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Falling fashionably in love in Victorian Toronto, p.2
Toronto observatory must have given her pause concerning the young man now courting her daughter. The British government with the Royal Artillery had established facilities in colonies around the globe – in Cape Town, on St Helena, in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and in Upper Canada – as part of an international effort to better understand magnetism and to thereby improve navigation. Although dedicated to science, as an artillery detachment the observatory was led by a junior officer and operated by three sergeants and two privates. They and their families lived in small barracks adjacent to the observatory. Incidents of drunkenness and disorderly conduct were commonplace, while stray bullets from shooting competitions on the King’s College grounds occasionally passed through the observatory’s windows. Henry’s own small cottage – the Officers’ Barrack – was built of 12-inch rough-hewn logs, uninsulated and graced with drafty single-pane sash windows. Boards were laid down between buildings to keep everyone’s hems out of the mud. Henry Lefroy, by Paul Kane, was Mrs. Robinson would is imaginary, Lefroy ensured that many record of the trip. The painting (a not have been faulted in 1853 and remained with the family. for having difficulty the most ever paid for a Canadian envisioning her very buyer – who turned out to be Ken Art Gallery of Ontario, 2009/507. social and genteel daughter living in such rustic surroundings. If one looked south from the observatory in 1846, the city was still a few farms away. Yet, Toronto’s population had doubled to 25,000 in the eight years since the city had incorporated. Charles Dickens described Toronto in 1845 as “full of life and motion, bustle, business and improvement including gas lights, excellent shops and large homes.” The Robinson home where Emily grew up had a multitude of servants, was elegantly furnished and was one of the first in the city to have a shower and hot-air central heating. Henry was considered a suitable marriage partner because he was an officer – promoted to captain soon after returning from the north – and in England his family was regarded as landed gentry (and had been well acquainted with the literary Austens). Over the winter and following spring, this fashionable couple saw a lot of each other. They attended skating parties on Toronto Bay and enjoyed sleigh rides to the outskirts of the city, “gliding past half-buried zig-zag fences, a cloud of snow rising before the horses, the bells audible at a quarter of a mile off.”
Mail: 250 Fort York Blvd, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3K9 info@fortyork.ca www.fortyork.ca The Fife and Drum 3
siblings. With Henry largely absent, her letters often reflected a deep loneliness. After many years of frail health, she died at the age of 37. In his memoirs, Henry attributed Emily’s death to an “organic” disease, but he appeared to be unclear on the exact cause. “I cannot bring myself to narrate the infinitely touching story of her sufferings,” Henry wrote, “…but they were borne with a sweetness, courage and patience beyond belief.” Frazer Lefroy, Emily and Henry’s youngest son, was the only member of the family to return to Canada. He was one of the first professors in the University of Toronto’s faculty of law and became a leading scholar of constitutional law. Henry remarried a year after Emily’s death. After a series of senior staff appointments,
Their work is considered the origin of Canada’s weather services
Their work is considered the origin of Canada’s weather services he resigned his commission and was made Governor of Bermuda in 1871 and knighted six years later. Granted the honorary rank of General of the Horse Guards upon retirement from public service in 1882, Sir John Henry Lefroy was still involved with scientific affairs when he passed away in 1890. Today, three historical plaques and a meridian line at the University of Toronto mark where the men of the Royal Artillery once fastidiously took magnetic and meteorological measurements. Their work is considered the origin of Canada’s weather services. Evidence of the lives once lived by Emily, Henry and their young family in the cottage at the observatory is less visible. Their story instead is revealed in the diaries and loving correspondence of Emily and Henry, their impressive portraits, and in the institutions they played a role in shaping.
Sharon Lefroy is the great-great-granddaughter of John Henry Lefroy. She lives in Ottawa and is writing his biography. This article ©Sharon Lefroy, all rights reserved.
Sources & Further Reading
Sources and Further Reading Much of this article is based on family papers which remain in private hands. Although our subject’s complete name was “John Henry Lefroy” – reflecting family reasons for including the name Henry – he was one of the few in the family to use that name in his daily affairs. Lefroy’s own account of his life was printed for private circulation by his widow in 1895 as the Autobiography of General Sir John Henry Lefroy, C.B., K.C.M.G., F.R.S., etc., colonel commandant Royal Artillery (London: Parsons & Sons). The scientific results of his trip through the north were published in Diary of a magnetic survey of a portion of the dominion of Canada chiefly in the northwestern territories executed in the years 1842–1844 (London, 1883). G.F.G. Stanley edited In Search of the Magnetic North: A Soldier-Surveyor’s Letters from the North-West, 1843–1844 for Macmillan in 1955. This is the human story of the trip. Lefroy’s own meticulous account of his ancient family (he was also a very scientific genealogist) was published as Notes and Documents Mail: 250 Fort York Blvd, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3K9 info@fortyork.ca www.fortyork.ca
Sources & Further Reading
relating to the Family of Loffroy of Cambray (1867) and modestly signed by “a Cadet.” A supplement was printed in 1961. An account of life at Beverley House is Anne Mercer, “The Robinson Ladies,” The Loyalist Gazette (Spring 1990), pp. 2632. The sisters in the painting (p.6) are also described in Three Centuries of Robinsons, by Julia Jarvis (Best Printing 1967). The first observatory was set up at the old garrison but the place was crumbling, cramped and too close to frequent firing. Moreover, “swamps in the neighbourhood were worse than I had at first imagined,” wrote the first director, “and likely to be very unhealthy.” By June 1840 work had begun at the new site on campus. The primary source for the history and science of the observatory is by the British leader of the global magnetism project: Lt.- Col. Edward Sabine, Observations Made at the Magnetical and Meteorological Observatory at Toronto in Canada, Vol. I (London, 1845), and two more massive volumes, available at the Toronto Reference Library or in Canadiana Online. Secondary accounts are Morley Thomas, The Beginnings of Canadian Meteorology (ECW 1991) and Gregory Good, “Between Two Empires: the Toronto Magnetic Observatory and American Science before Confederation” in Scientia Canadensis: Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Vol.10, No.1 (1946) pp. 34-52. A.D. Thiessen wrote a series of comprehensive articles on the observatory for the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada from 1940 to 1946. The intellectual context (including Sir Sandford Fleming) is described by Suzanne Zeller, Inventing Canada: Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation (UTP 1987). The Fife and Drum 5
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