This was to be a quick post about my visit to Hatley Castle in Victoria, British Columbia, but as per usual, I did a little digging and discovered that there is much more to tell you about. This beautiful castle was born in an atmosphere of greed, bitterness, sadness and exploitation. It’s a tragic tale of a man whose life, despite its riches, is unenviable. If James Dunsmuir had been given the gift of foresight, and was offered the chance trade his castle for a drama-free existence, I wonder if he would have ever even broken ground on its foundation. I suspect he’d have chosen happiness instead.
To really understand James Dunsmuir’s mindset when he began constructing Hatley Castle, we must go back 30 years before he purchased the land. It was 1876, and James was 25 years old. He and his 23-year-old brother Alexander were finally being given increasing responsibility for their father’s extensive business holdings. This was rather a big deal. Their father, Robert Dunsmuir, took business very seriously. After all, he had come to this area as an indentured miner, earning $5 a week, and by the time he died, his empire was estimated to be worth 509 million dollars in today’s money. It’s safe to say he didn’t suffer fools gladly.
Robert and his wife Joan had 10 children, 8 girls and 2 boys. James was their third child, and he was born just days after they first arrived in what was to become the Canadian province of British Columbia. And now here James was, embarking on a career as a captain of industry. And he was rather good at it, too, although his father got most of the credit. He and his brother Alexander took on increasing responsibility for the various businesses for the next 13 years.
James had also married his wife Laura in 1876, just as he began working with his father, and they went on to have 10-12 children (depending on which source you believe), of which 3 were boys. When James and Laura were first married, they lived under his father’s roof, which could not have been fun.
Robert died in 1889. The loss of a patriarch is quite a blow in any family, regardless of the dynamics, but in this one it was particularly complex because it seems that James and Alexander were under the impression that they were to be heirs to the family fortune. After all, they had paid their dues by maintaining the empire all those years. But much to their shock and consternation, their father had left everything to their mother Joan.
Needless to say, family tensions were high, but even so, James finished a very important project that his father had started: the construction of Craigdarroch Castle, which I wrote about here. Meanwhile, his mother begrudgingly gave her sons some of the business holdings, but was determined to hold on to the rest so that she and her daughters would remain financially secure for life.
Craigdarroch was completed in 1890, 17 months after Robert had passed away. His widow and her three youngest daughters took up residence. James could finally free himself of the Craigdarroch project, but his mother insisted that he remain in the area to oversee their coal mining interests. James and his mother’s relationship was never repaired after all the battles regarding the inheritance.
James now focused on building a home of his own, and in 1892 he and his wife moved into a Queen Anne-style mansion that they called Burleith. Finally, a home designed to his specifications, and he was no longer living in his father’s shadow. Based on the photographs, it was quite a beautiful place. (Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 1931 by some boys playing with fireworks, long after it had been sitting vacant, condemned and left to rot for decades.)
In its heyday, Burleith was the hub of Victorian Society. James and Laura hosted parties for British royalty, along with fancy dress balls, recitals, and wedding receptions. Some events had 300 guests. One wonders if his mother was invited, for appearances sake.
At this point, mother and son were no longer speaking. I don’t know if this silent treatment was a two-way street or not, but speaking from a one-way street experience, being given the silent message that “I find you so beneath my contempt that you are not even worth speaking to” alters you on a fundamental level. You feel it every day. It is abusive. It is painful. It gnaws away at your self-esteem. You’re never quite the same. If I feel that coming from someone 3000 miles away from me, I can’t imagine how James and/or Joan coped. Their homes were just 3 miles apart, and Victoria is, to this day, a very small city. Their strong sense of class consciousness would have made it seem even smaller for them. They must have inadvertently crossed paths constantly. Despite their riches, I wouldn’t want to be either one of them, not even for a second.
Meanwhile, James was barely speaking to his sisters, either, because they were siding with their mother. His brother Alexander was living in California and taking care of business, more or less, down there. Alexander drank quite a bit, and for many years he lived with the wife of his favorite bartender, a situation for which his mother Joan heartily disapproved.
If family meant anything at all to James, he must have felt very isolated. One wonders if James’ children had any relationship at all with their grandmother or aunts. They were all mostly raised by nannies and servants anyway, as was the custom. Their mother was all about social climbing, and their father was rarely there. To me, it sounds like a world of crowded, busy houses full of lonely, damaged people.
Alexander had been living quite happily with his paramour and her two children, one of which was Edna Wallace Hopper, who later became a well-known actress. He finally married Edna’s mother in 1899, and the happy couple headed off to New York for their honeymoon in 1900. They were to combine it with an opportunity to see Edna perform on stage. But tragically, Alexander died. It had something to do with his alcoholism. He was only 47. Just like that, the last family member that James was speaking to was gone.
That same year, James became Premier of British Columbia, so he was even more in the public eye than he had been before, right at the time he was even more alone than he had been before. It was while he was holding that office that much of his legal sh…stuff hit the fan. Not only was the family still bickering about his father’s estate, but now Alexander had made James his sole heir, and that wasn’t sitting too well with more than one person.
First, Edna Wallace Hopper burst onto the scene. Due to the times, her being an actress was a scandal. And even worse, this particular actress was popularly known as “the Eternal Flapper”. And she, of all people, was suing the Premier of British Columbia! This made all the news.
Edna asserted that James had exercised undue influence over Alexander, getting him to sign a will during his last, most incoherent days, and if it weren’t for that, his estate would have gone to probate, and she and her mother would have gotten it all. And then, since her mother died shortly thereafter, she would have gotten it all.
No doubt quite a few tongues were wagging in Victoria over this court case. But when vultures see that an animal is dying, they don’t hesitate to swoop in and hurry it along on its journey. So that is the very moment that James’ mother Joan decided to sue him as well.
The cases didn’t come to a conclusion for 4 long years, so James resigned as premier after only having served for 2 years. The pressure and humiliation must have been too great. That, and there was the little matter of a conflict of interest regarding his formulation of his government’s railway policies, given that much of his business empire revolved around the railroad.
James had his last child in 1903, when he was 52 years old. He had produced quite a brood, but hadn’t had as much interaction with them as someone in a lower class would have. Given the life he had built for himself, it’s rather surprising to discover that he really preferred the quiet, simple things in life. He was happiest when he could go fishing or hunting with a few of his friends. Maybe, once all this litigation was over with, he could do that. Maybe he could also form a closer bond with his children.
We all know it’s a white man’s world, and even more so when that man is rich and it’s the early 1900’s. So it was a painful process, but eventually James won the court cases and walked off with all of Alexander’s money that as well as with the lion’s share of the business empire. He could have walked away with his wife and children and lived a quiet, comfortable life at this point, but the more money that lined James’ pockets, the more roadblocks he seemed to throw into his own path toward happiness.
He took that money and bought the 585 acres of land on which he was to build Hatley Castle. It was 1906. He also decided that maybe politics was for him after all, so he chose to give it another go. He became the Lt. Governor of British Columbia and remained in office until 1909, and lived in Cary Castle, as per tradition for Lt. Governors. That was rather convenient, actually, because Hatley Castle would not be complete until 1908. Laura, of course, quickly turned Cary Castle into the social hub of Victorian society.
When Hatley Castle was being built, James famously said, “Money doesn’t matter. Just build what I want.”
To that I say, of course it didn’t matter. It was Alexander’s money! And it was his father’s money! Even though the place cost a fortune, I’m quite sure he didn’t touch a penny of his own money to build it. And he had quite a mountain of money, indeed.
Hatley was finished in 1908, and it cost a million dollars. The stone wall that encircled the original 585 acres of property cost 75,000 dollars alone. The house was 50,000 square feet and had 40 rooms.
By contrast, his mother’s property, Craigdarroch, was built in 1890 on 28 acres of land, cost $500,000, was 25,000 square feet, and had 39 rooms. (Needless to say, her rooms were quite a bit smaller.)
The same year Hatley was completed, James’ mother died. She was 81. He almost didn’t go to the funeral. But at the last moment he decided to attend after all. It was said that he cried through the service.
Now he’d never know if she ever loved him. He’d never know if she was proud of him. There is no way to know if it even occurred to him to ask himself those questions, but the proud bit, in particular, is well worth asking. His mother hadn’t exactly been married to a saint, and James was a chip off the old block, at least when it came to business.
While James was Lt. Governor, some of the legislation he pushed through was quite controversial and self-serving. While ruling his vast empire, he’d made it quite clear that he was very anti-union, even violently so. His were the most dangerous mines in the world. They were both unsafe and unsanitary and, given worker protests, James was well aware of that fact. For context, four times as many miners died in them than did in American mines during that period. His legislation was consistently anti-union.
He also promoted Asian immigration, but not due to any compassion for people who were seeking a better life. He did it simply because he wanted the cheap labor. He viewed people as commodities, and did not seem to feel any remorse about spending the money he got off his blatant exploitation of them to feather his own nest. This was not a good guy.
It bugs me that during this research I so often felt sorry for James Dunsmuir. He brought many of his problems on himself, and he certainly didn’t seem to do much to improve the lives of those less fortunate than he. Poor little rich man. Maybe I didn’t feel sorry for him after all. Maybe it was pity mixed with disdain.
And then, to make things worse, in 1915 his son James Jr. died in the sinking of the Lusitania. James Dunsmuir himself died in 1920. He was 68 years old. I suspect that more of those years were unhappy ones than not. I cannot conceive of a lonelier, more opulent life. If I could ask him one question (or three, because I never know when to stop), it would be this: Did your cold stone castle make you feel loved? Did it fulfill you? Did it warm your heart?
______________________________
Dear Husband and I got to visit the grounds of Hatley Castle this past October. Unfortunately, we were unable to enter the castle itself. It is only open to the public on very limited occasions, because it is owned by Royal Roads University, and the castle houses their administration offices and some classrooms. (Personally, I’d find it hard to concentrate if my class were in a castle. I’d be too busy imagining knights and queens and knaves and jesters and the like, even though this castle had none of those, except the occasional visiting queen.) We did peek in a couple of windows, though. You can see lots of videos of the interior on YouTube if you’re curious.
The gardens are open to the public every day from 10 am to dusk. I must say that they are stunning. There’s an immaculately groomed Italian garden that Laura must have adored. It would be the perfect venue for an outdoor soirée. We saw peacocks calmly wandering around there as if they owned the place. I wonder what they do when it snows. Are there such things as peacock coops?
The scent of the roses in the rose garden in June must be intoxicating. The seasonal flowers are beautiful. If I lived nearby I’d visit several times a year.
And the Japanese gardens, both upper and lower, complete with lakes, tea house, water wheel and fish ladder are, of course, an oasis of pure serenity. (Okay, so maybe I’d put up with a tiny bit of James’ drama in exchange for the Japanese gardens.) I’d love to bring a book and read there on a mild summer day.
Now, is it just me, or can you see a woman’s face in the next picture? (Dear Husband took it, and he’s giving me a very skeptical side eye right now.) Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it. Maybe it’s Laura Dunsmuir, wondering what we are doing in her garden. Or perhaps it’s Joan Dunsmuir, wishing she had spent more time here, getting to know her grandchildren. Who knows.
Something I don’t see any mention of on the official Hatley webpages is the fernery. I even love the word. Fernery sounds to me like a warm, cozy little nook where fairies would cavort when no humans were around. We happened to stumble upon a sign pointing toward it, and went down an overgrown narrow path, and there it was. The cozy, ferny nook was just as I had envisioned, but for those of you who believe that fairies really do exist, I’m sorry to say that, if so, they were keeping themselves well out of sight.
We must have been enchanted whilst in the fernery, because neither Dear Husband nor I seem to have taken any pictures there. You’ll have to take my word for it. It was a delightful little place.
Shaking off our ensorcellment, we spent a pleasant afternoon wandering the gardens. All the while, Hatley Castle gazed down at us, keeping its own counsel. Dear Reader, I hope that you get to visit Victoria yourself someday. It’s now one of my favorite places.
Additional Sources:
Dictionary of Canadian Biography: Dunsmuir, James
Travel vicariously through this blog. And while you’re at it, check out my book! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5
Leave a Reply