The Paris Peace Conference enters the narrative through a family death rather than through its negotiations: Baxter McCandless was attending Lloyd George when a taxi-cab knocked him down in Paris. His death, at twenty-seven and without issue, makes the conference a sharply personal point of reference in the account of his mother and her family.

Baxter McCandless at the Conference

Baxter McCandless accompanied Lloyd George to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The account offers no description of the conference’s proceedings; it establishes his presence there only to explain the circumstances of his death.

Death in Paris

While in Paris for the conference, Baxter McCandless was knocked down by a taxi-cab and died at the age of twenty-seven. He died without issue. The abrupt accident places a private bereavement alongside the public gathering, and gives the conference significance in the narrative as the setting of this family loss.