For a few days after my introduction to the Service, I felt like a
new boy in school. I was not welcome, it was clear, and Mr. Kingdom
seemed to consider me rather an addition to his burdens than a useful
member of his staff. I smiled upon every one who came within smiling
distance. It is a safe and non-committal act, and one I did well, and
sometimes with happy results. My smile was not the stereotyped smile
of the _première danseuse_, which means nothing, but a wide, genial,
ingratiating article, which looked as if it reached down my back and
pervaded my whole body. Some dogs wag their tails with such hearty
enthusiasm that they appear to wag their whole body. Of such kind was
my smile, and I made friends thereby.
I made my first requisition after a few days, Pa assisting. It covered
quite a list of things, a desk, ink, bottles, pads, pens, and paper;
a whisk, a brush and comb, and various other sundries, which are not
procurable now. “A hair brush!” said the Deputy to Mr. Kingdom, when my
requisition was put before him, “Wesblock has no hair.” “Pardon,” said
Mr. Kingdom, “he has nearly all the hair in the office.” So the hair
brush was not struck off.
The Political Era was followed by the Soap-and-Candles Era, the Era
of small things and small men, when men who should have been large,
and wide-minded were busy fussing over such trivial details as soap,
lead pencils, rubber bands, sealing-wax, hours of attendance and book
signing. These things, and the want of power to deal with the broad
and vital questions concerned, help to prevent the Civil Service from
taking its proper place in the esteem and respect of the country. But I
preach, which is not a function of an Automaton.
I soon discovered, in various holes and corners of the service, many
of my old college chums and acquaintances, who had evidently come to
the same pass as myself. I picked them up in every Department and every
class, and asked myself the question: “Why does M’Gill turn out so many
Civil servants?” Pa answered the question at once. “Don’t you see,”
he said, “that the percentage of fools is pretty much the same in all
paths of life, and that passing a Jackass through a certain process in
a university, and tagging him with a degree, does not make him less a
Jackass. In truth an educated Jackass is a more hopeless fool than the
common or garden variety, because he believes that his degree makes him
of the aristocracy of intellect. The only advantage a Jackass gets by
having a college degree is that he can enter the Civil Service and no
questions asked. His degree would not pass him unquestioned into any
other employment.”
I very soon concluded that the Civil Service involved, if you took it
seriously, a form of disease which saps your self-esteem and kills out
your originality.
After I had been some months with Mr. Kingdom and a friendly feeling
had been established between us, he said to me one day, “Wesblock,
I rather like you personally, but you will never make a good Civil
servant.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because you are not hum-drum enough,” he replied.
“Thank God for that!” said I, and Kingdom smiled.
He was certainly the most hum-drum person I had ever met. I really
believe he loved the Service. Mild spoken, good tempered, patient,
just, and honest—such was the character of the man—usually he was
solemn as a funeral, but one thing saved him happily from being quite
wooden and monotonous. He could see a joke and grin.
During my first three months in the office of Mercenary Dispensations,
I had to perform the very pretty financial feat of keeping a family in
Montreal and myself in Ottawa, on nothing at all. This because I had
to pass the Treasury Board, or the Treasury Board had to pass me, or
some equally important formality had to be gone through. Such were the
conditions to be satisfied before I could be listed, classified and
qualified to receive those large, pleasant pieces of paper, which ask
the Bank of Montreal to please pay to the order of John H. Wesblock,
etc., etc. Thus a great deal of the time of the Service is taken up
in waiting for something to happen which has actually taken place. I
was to learn later that a piece of work, which might take two hours
in actual performance, would have its intended effect in only five or
even ten days or a month. After three months spent in patience and a
boarding-house, I received my first Government cheque, for services
at the rate of three dollars per day, Sundays included. I could have
laid bricks or made coffins and been paid better. Fortunately for my
little three dollars per day, the cost of living had not then reached
the serious point it attained later. Gambling with real estate lots as
counters had not brought house rent to its present abnormal figure. A
house fit to live in was then procurable at twenty dollars per month.
Still, with four children and a wife to feed, clothe, and shelter, my
way was not easy.
Minister One’s secretary was Mr. Jellyman, a good fellow and a clever
one, whom I had known in Montreal as a clerk to the most notorious
crook amongst the city’s lawyers. Being private secretary to One was a
heart-breaking position, and it finished poor Jellyman, both morally
and physically. One had also a kind of under or second secretary, a
very splendid young widow, who did not make things any easier for
Jellyman. When I found Jellyman in Ottawa he had lost his easy laugh
and his keen appreciation of a jest; he was now generally solemn and
sour.
Nearly everybody feared One. He was a martinet, and considered himself
a power in the land. Being a non-smoker himself, he hated smoking, and
gave forth his dictum that there should be no smoking in any office in
his Department. He succeeded in stopping smoking about as well as he
succeeded in larger things, which is saying little. This fussy, little,
self-important man of the hour appeared one morning in an office of
one of the rented public buildings, and found a rough-looking person
smoking a pipe in the hall.
“Put out that pipe,” screamed the excitable Minister.
The smoking person took a couple of extra strong draws and looked Mr.
Minister over. “What for?” he quietly inquired.
“Because I say so,” bawled the Minister stamping his foot in rage.
“Then I will not,” said the person.
“Oh, ho! you will not? Do you know who I am?” said One.
“I do not,” said the smoker, coolly smoking.
“I am the Minister of Ways and Means, and you are discharged.”
“Is that so?” said the smoker, evidently not much impressed. “Do you
know who I am?”
“No, I do not know,” said the Minister.
“Well, I’ll tell ye,” said the person, amidst clouds of smoke, “I am
the janitor of this buildin’; an’ I’m not discharged, for I am not in
yer Department, do ye mind me?”
This closed the debate, and One made a quick exit in high dudgeon.
One was, to say the least, peculiar, erratic, and high strung. It
was nothing uncommon for him to gallop into his den, with coat-tails
flying, and talk volubly about three subjects at once, expecting
Jellyman to fully comprehend all his intentions before he galloped out
again, after a stay of about a minute and a half.
“You will meet me in Montreal. We leave for Quebec to-night,” he said
to Jellyman on one occasion, as he flew out of his office on his
tempestuous way. He always appeared and disappeared in a cloud of dust,
arms waving and silk hat bobbing at a furious rate.
Jellyman followed instructions; went to Montreal and booked passage for
himself and the Minister on the Quebec boat, which left at seven in the
evening. The hour for departure arrived, but not the busy Minister.
Jellyman could not locate him. A Minister of the Crown being a large
and very important person in the eyes of the navigation company, the
boat was held for nearly ten minutes. The captain decided that he
could wait no longer, and the boat was just about to pull out, when a
cab appeared driven at a hand-gallop. Within the cab the silk hat of
One could be seen gleaming brightly, so the gang plank was again put
out, and the little jumping-jack joined Jellyman on the lower deck.
Again the boat started and was gently moving off, when with a wild
shriek the Minister jumped upon the wharf, and drove off again as
quickly as he had come, leaving his secretary to proceed to Quebec.
Jellyman, on this occasion, wasted nearly two days hunting the little
man, without finding him, and on his return to Ottawa found his
desk littered with piles of telegrams, telephone calls and various
miscellaneous documents.
When I received my first cheque I went immediately to Rex, who was now
a senator and frequently in Ottawa. I explained to him that as there
was no appearance of my appointment being made at fifteen hundred per
annum as promised, it hardly appeared worth while to move my wife,
family and household gods from Montreal to Ottawa, for a matter of
three dollars per day, when I could easily make as much upon the
street. In spite of his money, his senatorship, his whiskers and his
dislike of long hair, Rex was good enough to sympathise with me, and
we went at once to the office of Minister One. We were lucky that day
and caught him first try. Rex brought to his notice his promise of a
position at fifteen hundred for Mr. Wesblock.
“Wesblock must move now,” said he; “but he can only do so on the
assurance that the fifteen hundred is in sight.”
The Minister was in his shirt sleeves, and was pacing the floor like a
caged wolf.
“Let him move,” he said, “certainly move. I said I would do it, and of
course it will be done.”
Once more I believed.
Rex was kindness itself. He financed me to the extent of several
hundred dollars to enable me to move. Moving was a heart-breaking job,
and it was many weeks before we were settled, but I bore the trial and
worry of it cheerfully, for I was full of hope and faith. I mended
furniture, laid carpets, put up curtains, and did all the many things a
moving implies, working nightly with a glad heart.
One never carried out his promise to me. In justice to him it must
be said that he could not. He had always been unpopular with certain
members of the Cabinet, and as time went on his unpopularity steadily
increased, mostly through his own fault. The consequence was he was
checked or mated in every move he attempted; and my little affair, it
need hardly be said, was of no great account to the baited Minister.
He found his enemies in the Opposition comparatively harmless, but his
enemies in his own party were deadly.
One was a brilliant little man, of wonderful energy and resource, but
he carried too much sail for his beam. A remark he once made, about
a clever but erratic friend, very well applied to himself. He said:
“C’est un fou intelligent.”