My Dearest Wife: The Private and Public Lives of James David Edgar and Matilda Ridout Edgar

Barbara Robertson is the author of Wilfrid Laurier: The Great
Conciliator and the co-author of The Well-Filled Cupboard.

My Dearest Wife deals with the private and public lives of J.D. Edgar
(1844–1899) and Matilda Ridout (1844–1910) in a balanced way. Their
backgrounds were very different. Edgar was born in Lower Canada and
received some of his early education in French before his dysfunctional
family moved to Ontario in 1857. Thanks to modest financial support from
relatives in Scotland and to his own prodigious efforts, he became a
lawyer, and quickly a successful one. Matilda Ridout, born into the
Family Compact, enjoyed the most pleasant of childhoods until 1861 when
her father died, leaving the family near penniless. Her resourceful
mother began to take in boarders, one of whom was Edgar’s sister.
James Edgar and Matilda Ridout soon fell in love: they were married in
1865. The authors do full justice to their marriage, an immensely happy
one that produced eight children.

James Edgar soon became active in politics as a Liberal; he was elected
to the federal parliament in 1872, and spent much of the rest of his
life as an MP From the outset he was lonely in Ottawa, and he and
Matilda wrote each other daily during his absences. His letters,
generously quoted from, give a detailed account of Liberal activities
during this long prelude to Laurier’s victory in 1896. Edgar was
unusual in his knowledge of French, his friendship with the
French-Canadian poet Louis Frechette, and his devotion to building up a
partnership between English and French Canadians. Just how unusual might
have been made clearer by a firmer depiction of the Ontario context.

However, too much attention to politics in a short biography might have
led to a neglect of Matilda who, after the child-bearing period was
over, emerged as an historian. She wrote three books, became president
of the Women’s Historical Society in 1897, and later, president of the
National Council of Women. She died in the Windsor Castle Library while
working on her fourth book.

Altogether, this is a competent short account of an unusually
interesting Toronto family.