George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen

George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen, (5 June 1829 – 29 November 1921), known as Sir George Stephen, Bt, between 1886 and 1891, was a Canadian businessman. Originally from Scotland, he made his fame in Montreal and was the first Canadian to be elevated to the Peerage of the United Kingdom. He was the financial genius behind the creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

He was President of the Bank of Montreal and is remembered as one of the greatest philanthropists of his time: he built a new wing at the Montreal General Hospital, donated generously to various hospitals in Scotland and gave over £1.3 million to the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund in London, working closely with George V. He and his first cousin, Lord Strathcona, purchased the land and then each gave $1 million to the City of Montreal to construct and maintain the Royal Victoria Hospital. His home in Montreal's Golden Square Mile later became the Mount Stephen Club.

In 1888, he retired to England, living between Brocket Hall and 17 Carlton House Terrace. His first wife is credited with introducing the canoe to Scotland. From starting life as a bare-footed stable boy, he became the richest man in Canada and closely associated with George V, whose wife, Queen Mary, was a lifelong friend and confidante of the second Lady Mount Stephen.

Early years

Stephen was born in 1829 at Dufftown, Banffshire, in a cottage built by his grandfather. He was the son of William Stephen (b. 1801), a carpenter, and Elspet, daughter of John Smith, a crofter at Knockando, Moray. His mother was a first cousin of the philanthropic Grant brothers of Manchester, immortalised as the "Cheeryble Brothers" in Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby.

Stephen began life as a boy running barefoot through fields to carry letters for the Duke of Richmond for a shilling. He was educated at the parish school, leaving at the age of fourteen to work variously as a stable boy, shepherd and in a local hotel. The following year he was apprenticed to a draper and silk mercer at Aberdeen, before moving to London in 1848 - first working for a draper and then at a wholesale dry goods house.

George Stephen's first cousin, William Stephen, had already emigrated to Montreal and established a wholesale dry goods business on St. Paul Street. At William's invitation, the Stephen family came to Montreal in 1847, and George joined them in 1850.

In 1866, he started to work closely with his first cousin, Donald Smith (later Lord Strathcona). The two were to become partners in a myriad of ventures which made them both a fortune. One of their first investments was in 1868, when they formed a partnership with Richard B. Angus and Andrew Paton to establish the Paton (Textile) Manufacturing Company of Sherbrooke. By the late 1860s, Stephen had become one of the foremost financiers in Montreal, forming boards and working alongside Montreal's most prominent business names. By 1873, he had become a director of the Bank of Montreal, and three years later he was elected president, in which capacity he frequently traveled to London and New York City to meet with the leading financiers there. He remained as president until 1881, resigning to turn his full attention to running the company that would build the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was elected to the Montreal Board of Trade in July 1864 as a successful businessman. Stephen had begun investing in railways and formed the Canada Rolling Stock Company in 1870. They then contributed $500,000 each for its construction and after it opened in 1893 they gave a further $500,000 each in stock to establish an endowment fund to maintain it.

Though best remembered today for the Royal Vic, he reserved the bulk of his fortune for the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund in London. Stephen worked closely with the future George V in creating its endowment fund and was its most important benefactor, having made gifts to the amount of £1,315,000.

To put these figures into a personal perspective, when Mount Stephen died in 1921, after providing for his wife, step-daughter and charities, he left £1,414,319 to be divided between nineteen relatives, which worked out at about £75,000 each. Though hardly an inconsequential sum, he gave substantially more to charity than he left to his individual heirs. In his will, he left little to charities in Canada, believing that through the donations mentioned above and his legacy that was the Canadian Pacific Railway, he had given more to Canada than it had given to him.

Montreal to England

thumb|Stephen's Montreal mansion (now known as [[George Stephen House), which was completed in 1883]]

thumb|[[Brocket Hall near Hatfield in England, Stephen's country home from 1893 until his death in 1921]]

In 1880, Stephen employed the architect William Tutin Thomas to design a sumptuous mansion (now known as George Stephen House) for him in Montreal's Golden Square Mile. The house took three years to complete and cost some $600,000. Architectural historian Arthur Richardson described it as "one of the real masterpieces of the Italianate style in Canada". After Stephen moved to England, the house was occupied by his sister Elsie Stephen and her husband, Robert Meighen, who purchased the residence in 1900. It became the clubhouse of the Mount Stephen Club in 1926.

From the mid-1880s, Stephen began to spend an increasing amount of time in England. Tired of the business and politics that surrounded his life in Montreal, when he retired from the CPR in 1888, he settled permanently in England. The Stephens kept a London residence at 17 Carlton House Terrace and from 1893 leased Brocket Hall near Hatfield, Hertfordshire, where he died in 1921.

Stephen had been created a baronet in 1886, and in 1891, he had the honour of being the first Canadian to be elevated to the Peerage of the United Kingdom. He was created Baron Mount Stephen "of Mount Stephen in the Province of British Columbia and Dominion of Canada, and of Dufftown in the County of Banff" (Scotland). He took the name from the Mount Stephen peak in the Rocky Mountains, previously named in his honour and adjacent to the CPR line. Mount Stephen House, a CPR hotel at the base of the mountain, also bore his name.

Lord Mount Stephen sat regularly in the House of Lords but avoided public speaking and committees. He returned to Canada infrequently, making his last trip in 1894, but his influence there remained considerable, particularly to those seeking high office – Lord Minto acknowledged that he owed his appointment as Governor General of Canada in 1898 to the influence of Stephen and Lord Wolseley. From the 1890s onward, he passed management of his substantial investments in Canada, the United States and England to his individual agents in those countries.

Lord Mount Stephen was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in 1905.

Charlotte (1830–1896), the 1st Lady Mount Stephen

thumb|The first Lady Mount Stephen

At London, on 8 April 1853, George Stephen married his first wife, Annie Charlotte Kane (1830–1896). She was one of several children born to Benjamin Kane on the island of Corfu when the Ionian Islands were a British protectorate. Her father, a former officer in the Royal Engineers was assistant clerk of works in the Naval Ordnance there, though she was educated in London. During a Royal Tour, the haemophiliac Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, fell seriously ill at Montreal and Charlotte nursed him back to health. As such, in 1887, she was first presented to Queen Victoria by her friend Georgina Gascoyne-Cecil, Marchioness of Salisbury, who lived at Hatfield House which neighboured the Stephen's home from 1893, Brocket Hall. The Queen thanked Lady Mount Stephen by presenting her with an oil portrait of herself.

At Brocket Hall, Lady Mount Stephen frequently entertained the Prince (the future Edward VII) and Princess of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught and the Duchess of Teck. She introduced the canoe to Scotland while living at Faskally, Perthshire and fished with her husband in Canada and the rivers of Scotland. She died in London on 10 April 1896, and was buried in Lemsford Churchyard, adjoining Brocket Hall. The couple had no biological children, but had adopted as a young woman in Montreal, Alice Brooke, purportedly the daughter of a Vermont clergyman.

Alice Maude Stephen (died 1934), DBE (born Alice Brooke). Her adopted father introduced her to, and in 1873 she married, Henry Northcote, 1st Baron Northcote. The union was childless. In 1919, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Georgiana (1864–1933), the 2nd Lady Mount Stephen

thumb|The second Lady Mount Stephen

In 1897, after the death of his first wife, Mount Stephen remarried Georgiana Mary (known as Gian) Tufnell (1864–1933), daughter of Captain Robert George Tufnell R.N., of Uffington and Jessy (née Curtis), granddaughter of Sir William Curtis, 1st Bt. Gian was a niece of George Glyn, 2nd Baron Wolverton and she had been Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, a frequent guest at Brocket Hall, and the mother of Queen Mary. Through this connection, Gian was a lifelong friend and confidante of Queen Mary and she and Lord Mount Stephen regularly entertained her and her husband, George V, at Brocket. The Duchess of Teck was said to have been strongly in favour of Gian and Mount Stephen's marriage.

Gian Mount Stephen had a stillborn daughter in March 1900, and there were no other children of the marriage. She was said to have preferred the life at Brocket Hall to the social life that surrounded their city residence on Carlton House Terrace. She was also said to have been exceedingly popular around Hatfield, and her many benefactions endeared her to hundreds.

Lady Mount Stephen died in 1933 at Cuckfield, Sussex, England. As Lord Mount Stephen had left no natural heirs by either of his wives, his titles died with him.

Coat of arms

References

External links

Biography from Digital collections of Canada
Photograph: George Stephen in 1865. McCord Museum
Photograph: George Stephen in 1871. McCord Museum