"Newman, Peter C. - Company of Adventures 03 - Merchant Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Peter C)

Portentous and solemn, terminally obscurantist in his manner of speech,
Smith, as one contemporary observer put it, kept "his own counsel, his
sixpences, the Sabbath, and everything else he could lay his hands on."
George Stephen, first president of the CPR and his closest business
associate for forty-eight years, once confided to a friend about Smith:
"What a strange creature he is, so Indianlike in his love of mystery and
secretiveness." Smith was obsessive about not committing incriminating
facts to paper. Even though he and Stephen spent most of a halfcentury
cutting the youthful Dominion's important business deals, nearly went
bankrupt together, and ultimately fathered Montreal's essential
philanthropies, Smith wrote Stephen few letters, preferring to discuss
important issues personally, even if it meant crossing the Atlantic to do
so.
Because the first three decades of his career were spent in the Labiador
wilderness, cut off from the events in which he longed to play a part,
Smith developed a need for self-assertion that never left him. But instead
of signalling what he was doing through public displays or pronouncements,
lie simply acted and allowed others to catch up with him if they could. His
formative years, insulated from the kind of lively discourse that prepared
men for the anterooms of power, led Smith to distrust words, written or
spoken. He developed a sense of boldness that required no validation from
others. If there was one quality that characterized everything he said and
did, it was aversion to
 14 LABRADOR SMITH

North ff~st River, in the Labrador wilderness,
where Smithspent more than Mlellty Yf'drs of his early career

revealing his innermost feelings. "Ile loved the solitude of a crowd, a
privacy of mild light, from which he shone benevolently on all alike and
upon no one in particular," wrote Professor Macnaughton, who also noted that
"his really fine manners" were "more impenetrable and isolating in their
lubricant defensiveness than crocodile's, scales."
Smith's appearance helped create the air of some enigmatic Old Testament
prophet who spoke in public so seldom that his occasional pronouncements
were given more weight than they deserved. His imperturbable composure
served him well during financial negotiations. Because Smith was
photographed only after lie left Labrador, the record of his physical
aspect is almost entirely that ol'his later years-grey-bearded, tall and
slight, elegant yet wiry, all bone and gristle at a
 THE MAN WHO BECAME A COUNTRY 15

time when distended bellies were regarded as a sign of affluence. His body
language was a lexicon of military precision, but his most marked physical
features were those bristling eyebrows, hiding eyes of feral flint. His
sight had been injured early by snow blindness and the intensity of his gaze
lent his glance a telescopic effect. One of his characteristic gestures was
to turn his hands outward, showing the insides of his wrists, then to lean
forward in a semi--bow that granted others in the room permission to
speak-without having uttered a word himself. Whenever he did condescend to