Free True Patriot Love by Michael Ignatieff Page B

earnest young woman, but also stylish, refined and full of life. At Manchester, she impressed many with her organizational abilities and skill with undergraduates. One of her friendships was with a young chemist, Chaim Weizmann, just then beginning his career as a leader of British Zionism. Maude Parkin made a sufficiently vivid impression on Weizmann that, forty years later, when he was president of Israel, he still remembered his old Manchester colleague.
    At the end of each Manchester term, Maude would return to Goring, and there, as often as not, she would find herself sometimes alone in the salon, sometimes in the gardens, with William Grant. She would have noted that her father, on whom she doted, thought him a clever and coming man. But she would have had little idea of William’s feelings for her, for they were all bottled up inside.
    By the summer of 1910, Grant had been lured home to Canada by an offer of an endowed chair in colonial and Canadian history at Queen’s. He had been away six years. If he remained in England, he knew that he would never be accepted as one of the tribe. Parkin had done well passing as an Englishman, but Grant lacked his graces and political finesse. If Grant went home to Queen’s, he reckoned, life might be more provincial, but he knew he belonged there.
    It was not until early August 1910, with departure for Canada only a month away, that he screwed up his courage and wrote “Miss Maude” a letter in which he declared his true feelings. He admitted that he had always seen himself as a confirmed bachelor, but their last few months together had changed his plans for life. He confessed that he was old, pushing forty, but hoped there was still the play of life in him yet. He burst out finally: “I have come to love you very deeply. There! It is said now, and nothing else makes much difference.”
    He told her that with her at his side “we can do ten times as much for Canada” as he could do alone, and then, realizing she might think he wanted her just for what she could bring to his work, he blurted out: “My dear, whenever I think of you, when I speak your name, the pulses in my neck quiver and tighten, and all my blood seems to be in my throat.”
    It was a touching letter and it did the trick. Within a week, they met in London, Maude accepted him, Mr. and Mrs. Parkin gave their approval and the engagement was announced.
    It is worth pausing over the phrase in William Grant’s declaration about working together for Canada. Commit to help each other, commit to stay with each other in sickness and in health, certainly, but commit to Canada? Yet it was not just a fine phrase, but central to Grant’s sense of what his life—and hers—were for.
    By mid-September 1910, he was on his way across the Atlantic, back to Kingston, and she back to Manchester. Letters, sometimes two a day, would pass back and forth between them. He confessed, “I am not a great man. I have read their biographies and they all write to their lady loves as if they were addressing a large and highly cultivated Public Meeting … whereas I write to you about You and Me.”
    Sometimes, as the days passed and a letter would not come, he would break into a kind of half-comic despair:
Will you always love me? Always? In the commonplace days? If my hair falls out? If the maid gives warning and we have to cook our own dinner? If I make a bad speech? And my class despise my lectures? If all goes wrong? When you are overworked, and we have to take a second bestholiday because we can’t afford the one we want? Will you always love me?
    As 1910 turned into 1911, she wanted to know what position he took on the issue of trade reciprocity, the great question dividing the country. Laurier went into the elections with a proposal to lower tariffs on all American goods. The Conservatives opposed, believing that reciprocity would jeopardize Canadian manufacturers, weaken the British connection and threaten the identity of the