Hardly a boy in the land would be happy inside a manse when there were rough boys outside, especially with a father who was said to have had “a voice like God almighty” and who spared him little love. In some ways he must have felt he would never be able to please Reverend Aitken. And so he spent more and more time outside with
older men he knew he could entertain. This pattern started very early and became one of the main pursuits of his life: acting the scallywag, the juggler of tales, entertaining others by embellishing his own story.
In his teenaged years, he sought out rogues and adventurers. I am sure his fascination with life itself, and his zeal to understand it in all its mystery, propelled him. Here he lingered at a bakery, there at an office, down at the wharf talking with sailors from the square riggers and the schooners that came to transport timber overseas. Listening to the stories of woodsmen, of veterans from the Crimean War, of sailors who had been to Europe, who had walked the streets of London itself, he stored up information and a longing to be part of it.
There is not much talk of sports and young Max Aitken—except for fishing. A friend of mine has a picture of Max’s older brother Traven (who died of an accidentally inflicted gunshot wound) playing football, but there are none of Max.
He must have spent many a night alone in that bedroom on the third floor, realizing that, in some way, whatever he did, he would never please his father enough. And so he would have to go. Do I think he was lonely? Yes. Do I think he felt unloved? Absolutely. But then I know how
outsiders are continually forced to the outside by people who pretend to be concerned on their behalf. At Harkins, my schooling was very much like his, though he was a millionaire by twenty-four and I didn’t make ten thousand dollars until I was thirty-five. Still, we had more than a little in common, and it went beyond being born and raised a block and a half from one another.
HIS ARGUMENTS
at the house were probably fierce, and most likely continual. His big head would be seen peeking around the doors of his siblings’ rooms continuing confrontations, and his sisters and brothers were more than a little tired of him. There were six brothers and sisters, several with unusual names that their mother thought romantic, like Rahno (a sister) and his brother Traven. There was also Magnus, Arthur (who later became an American) and Allan (a lawyer in Newcastle). Not to forget Maxwell, of course.
But from all reports, even his own, Max was the one who caused the disruptions. When he was twelve, his father said he should learn to translate the Latin phrase
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
, about Gaul being divided into three parts. Max answered with the quip that he would much rather learn how to divide twenty-five cents into three parts. I know we can cringe at that—but not completely. There is
an old Islamic saying that the dreams God gives you must be pursued in order not to offend him. Perhaps this is all Max was doing—in fact it is all any of us do. And he was brave enough to tell his father what his dream was: to become in a way his father’s worst nightmare, a man who looked to the things of the earth to satisfy earthly desires.
There is a story—possibly apocryphal, as so much about Max Aitken is—about the time when, as a boy, he sold eggs from his own hens. Once, when he had an order for more eggs than he could supply, he went to his mother’s kitchen and borrowed the rest. The next afternoon the woman who ordered these eggs asked him what kind of hens he had, for half the eggs were already hard-boiled.
“I knew the thunderstorm we had yesterday would affect my hens,” he replied.
That sounds straight out of
Tom Sawyer
, but Sawyer’s and Aitken’s habits weren’t so different, and were in some ways entirely alike. One could very easily imagine Aitken convincing others to paint the fence for him on a warm summer day. And that was the problem, even for those who loved him. He was an imp and a scallywag, but his motives always came back to selfinterest. Once the ultimate winner, he could then turn about and be generous. But he wasn’t prepared to lose. I am sure that, for the rest of his life, some part of him was trying to divide the
twenty-five cents into three. That he was in large part successful benefited many who found it distasteful to hear him say it.
“I never thought he would be a success at anything,” the headmaster of Harkins said. This shows the one ingredient most principals and headmasters need: blindness to any real talent. And what is worse, they are proud to admit this tendency.
Max must have come up against this early—must have in some ways been terribly frustrated by it, and in other perverse ways loved it. It was at Harkins where he learned that everyone had to be a mark. He told his fellow students he could count the hairs on a teacher’s moustache, and made money promoting this idea. (He couldn’t count the hairs, but he knew well enough they couldn’t either.) Asked to write something about himself, he carved his initials into his desk. The desk was there when I was a boy, and has since been misplaced. I wish I had been the one smart enough to take it. I am sure Max would have.
They called him “Moccasin Mouth,” because of how large a mouth it was. And one boy told him that if God had made his mouth any larger he would have had to remove his ears. That is a great line, and one that I am sure Max would have loved to use himself—if the mouth had been on someone else.
He was drawn to public life, and began to publish a paper in his own house and deliver it on the street by himself. It was filled with interesting things about the town, about local politics and industry that he had managed to observe. I’m sure he made up some very likeable lies in order to please. That was also one of his early characteristics: embellishment. Perhaps he was trying to see what he could get away with. To my mind, only two kinds of youngsters do this: one is trying to take on the world, the other is trying to please his headmaster.
But his father did not see the worth of this paper, especially when Max wanted to print it upstairs at the manse—on a Sunday. So Max turned his attention to corresponding, not telling the newspaper—the
Telegraph
, in Saint John—how old he was.
When it was reported to his father, erroneously, that Max the correspondent was writing sarcastic tributes about various people and events in town that would damage their reputations, his father reprimanded him severely with threats of hellfire. (I am sure this was a more than constant threat.) Max decided to run away to Kent County, where his father came to retrieve him, saying all was forgiven. In truth Max had not been the author of such libel, so there was nothing to forgive. (Or at least it hasn’t been proven. I am almost sure
Max would have delighted in writing yarns about anyone in town if he could get a laugh and get away with it. He understood how to get under people’s skins, and loved to do it all his life.)
Still, at fourteen, Max had noticed the world and the world was beginning to notice him. He was going to be a part of it one way or the other. He was seething with the enthusiasm of youth to do something beyond the restrictions of his parents’ house, and to do it well. He resumed his correspondent position for a dollar a column. But this was only one of the many ways he had of making money. The idea of making money was paramount with him from the time he was a boy, so there must have been lots of talk about money at the house. He must have listened to his mother and father talking about scrimping and saving, going without, and priding themselves on this ability. Though the family was not poor, it was not rich either.
He knew he could do better. This is something else that I believe shaped his personality and his course in the world: the idea that the manse was God-driven, and the outside world—down Pleasant Street and beyond—wasn’t. Once out those doors and down the steps of that manse, he was free to be less than God-driven, because he saw how others were less than God-driven and he could match them, but his dad
could not. He could outsmart and out-scallywag, and outthink any of them. He could and did and would discombobulate them—for his father’s sake. (Well, of course for his own sake, too.) Did it bother his conscience? Yes, all his life! Years later, in England, he bought a racing stable. Realizing how his father would have disapproved of such things, he renamed it Calvin House. (And too, there might have been some mischievousness in doing so.)
About 1894, he was given a position at Lee Street’s pharmacy on the Town Square in Newcastle, also for one dollar a week. An incident here shows his almost pathological bent for trouble.
He tended to completely ignore the doctor’s prescriptions and make up his own, trying out different remedies as he went, like a mad little concocter. One day he was caught doing this and the dollar a week was forfeited to his talent for mischief. He was sent home to his parents, and one can imagine the rumours about town.
(It is amazing that this was the standard by which people were paid—that is, not the currency but the amount. It seems to me that all of Max’s early endeavours resulted in the tribute of one dollar per week. Never in my readings about him did he complain about this amount, so it must have been fair and standard wage. His father, however, did. Parsimony was
perhaps a necessary habit for a minister, but it was awful how he showed it. Once when young Max was living in Halifax, Rev. Aitken sent him a box of books. Reluctant to spend one dollar on the shipping cost, he sent it at the much more reasonable—and slower—rate of thirty-eight cents. He instructed Max to pay the thirty-eight cents.
IT IS LUCKY
he did not die, for it’s likely there were many that wanted to kill him. I’m sure most couldn’t see him succeeding at anything. Max, however, could. He was sure of his genius and probably painfully aware that others did not have it—and, worse, did not recognize it in him. Perhaps they thought he would some day be a schoolteacher, a labourer, or a clerk. These were all activities that would have made him moderately successful in their eyes. Then he wouldn’t have been such a threat.
But Max was destined for other things. His boyhood was a fermenting ground for rudimentary ideas of business and money-making. And the area was not so primitive as one might think. The Miramichi, among other things, was the birthplace of the Cunard Shipping Line (which was later sold to England’s White Star Line, which built the
Titanic
) and of some of the greatest lumber barons in the country. Its industries were the physical industries of lumber and the sea.
These were extremely sophisticated industries for the time, and Max would have delighted in scampering about the town, discovering the promise in such things. This and playing pranks were his two main pastimes. For the rest of his life he couldn’t seem to do without either. His boyhood was a time for driving his parents and siblings to distraction. (His older sister Rahno once threw him down a flight of stairs in an attempt to kill him.) Perhaps nowadays the boy would have been put on medication. And what would have happened to his empire then?
One cannot help but think of him as an elderly man at dinner with potentates from the Empire—ladies and lords, members of parliament—watching them with a mischievous glint in his eye, as his friend Peter Howard says, like a cat ready to pounce. The idea, if he ever had it, that once he was finished with school he wouldn’t have to deal with mundane people ever again, proved to be wishful thinking. He would have to deal all his life with those who thought inside the box, who had dutifully done their lessons, who could get high marks in everything except thinking for themselves. Often he would have to fight them alone. In fact, in the end, they were the ones who did him in. Like a cat being pecked to death by ducks.
There were many law offices on the Miramichi, in which many boys of Max’s age and demeanour articled. This certainly was one way into the greater world, and young Aitken knew this. By the age of fifteen he was ready to leave his father and mother and try life on his own. I believe the only champion he had at that time was himself.
He knew one of the finest law firms was that of Tweedie’s, across the river in Chatham. So he waited his chance, and took advantage when it came, and one spring day about l896 he met Mr. Tweedie, portly and proud of it, and a locally famous lawyer, on the ferry boat travelling from Newcastle to Chatham. Engaging him in conversation, the ever-optimistic Max appealed for a job as law clerk. It was the same kind of chance meeting he would have a few years later with John Stairs of the Union Bank of Halifax.
He had so many of these chance meetings in his life, one wonders how random they were, and how many times he took the ferry ride before this particular chance meeting occurred. So Moccasin Mouth, and double-dealer, went as law clerk, smiling all the while.
LATER HE SAID
he went into law at Tweedie’s because R.B. Bennett was a lawyer there, and Max wanted to emulate Bennett, who was already a local politician. That is the same R.B. Bennett who would one day become leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister of Canada. Max’s childhood longing to be accepted by older men, and his precocious ability to keep them entertained, would become over time instrumental in the affairs of great men and of nations. Was his father ever jealous of this, or did he have too much else to think about? For, even by nineteenthcentury standards, Max was young when he went out on his own.
R.B. Bennett, twenty-six at the time, and a former teacher in Douglastown, a village between the two main Miramichi towns of Chatham and Newcastle, was a highstrung, driven political animal, who could quote Disraeli and had legislative ambitions. (Anyone who could quote Disraeli would be welcome in my house, at least once.) He
was the first, and therefore the most important, father figure of the many Max Aiken would seek out.
At seventeen, Max ran Bennett’s very first political campaign, for alderman of the newly chartered town of Chatham, New Brunswick. This was in l896. Bennett was a church-going Methodist and a teetotaller, and Max says this is where they parted company (intellectually speaking), which gives us the first indication that the Beaver was imbibing when he was sixteen or seventeen. On the Miramichi at that time, of course, this might have been a relatively mature age to begin. He talks about a back room at Adams’s (my mother’s name but no relation) where he boarded, and the lumberman William Richards (my grandfather’s name but no relation), and about parties and card games and drinking that went on. I am sure they did, and I am pretty sure Max would have a hand in some of it. He was far too exuberant not to. He was too gregarious not to have a devil-may-care attitude. The nights were too wondrous not to join in, the girls—for which he always had a weakness—too pretty. But I also know something about the drinking excesses of youth, and Max seems to be the kind who was too energetically ambitious to have spent too much of this energy drunk. Miramichi drinking habits are dangerous, and peer pressure is deadly. Many young men (and women) succumb to this
temptation. I believe his determination to succeed in the world, to make father figures proud of him, prevented wholesale inebriation, or at least curbed it. Also, among the fashionably drunk, it is never popular to be your own man. Max was always his own man.