perry’s attention. She gave a little exclamation. The horseman was
unmistakably Jim Lascelles.
Jim received a most affectionate greeting.
“You are just in time,” said he. “It is a near thing. Gobo is yonder in
the offing. I was afraid he would get here before you.”
Miss Perry was delighted but perplexed by a suggestion that Jim put
forward. It was that they should go down the left while Gobo rode
up on the right.
“But I promised Gobo,” she said.
“Look here, Goose Girl,” said Jim, with tremendous resolution, “do
you suppose I have invested the last half-sovereign I have in the
world on the worst hack in London, to be cut out by that old duffer?
Come on round, you Goose, before he gets up.”
Really Miss Perry is not to be blamed. Jim Lascelles was resolution
incarnate once he had made up his mind. Jim’s horse, a nondescript
who does not merit serious notice, walked a few paces briskly, the
chestnut followed its example, as chestnuts will, and the next thing
was Jim’s horse broke into a canter. The chestnut did the same. Of
course it was Miss Perry’s business to see that the chestnut did
nothing of the sort. But it has to be recorded that she failed in her
obvious duty. And then, so swift is the road to destruction, in less
time than it takes to inform the incredulous reader, the chestnut and
the nondescript began literally to fly down Rotten Row.
It was a golden morning of glorious June, and, of course, things
constantly happen at that vernal season. But as the four pairs of
irresponsible hoofs came thundering by, flinging up the tan in all
directions and nearly knocking over a policeman, equestrians of both
sexes, and pedestrians too, stared in polite amazement and very
decided disapproval. If not absolutely contrary to the park
regulations, it was certainly very wrong behavior.
There is every reason to suspect that the opinion of that high
authority, Mr. Bryant, was even more uncompromising. Not for an
instant did he attempt to cope with the pace that had been set. He
was content sadly to watch his charge get farther and farther away.
He then turned to look back at the man with the red face, who had
just arrived at the turn.
That elevated personage, who could not see at all well without his
spectacles, halted at the turn and looked in vain for the wonderful
Miss Perry. His friend Cheriton, who had entered the gates just in
time to be au courant with all that had happened, accosted him
cheerfully.
“Doctors’ orders, George?”
“Ye-es,” said George, rather gruffly.
“I warned you years ago, my dear fellow,” said his friend,
sympathetically, “that any man who drinks port wine in the middle of
the day as a regular thing, can count later in life on the crown of the
martyr.”
George looked rather cross. He peered to the right and he peered to
the left. The ever-receding pair were by now undecipherable to
stronger eyes than those of George Betterton.
“Seen a gal about?” he inquired rather irritably. There never was a
duke since the creation of the order who could endure to be kept
waiting.
“I’ve seen several,” said his friend, with an air of preternatural
innocence.
“I mean that gal of Caroline Crewkerne’s,” said George.
“I was not aware that she had one.”
“Tall, bouncing gal,” said George. “Ginger hair.”
“Ginger hair!” said his friend. “Tall, bouncing gal! Do you mean my
ward, Miss Perry?”
“Your ward! What d’ye mean, Cheriton?”
“Caroline Crewkerne seems to think,” said Cheriton, coolly, “that I
shall serve the best interests of a lonely and unprotected and
extraordinarily prepossessing girlhood if I act, as it were, in loco
parentis during Miss Perry’s sojourn in the vast metropolis.”
George began to gobble furiously. It was a sign, however, that his
mind was working. That heavy and rusty mechanism was very
difficult to set in motion.
“If it comes to that,” said he, “I should say I am quite as capable of
looking after the gal as you are.”
“A matter of opinion, George, I assure you,” said Cheriton, with
genial candor.
“What d’ye mean?”
“For one thing, I am rather older than you. Therefore, in Caroline’s
opinion, I am better fitted to occupy the paternal office.”
“Are you, though?” said George, stubbornly.
“I am sixty-five, you know,” said his friend, with an air of modest
pride. “The ideal age, if I may say so, for wisdom, experience, and
knowledge of the world to coalesce in the service of innocence,
beauty, and extreme youth. At least, I know that is Caroline
Crewkerne’s opinion.”
“Goin’ to marry the gal, are you?” said George, bluntly.
Some men are very blunt by nature.
“The exigencies of the situation may render that course expedient,”
said Cheriton, rather forensically. “But in any case, my dear George,
speaking with the frankness to which I feel that my advantage in
years entitles me, I am inclined to doubt the seemliness of the open
pursuit by a man of nine-and-fifty of a wayside flower.”
“What d’ye mean, Cheriton?” said George, with a more furious
gobble than any he had yet achieved.
“What I really mean, my dear fellow,” said his friend, “is that you can
no longer indulge in the pleasures of the chase without your
spectacles. Had you been furnished with those highly useful, if not
specially ornamental adjuncts to the human countenance, you would
have been able to observe that the wonderful Miss Perry—whose
hair, by the way, is yellow—was spirited away exactly ninety seconds
before you arrived on the scene.”
“Who took her?” said George, who by now had grown purple with
suppressed energy.
“A young fellow took her,” said Cheriton. “A smart, dashing, well-set-
up young fellow took her, my dear George. He simply came up,
tossed her the handkerchief, and away they set off hell for leather.
By now they are at the Albert Memorial.”
No sooner was this information conveyed to him than George
Betterton did a vain and foolish thing. Without bestowing another
word upon Cheriton he set off in pursuit. It was supremely ridiculous
that he should have behaved in any such fashion. But it is surprising
how soon the most stalwart among us loses his poise; how soon the
most careful performer topples off the tight-rope of perfect
discretion and sanity. The spectacle of George pursuing the
runaways with a haste that was almost as unseemly as their own
was certainly romantic. And at the same time it provided infinitely
pleasant food for the detached observer who was responsible for
George’s behavior.
Cheriton stood to watch and to laugh sardonically. The marionette
had begun to answer to the strings in delightful fashion. He
promised to excel all anticipation.
In the meantime Young Blood was careering away like the wind.
Faster and faster it went. It was higher, deeper, richer, more
exhilarating than any of the old Widdiford madnesses. It was in vain
that the British public looked pained and the London police looked
important. This was its crowded hour of glorious life; and if there
was to be an end to all things, there were two persons at least who
felt that, after all, the cosmos had done very well to get itself
invented.
However, this sort of thing cannot last forever. The nondescript soon
began to display signs of distress.
“Bellows to mend,” said Jim.
The glorious Miss Perry had difficulty in checking her chestnut.
“Why,” said she, “he is almost as strong as your papa’s pedigree
hunter.”
“We’ve done a record from the Red House to the Parsonage, I think,”
said Jim.
Even when they turned to ride back their high spirits met with no
check. The crowded glorious hour continued, if pitched in a less
emotional key. Jim’s nondescript was no longer equal to the fine
careless rapture.
“Goose Girl,” said Jim, “do you know I have made a resolution?”
“Have you, Jim?” said Miss Perry.
“I am determined to finish that picture of you in your wonderful
Gainsborough frock.”
“Of course, Jim,” said Miss Perry.
“That picture is to be a masterpiece, you know.”
“Is it, Jim?” said Miss Perry.
“Yes,” said Jim. “And when it has made me famous what do you
suppose I am going to do?”
“I don’t know, Jim,” said Miss Perry.
“Can’t you guess?”
Miss Perry knitted her brows in grave perplexity.
“Marry Muffin.”
“What, marry the Ragamuffin!” said Jim, scornfully.
“She is prettier than Polly is.”
“But she is such a Ragamuffin; and she has never an incredible hat
and a Gainsborough frock to call her own.”
“She has her mauve, Jim,” said Miss Perry.
“No,” said Jim, decisively; “in spite of her mauve I decline to marry
the Ragamuffin.”
Miss Perry looked vastly disappointed.
“Milly is too young,” said she.
Jim pressed the nondescript. The ice was getting desperately thin.
And every moment the light of the morning was making it thinner.
“Goose Girl,” said Jim, “do you remember that once you promised to
marry me?”
“Yes, I did, Jim,” said Miss Perry, “if you got those three big red-
cheeked apples off the tree at the Red House at Widdiford.”
“I got them off all right,” said Jim. “But instead of receiving your
hand in matrimony I got a tremendous licking.”
“The apples were awfully nice, though,” said Miss Perry, like a true
daughter of Eve.
The high personage who controls the limelight continued to play
most embarrassing tricks with the light of the morning. The hapless
Jim Lascelles felt himself to be no match for that master hand.
“Goose Girl,” said Jim, defiantly, “assuming for a moment that I
made myself famous enough to buy back the Red House at
Widdiford, with the strawberry beds and the apple orchards, and the
old wicket-gate that leads into the back lane which takes you
straight to the Parsonage—would you keep the promise that you
made when you were a long-legged person of seven, with a very
large appetite, and I was a chubby subject of thirteen and a half
with rather thin trousers?”
“Yes, Jim, I would,” said Miss Perry, with remarkable promptitude,
frankness, and sincerity.
“There, now I’ve done it,” groaned Jim. “It was bound to happen. I
knew the royal daylight would provoke me to make a cad of myself
before it had done playing its tricks. But if people will have yellow
hair, and they will wear yellow gauntlets to match it, and that fellow
upstairs will fling the limelight all over the place, how can a poor
painting chap help himself?”
Miss Perry had grown very grave. She was silent for twenty-five
seconds.
“Jim,” said she, with slow-drawn solemnity, “if you do marry
anybody, I r-r-really think it ought to be Muffin.”
“That Ragamuffin!”
“She is such a sweet,” said Miss Perry. “And she is so pretty; and
dearest papa says she is so clever; and of course you know I am
rather a Silly.”
“All the world knows it.”
“And Muffin always said she would just love to live at the Red House
at Widdiford.”
“Goose Girl,” said Jim, “I am afraid you are deep. You want to marry
Gobo.”
“Not r-r-really,” said Miss Perry, with wide-eyed earnestness. “Of
course he is a dear, but—but of course, Jim, he is not like you are.”
“Thank you very much for the information. But tell me, Goose Girl,
wouldn’t you like to be a duchess?”
“Oh no, Jim,” said Miss Perry.
“Why not, you Goose?”
“It sounds rather silly.”
“So it does, now you come to mention it,” said Jim. “But think of all
the wonderful frocks and jewels you would have, and the wonderful
houses, and the wonderful horses, and the wonderful ices of every
conceivable color and every possible flavor. And as for cream buns, a
duchess of course can have as many as she requires.”
“I would rather have the Red House at Widdiford,” said Miss Perry.
“Really,” said Jim, “you are the most tremendous thing in Geese. Just
think what you could do if you were a duchess. You could buy old
books and new vestments for your papa; Muffin could have a new
mauve; the Polly Girl could marry her parson, and she could boast of
her sister who married the duke; and the Milly Girl could think more
about Persian kittens and less about self-improvement; and as for
Dickie and Charley, they both might go to Sandhurst and probably
become field-marshals.”
The blue eyes of Miss Perry opened in their dazzlement to
dimensions that were perfectly astonishing.
“It would be awfully nice,” said she; “but, Jim——”
“Well?”
“I did promise you, didn’t I?”
“You would never have got those three red-cheeked apples if you
hadn’t,” said Jim.
As they neared the turn at Hyde Park Corner they began
unconsciously to assume airs of decorum. The accusing figure of Mr.
Bryant awaited them. Lord Cheriton too was only a little way off. He
stood by the railings looking the picture of outraged delicacy.
When the runaways came up to greet him he held up both hands
before his face with the gesture of dismay of a very nice old lady.
“I am dumb,” said he.
Apparently Jim Lascelles was smitten with a similar infirmity. As for
Miss Perry, the ineradicable instincts of her sex assumed the control
of that irresponsible person.
“Have you seen Gobo?” she demanded breathlessly.
The blend of disinterested concern and absolute innocence was
perfectly charming.
“I could never have believed it,” said Cheriton, with a pained air.
“The finished duplicity, the Jesuitical depth.”
“Have you seen him?” demanded Miss Perry.
“Have I seen Gobo? I have seen a roaring, outraged lion in the guise
of a rampant turkey cock.”
“It is an awful pity,” said Miss Perry. “We missed him.”
Cheriton felt that he had never observed such gravely sweet concern
in the human countenance. To have suspected its proprietress of
arrière pensée would have been barbarism.
“Yes; an awful pity,” Cheriton assented. “Particularly for men of a
rather full habit of body who are decidedly short in the neck.”
“Do you think Gobo will mind?” said Miss Perry. “You see, Jim”—the
handle of Jim’s crop was ominously near to her knee—“Mr. Lascelles
came up, and we thought if we went down we should be sure to
meet Gobo, but we didn’t.”
“Lascelles, my good fellow,” said his friend, “isn’t it time you began
to play up a bit? Miss Perry’s lucidity is admirable, but somehow one
has the feeling that her verisimilitude wants eking out a little. Your
version will be interesting.”
“My mount cost a cool half-sovereign which I couldn’t afford,” said
Jim, brazenly, “and I thought as it was a fine morning I had better
have my money’s worth.”
Cheriton’s smile expanded to the dimensions of his necktie.
“Yes,” said he, laughing, “this sort of thing is best left to those who
are born with the instinct for diplomacy. Lascelles, my good fellow,
you would have done far better to have pinned your faith to your
companion in guilt. Her version was excellent, if a little bald. To my
mind it was pitched in quite the right key. It was natural, lucid,
admirably reticent. It clearly suggested that the blame could not
belong to either of you, whoever else it might be fixed upon.
Unfortunately, your own version does not tend to exonerate you
equally. I must confess, Lascelles, that upon my mind it leaves a
most unhappy impression.”
“The truth is,” said Jim, “I am seeking a fresh store of inspiration in
order that I may complete the chef d’œuvre.”
“I think it should be a masterpiece undoubtedly.”
“I think so too,” said Jim.
Miss Perry’s far-seeing, west-country eyes appeared to be searching
for something on the far horizon.
“Gobo is coming,” said she.
“Which way?” said Jim.
“He is coming up on the right. Don’t you see him?”
Jim had to strain his gaze.
“Yes; by Jove, you are right!” said he. “What wonderful eyes you
have got, Miss Perry!”
“It is so long since one inhabitated the halcyon era of one’s youth,”
said Cheriton, “that one is rather at a loss to remember whether Red
Riding Hood made a similar observation to the wolf, or whether the
wolf made the observation to Red Riding Hood.”
“The former, undoubtedly,” said Jim.
“I am glad of that,” said Cheriton. “I feared it might have been the
latter.”
“Hadn’t we better be going?” said Jim, brazenly, to his companion in
guilt. “This screw of mine seems to have got his wind back.”
“Has he, Jim?” said Miss Perry.
Jim’s nondescript took a turn to the left. The chestnut followed in
the most natural manner. On this occasion, however, the distance
between the Parsonage and the Red House at Widdiford was not
accomplished in quite such record time. All the same, for the greater
part of the way the pace was decidedly hot.
“Seen anything of the gal, George?” inquired his friend Cheriton.
George was looking very purple indeed.
“I saw a cloud of dust just now,” said he. “There was a ginger-haired
gal in it going at a dooce of a rattle.”
“I can’t imagine my ward, Miss Perry, attempting anything in the
nature of a rattle,” said Cheriton.
“Can’t you?” grunted George, sourly.
CHAPTER XVIII
FASHION COMES TO THE ACACIAS
FOR almost the space of a minute a battle royal was waged between
the monocle and the long-handled folders. All present, with the
exception of Miss Perry, who was not in the habit of observing
anything, sat in breathless silence to observe the issue. And
incredible as it may appear, the issue was not with the long-handled
folders.
“Capital!” murmured the victor, to nobody in particular, and for no
apparent reason.
Jim Lascelles was one of those unfortunate and misguided people
who have an extraordinary flair for what they call “fun.” He bent over
to his mother.
“Don’t give the show away yet,” said he.
“You are too cryptic, my son, for this addle-pate.”
“Don’t you see,” said Jim. “They think our dark horse is an outsider.
Had they known they wouldn’t have come.”
Jim’s mother smiled her little half smile whose furtive mischief was
really far more becoming than it ought to have been.
“When is the sale of work, Lady Charlotte?” she asked, in order to
keep the pot boiling.
The simple question was received by the three ladies with hauteur.
As the sale of work began on the morrow, and Mrs. Lascelles had
promised to preside over the bran tub or the refreshment stall or the
rummage counter, she was not quite clear which, their demeanor
was perhaps not unnatural.
“The sale of work begins to-morrow at three o’clock, Mrs. Lascelles,”
said Miss Champneys, coldly.
“Of course,” said Jim’s mother. “How stupid of me! I knew that
perfectly well. What I meant to have said was, which is the day upon
which Lady Charlotte will perform the opening ceremony?”
“The first, Mrs. Lascelles,” said Miss Champneys and Miss Laetitia,
speaking as one.
“Of course,” said Jim’s mother; and involuntarily added the rider,
“how stupid of one!” The Miss Champneys were matchless in putting
people in the wrong. “What I should have asked was, who will
perform the ceremony on the second day?”
“The wife of the member,” said Miss Champneys.
“And on the third?” asked Jim’s mother, rather obviously.
“Lady Plunket,” said Miss Laetitia.
“The wife of the brewer?” asked Jim.
Jim’s question provoked a further display of hauteur. In the first
instance it was an act of presumption for a young man like Jim to
have ventured to ask a question at all, and in the second he had
contrived to ask the sort of question that stamped him as belonging
to the neighborhood.
“Lady Plunket was a Coxby, I believe,” said Miss Champneys. She
assumed an air of devastation, which was singularly becoming to
one whose forebears, according to their own oral and written
testimony, had first appeared in these islands in the train of the
Conqueror.
“Any relation to the parson chap?” inquired Cheriton, casually.
Lady Charlotte Greg again elected to do battle.
“I am informed that Lady Plunket is a niece of the late Archbishop
Coxby,” said she, in a tone and manner which for two decades had
cowed the minor clergy of the diocese.
“Archbishop, was he?” said Cheriton. “I only knew him in his capacity
of a bore.”
Each of the three ladies was susceptible of a little quiver of horror.
“Pray where did you meet him?” demanded Lady Charlotte Greg,
with dilated nostril.
“In the House,” said Cheriton. “Shockin’ bore in the House.”
Lady Charlotte raised her glasses with studious care.
“The domestic life of Archbishop Coxby was renowned for its
simplicity,” said she.
A pause surcharged with suppressed emotion followed, and then the
ludicrous drawl of Miss Perry was heard in the land.
“I think a sale of work is too sweet,” said that Featherbrain. “We
always have one once a year in the parish-room at Slocum Magna.”
The Miss Champneys and Lady Charlotte Greg received this
announcement with a frosty disdain which, sad to relate, had not the
least effect upon Miss Perry. The fine shades of social feeling did not
percolate to that obtuse person.
“That is very interesting, my dear Miss Goose,” said Cheriton, in his
most mellifluous manner; “very interesting indeed.”
“We raised eight pounds two and ninepence for the organ fund in
1900, at Slocum Magna,” drawled Miss Perry.
“Where, pray, is Slocum Magna?” inquired Lady Charlotte Greg.
Miss Perry had learned by this time that whenever Slocum Magna
was mentioned in the presence of London people the question was
inevitable. However, before she could take steps to enlighten Lady
Charlotte Greg, Cheriton favored her with a paternal finger.
“Permit me, my dear Miss Goose,” said he, elaborately. “Slocum
Magna,” he proceeded, with the weighty air of one who is no
stranger to the Front Bench, “is the next village to Widdiford.”
“And where, pray, is Widdiford?” inquired Lady Charlotte Greg.
“Widdiford,” said Cheriton, meditatively, “Widdiford is the place
where the Red House is and where they haven’t quite got the
railway, don’t you know.”
“But it is only three miles away,” chimed Miss Perry.
The pause which ensued made Jim’s mother and the Miss
Champneys wonder what was going to happen. All three felt a little
uncomfortable. On the contrary, Lady Charlotte Greg felt it to be a
tribute to the overpowering nature of her personality, and was
gratified accordingly. Cheriton crossed and recrossed his lavender
trousers, and changed the glass from the right eye to the left with
the air of a High Church clergyman pronouncing the benediction.
“Have you been to see the horses at the Hippodrome?” inquired the
undefeated Miss Perry of Lady Charlotte Greg.
“I have not,” said that lady, with a quiver of an evangelical top-knot.
“Have you?” inquired Miss Perry of the Miss Champneys.
“My sister and I have not,” said the elder Miss Champneys, whose
top-knot, although not quite so evangelical as Lady Charlotte’s, yet
contrived to quiver just as much.
“You ought,” said Miss Perry, with irresistible friendliness. “They play
bridge and fire off guns and pretend to be dead. I have been nine
times.”
The Miss Champneys conferred in discreet undertones with Lady
Charlotte Greg.
“Too natural to be an actress,” said that authority. “Her hair and skin
bear inspection. If she were not so painfully overdressed she would
be a singularly beautiful girl.”
“Can you place that curiously artificial person?” asked Miss Laetitia,
who had a passion for exact knowledge.
“An actor-manager unmistakably,” said Infallibility with immense
decision.