THE MOBILE HOTEL DE LUXE: THE ROYAL TRAIN
I
On Sunday, August 24th, His Royal Highness came under the sway of that
benevolent despot in the Kingdom of Efficiency, the Canadian Pacific
Railway.
He motored out along a road that Quebec is proud of, because it has a
reputable surface for automobiles in a world of natural earth tracks,
through delightful country to a small station which [had?] a Gallic
air, Three Rivers. Here he boarded the Royal Train.
It was a remarkable train. Not merely did its construction, length,
tonnage and ultimate mileage set up new records, but in it the
idealist's dream of perfection in travelling came true.
It might be truer to say the Royal Party did not take the train, it
took them. As each member of the party mounted into his compartment,
or Pullman car, he at once ceased to concern himself with his own
well-being. To think of oneself was unnecessary. The C.P.R. had not
only arranged to do the thinking, but had also arranged to do it better.
The external facts concerning the train were but a part of its wonder.
And the minor part. It was the largest train of its kind to accomplish
so great a single run--it weighed over a thousand tons, and travelled
nearly ten thousand miles. It was a fifth of a mile in length. Its
ten splendid cars were all steel. Some of them were ordinary sleepers,
some were compartment and drawing-room cars. Those for the Prince and
his Staff were sumptuous private cars with state-rooms, dining-rooms,
kitchens, bathrooms, and cosy observation rooms and platforms,
beautifully fitted and appointed.
The train was a modern hotel strayed accidentally on to wheels. It had
its telephone system; its own electricity; its own individually
controlled central heat. It had a laundry service for its passengers,
and its valets always on the spot to renew the crease of youth in all
trousers. It had its own newspaper, or, rather, bulletin, by which all
on board learnt the news of the external world twice a day, no matter
in what wild spot the train happened to be. It had its dark-room for
photographers, its dispensary for the doctor and its untiring telegraph
expert to handle all wired messages, including the correspondents'
cables. It had its dining-rooms and kitchens and its staff of
first-class chefs, who worked miracles of cuisine in the small space of
their kitchen, giving over a hundred people three meals a day that no
hotel in London could exceed in style, and no hotel in England could
hope to equal in abundance. It carried baggage, and transferred it to
Government Houses or hotels, and transferred it back to its cars and
baggage vans in a manner so perfect that one came to look upon the
matter almost as a process of nature, and not as a breathless
phenomenon.
It was the train _de luxe_, but it was really more than that. It was a
train handled by experts from Mr. A. B. Calder, who represented the
President of the Company, down to the cleaning boy, who swept up the
cars, and they were experts of a curious quality of their own.
Whatever the Canadian Pacific Railway is (and it has its critics),
there can be no doubt that, as an organization, it captures the
loyalty, as it calls forth all the keenness and ability of its
servants. It is something that quickens their imagination and
stimulates their enthusiasm. There was something warm and invigorating
about the way each man set up within himself a counsel of
perfection--which he intended to exceed. Waiters, negro car porters,
brakemen, secretaries--every man on that staff of sixty odd determined
that _his_ department was going to be a living example, not of what he
could do, but of what the C.P.R. could do.
The _esprit de corps_ was remarkable. Mr. Calder told us at the end of
the trip that as far as the staff working of the train was concerned he
need not have been in control. He had not issued a single order, nor a
single reprimand in the three months. The men knew their work
perfectly; they did it perfectly.
When one thinks of a great organization animated from the lowest worker
to the President by so lively and extraordinarily human a spirit of
loyalty that each worker finds delight in improving on instructions,
one must admit that it has the elements of greatness in it.
My own impression after seeing it working and the work it has done,
after seeing the difficulties it has conquered, the districts it has
opened up, the towns it has brought into being, is that, as an
organization, the Canadian Pacific Railway is great, not merely as a
trading concern, but as an Empire-building factor. Its vision has been
big beyond its own needs, and the Dominion today owes not a little to
the great men of the C.P.R., who were big-minded enough to plan, not
only for themselves, but also for all Canada.
And the big men are still alive. In Quebec we had the good fortune to
meet Lord Shaughnessy, whose acute mind was the very soul of the C.P.R.
until he retired from the Presidency a short time ago, and Mr. Edward
W. Beatty, who has succeeded him.
Lord Shaughnessy may be a retired lion, but he is by no means a dead
one. A quiet man of powerful silences, whose eyes can be ruthless, and
his lips wise. A man who appears disembodied on first introduction,
for one overlooks the rest of him under the domination of his head and
eyes.
The best description of Mr. Beatty lies in the first question one wants
to ask him, which is, "Are you any relation to the Admiral?"
The likeness is so remarkable that one is sure it cannot be accidental.
It is accidental, and therefore more remarkable. It is the Admiral's
face down to the least detail of feature, though it is a trifle
younger. There is the same neat, jaunty air--there is even the same
cock of the hat over the same eye. There is the same sense of compact
power concealed by the same spirit of whimsical dare-devilry. There is
the same capacity, the same nattiness, the same humanness. There is
the same sense of abnormality that a man looking so young should
command an organization so enormous, and the same recognition that he
is just the man to do it.
Both these men are impressive. They are big men, but then so are all
the men who have control in the C.P.R. They are more than that, they
can inspire other men with their own big spirit. We met many heads of
departments in the C.P.R., and we felt that in all was the same
quality. Mr. Calder, as he began, "A. B." as he soon became, was the
one we came in contact with most, and he was typical of his service.
"A. B." was not merely our good angel, but our good friend from the
first. Not merely did he smooth the way for us, but he made it the
jolliest and most cheery way in the world. He is a bundle of strange
qualities, all good. He is Puck, with the brain of an administrator.
The king of story tellers, with an unfaltering instinct for
organization. A poet, and a mimic and a born comedian, plus a will
that is never flurried, a diplomacy that never rasps, and a capacity
for the routine of railway work that is--C.P.R. A man of big heart,
big humanness, and big ability, whom we all loved and valued from the
first meeting.
And, over all, he is a C.P.R. man, the type of man that organization
finds service for, and is best served by them; an example that did most
to impress us with a sense of the organization's greatness.
II
If I have written much concerning the C.P.R., it is because I feel
that, under the personality of His Royal Highness himself, the success
of the tour owes much to the care and efficiency that organization
exerted throughout its course, and also because for three months the
C.P.R. train was our home and the backbone of everything we did. If
you like, that is the chief tribute to the organization. We spent
three months confined more or less to a single carriage; we travelled
over all kinds of line and country, and under all manner of conditions;
and after those three long months we left the train still impressed by
the C.P.R., still warm in our friendship for it--perhaps, indeed,
warmer in our regard.
There are not many railways that could stand that continuous test.
Of the ten cars in the train, the Prince of Wales occupied the last,
"Killarney," a beautiful car, eighty-two feet long, its interior
finished in satinwood, and beautifully lighted by the indirect system.
The Prince had his bedroom, with an ordinary bed, dining-room and
bathroom. There was a kitchen and pantry for his special chef. The
observation compartment was a drawing-room with settees, and arm-chairs
and a gramophone, while in addition to the broad windows there was a
large, brass-railed platform at the rear, upon which he could sit and
watch the scenery (search-lights helped him at night), and from which
he held a multitude of impromptu receptions.
"Cromarty," another beautiful car, was occupied by the personal Staff;
"Empire," "Chinook" and "Chester" by personal and C.P.R. staff. The
next car, "Canada," was the beautiful dining car; "Carnarvon," the
next, a sleeping car, was occupied by the correspondents and
photographers; "_Renown_" belonged to the particularly efficient C.P.R.
police, who went everywhere with the train, and patrolled the track if
it stopped at night. In front of "Renown" were two baggage cars with
the 225 pieces of baggage the retinue carried.
At Three Rivers a very cheery crowd wished His Royal Highness _bon
voyage_. The whole town turned out, and over-ran the pretty grass plot
that is a feature in every Canadian station, in order to see the Prince.
We ran steadily down the St. Lawrence through pretty country towards
Toronto. All the stations we passed were crowded, and though the train
invariably went through at a good pace that did not seem to matter to
the people, though they had come a long distance in order to catch just
this fleeting glimpse of the train that carried him.
Sometimes the train stopped for water, or to change engines at the end
of the section of 133 miles. The people then gathered about the rear
of the train, and the Prince had an opportunity of chatting with them
and shaking hands with many.
At some halts he left the train to stroll on the platform, and on these
occasions he invariably talked with the crowd, and gave "candles" to
the children. There was no difficulty at all in approaching him. At
one tiny place, Outremont, one woman came to him, and said that she
felt she already knew him, because her husband had met him in France.
That fact immediately moved the Prince to sympathy. Not only did he
spend some minutes talking with her, but he made a point of referring
to the incident in his speech at Toronto the next day, to emphasize the
feeling he was experiencing of having come to a land that was almost
his own, thanks to his comradeship with Canadians overseas.
Not only during the day was the whole route of the train marked by
crowds at stations, and individual groups in the countryside, but even
during the night these crowds and groups were there.
As we swept along there came through the windows of our sleeping-car
the ghosts of cheers, as a crowd on a station or a gathering at a
crossing saluted the train. The cheer was gone in the distance as soon
as it came, but to hear these cheers through the night was to be
impressed by the generosity and loyalty of these people. They had
stayed up late, they had even travelled far to give one cheer only.
But they had thought it worth while. Montreal, which we passed through
in the dark, woke us with a hearty salute that ran throughout the
length of our passing through that great city, and so it went on
through the night and into the morning, when we woke to find ourselves
slipping along the shores of Lake Ontario and into the outskirts of
Toronto.