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Unit 5: Are the Rich Happy? by Stephen Leacock

Notes
Did u know? He grew up on a farm near Lake Simcoe, Ont, and was educated at Upper
Canada College (where he taught for 9 years), the University of Toronto and the University
of Chicago, where he studied economics and political science (PhD 1903). On the 15th of
December, 1925, Leacock’s wife Beatrix (Trix) died of breast cancer.
Leacock’s first appointment was at Uxbridge High School, Ontario, but he was soon offered a
post at Upper Canada College, where he continued from 1889 through 1899. At this point in
time, he also started part-time studies again at the University of Toronto, graduating with B.A.
in 1891. Though, Stephen Leacock’s actual interests were turning towards economics and political
theory. In 1899 Leacock was accepted for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago,
where he got his Ph.D. in 1903. Leacock married Beatrix Hamilton, an aspiring actress in 1900
and the Beatrix gave birth to a baby boy in 1915.
Stephen Leacock was offered a post at McGill University, where he continued till his retirement
in 1936. In 1906, he wrote Elements of Political Science, which continued to be a standard college
textbook for the next twenty years. It became Leacock’s most profitable book. Leacock also
began lecturing and public speaking, and he took an year’s leave of absence in 1907 to speak in
Canada on the topic of national unity. He usually spoke on the British Empire or on national
unity for the rest of his life.
In 1894, Leacock started submitting articles to the Toronto humour magazine Grip and soon was
publishing several humorous articles in American and Canadian magazines. In 1910, Leacock
privately published the best of these as Literary Lapses. The book was spotted by a British
publisher, John Lane, who brought out editions in New York and London, promising Leacock’s
future as a writer. This was established by Nonsense Novels (1911), and possibly his best book
of humorous sketches, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912). Leacock’s humorous style was
reminiscent of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain at their brightest. However, his Arcadian
Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914) is a darker collection that ridicules city life. Collections of
sketches continued to follow almost yearly at times, with a blend of parody, whimsy, satire and
nonsense that was never bitter. Leacock was extremely popular in Canada, in Britain and the
United States.
In later life, Leacock wrote on the art of humour writing and also published biographies of
Dickens and Twain. After retirement, a lecture tour to western Canada lead to his book My
Discovery of the West: A Discussion of East and West in Canada (1937), for which he won the
Governor General’s Award. He also earned the Mark Twain medal and received several honorary
doctorates. Other nonfiction books on Canadian topics followed and he began working on an
autobiography. Leacock died in Toronto in 1944 of throat cancer. A prize for the best humour
writing in Canada was named after him, and Leacock’s house at Orillia on the banks of Lake
Couchiching became the Stephen Leacock Museum.

5.1.6 Death and Tributes

Predeceased by Trix who had died of breast cancer in 1925, Leacock was survived by Stevie, who
died in his fifties. According to his wishes, after dyeing of throat cancer, Leacock was buried in
the St George the Martyr Churchyard (St. George’s Church, Sibbald Point), Sutton, Ontario.
Soon after his death, Barbara Nimmo, his niece, benefactor and literary executor, published two
major posthumous works: The Boy I Left Behind Me (1946) and Last Leaves (1945). His physical
legacy was less valued, and his abandoned summer cottage became neglected. In 1958 it was
saved from oblivion when it was declared a National Historic Site of Canada. Since then is being
operated as a museum called the Stephen Leacock Memorial Home.

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