Sisters in the Wilderness (52 page)

It was a joy for me to rely once again on the professional advice of my agent, Jan Whitford, and to return to Penguin Books, and the careful attention of Meg Masters. Ramsay Derry, my editor, brought a sharp pencil and a sharper eye to my manuscript, and improved it in more ways than I care to admit. I would like to thank Catherine Marjoribanks for being a dream copy-editor, Susan James for her time-consuming work on production, and Laura Brady for the imaginative design of the book. Jeanne Simpson knew exactly what I meant when I asked for “maps that tell a story,” and she created four wonderful examples. She also produced the elegant illustrations of Reydon Hall and Middleton Square.

I always enjoy walking into any of the great Ottawa repositories of national memory and discovering not only the treasures they house, but also the enthusiasm and knowledge of their staff. Both Brian Murphy and Jennifer Mueller were a pleasure to work with at the National Archives of Canada; at the National Library of Canada, Michel Brisebois searched out letters and rare books for me; the staff at the Parliamentary Library tracked down obscure titles and entries in biographical
dictionaries. I was particularly thrilled to discover that the Canadian Museum of Nature had in its collection many of Catharine Parr Traill's botanical specimen books. Mike J. Shchepanek, chief collection manager, botany section, and Micheline B. Bouchard shared my excitement as we turned the pages, and they explained to me the strengths and weaknesses of Catharine's approach to natural history.

In England, I should like to thank Mr. LeGrys for opening Reydon Hall, Suffolk, to me, and my friend Tosh Potts for joining me on research trips in Southwold and London. In Canada, I would like to thank David Staines, Dean of Arts at the University of Ottawa, for supplying me with the New Canadian Library editions of Catharine's and Susanna's most important books. I am grateful to Gerry Boyce, who shared his extensive knowledge of Belleville with me, and to Betsy Boyce, who guided me through the photographic archives of the Hastings County Museum. Three people in the Peterborough area went out of their way to provide me with assistance: Connie Thompson at Hutchison House, and Jean Cole and Kathy Hooke, who fleshed out my knowledge of Stony Lake. Kathy Hooke generously sent me maps, photos and booklets and read the Stony Lake chapter for me. In Ottawa, Liz Kane walked me round her house in New Edinburgh, where Catharine stayed in 1884 as a guest of her niece Agnes Fitzgibbon.

Much of the fun of writing this double biography came from discussions with friends and new acquaintances about the sisters. Norman Hilmer and Christopher Moore helped me with historical background. Ann Schteir discussed nineteenth-century natural history with me. Designer Paddye Mann helped me imagine what the women would have looked like and how they dressed. Clara Thomas shared her astringent (and well-informed) views on which sister would have been the most likable. Roger Hall gave me reading lists and good advice on how to deal with the value of money in the nineteenth century. Fay Sharman gave me expert advice on both sailing and plant life. Jennifer Southam allowed me to talk through my ideas as we walked. Sheila Williams, Chaviva Hosek, Barbara Uteck, Wendy Bryant, Maureen Boyd, Cathy Behan, Kyle
McRobie and Judith Moses all once again convinced me that there is considerable public interest in how women in any century live their lives. Ernest Hillen convinced me that I could write a book about these two particular women. And several others gave me and my family the kind of support that allowed me to stay in my third-floor study for hours on end: they include Violeta Bonales-Hollmann, Christie Murray, Katie Plaunt, Gloria Cardoza, Monic Charlebois and Wayne McAlear.

My parents generously and enthusiastically helped facilitate my research trips in Britain, and waited patiently as I tramped around Leith, Norwich and Suffolk. My deepest thanks, as always, go to my husband George Anderson, who always provides unconditional support and encouragement, as well as useful feedback and good suggestions on the manuscript. And I could not have written this book without my sons Alexander, Nicholas and Oliver, who make my own life worthwhile.

This book would not have been possible without the financial assistance of the Canada Council and the Arts Committee of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. I am grateful to both for their continued support of Canadian writers.

Sources

Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill are themselves the main sources for this book. Thanks to the New Canadian Library imprint of McClelland and Stewart, Catharine's
The Backwoods of Canada
and Susanna's
Roughing It in the Bush
and
Life in the Clearings versus the Bush
are still in print. The University of Ottawa Press has recently issued a collection of Susanna's short narratives, under the title
Voyages
(1991, edited by John Thurston), and a collection of Catharine's sketches, under the title
Forest and Other Gleanings
(1994, edited by Michael A. Peterman and Carl Ballstadt). Carleton University Press has reissued Catharine's novel
Canadian Crusoes, A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains
(1986, edited by Rupert Schieder). I found original copies of all the other books that the sisters wrote in Canada in the Parliamentary Library and the National Library of Canada.

The sisters' published works tell only half the story. For their personal letters I relied heavily on three volumes of their correspondence,
published by the University of Toronto Press and edited by Professor Carl Ballstadt of McMaster University, Professor Elizabeth Hopkins of York University and Professor Michael A. Peterman of Trent University. The volumes are
Susanna Moodie, Letters of a Lifetime
(1985),
Letters of Love and Duty, The Correspondence of Susanna and John Moodie
(1993) and
I Bless You in My Heart, Selected Correspondence of Catharine Parr Traill
(1996). I used the Traill Family Collection in the National Archives of Canada, and the Patrick Hamilton Ewing Collection in the National Library of Canada, for additional letters from Catharine, and for letters from other members of the Strickland, Moodie and Traill families.

Given the importance of the Strickland sisters for students of both Canadian history and Canadian literature, there have been surprisingly few attempts to describe their lives in nineteenth-century Canada. The best, Audrey Y. Morris's
The Gentle Pioneers,
appeared in 1966. Other useful biographical assessments of Catharine and Susanna are G.H. Needler's
Otonabee Pioneers, The Story of the Stewarts, the Stricklands, the Traills and the Moodies
(1953); Clara Thomas's essay on “The Strickland Sisters” in
The Clear Spirit,
edited by Mary Quayle Innis (Toronto, 1966); Marian Fowler's The
Embroidered Tent
(1982). Michael Peterman's
Susanna Moodie: A Life
(1999) elegantly traces the links between Susanna's books and her life. Sara Eaton's
Lady of the Backwoods
(1969) is a cheerful account for young readers of Catharine's life.

There are two biographies of the formidable Agnes Strickland. The first is her sister Jane's hagiography, published in 1887. The second is Una Pope-Hennessy's Agnes Strickland
, Biographer of the Queens of England
(1940).

PRELUDE

Elizabeth Thompson discussed the Strickland sisters' influence on subsequent writers in
The Pioneer Woman, A Canadian Character Type
(1991). Michael Peterman discussed the way subsequent writers have treated Susanna in
This Great Epoch of Our Lives: Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush
(1996).

CHAPTERS 1, 2, 3

Details of the Strickland family in England come from a variety of sources. They include Catharine's reminiscences published in her book
Pearls and Pebbles
(1894); an interview with Susanna Moodie that I found in an 1884 issue of the Toronto
Globe
, in the Belleville Public Library; and material from the Traill Family Collection. Carole Gerson's article on “Mrs. Moodies's Beloved Partner” (
Canadian Literature
, No. 107, Winter 1985,pp. 34–45) was a corrective to much of the criticism John Moodie has suffered over the years.

To round out the picture of Suffolk in the early nineteenth century, I turned to
Suffolk Scene
by Julian Tennyson (1939); Rachel Lawrence's
Southwold River, Georgian Life in the Blyth Valley
(1990); and
A History of Suffolk
by David Dymond and Peter Northeast Phillimore (1995). The comparison with the Austen family came to mind after I read
Jane Austen, A Life
by Claire Tomalin (1997).

I learned about the position of women in Regency England in Muriel Jaeger's
Before Victoria, Changing Standards of Behaviour 1787‒1837
(1967) and in
Hyenas in Petticoats
by Robert Woof, Stephen Hebron and Claire Tomalin (1997). Another book that provided useful background for lives of women during this period was
A Passionate Sisterhood: The Sisters, Wives and Daughters of the Lake Poets
by Kathleen Jones (1998). I learned about London in the late 1820s from James Morris's
Heaven's Command, An Imperial Progress
(1973). Information about Mary Prince and Ashton Warner comes from Dr. Sandy Campbell, of the English Department at the University of Ottawa.

CHAPTER 4

I learned about Leith during a personal visit, and from Hamish Coghill's
Discovering the Water of Leith
(1988). I never found a good modern account of Atlantic crossings in the 1830s, but I did discover Edwin C. Guillet, a prolific historian who wrote on a wide variety of topics I wanted to know about. His book
The Great Migration, The Atlantic Crossing by Sailing-Ship 1770-1860
(1963) and his pamphlet
Cobourg 1798-1948
, written for the
Business and Professional Women's Club of Cobourg (1948), were both useful sources. Dr. Bruce Elliot of Carleton University and Caroline Parry (author of
Eleanor's Diary
) both shared their knowledge of the emigrant ships with me.

CHAPTERS 5, 6 AND 7

I was able to imagine Cobourg in 1832 thanks to Katherine Ashenburg's
Going to Town, Architectural Walking Tours in Southern Ontario
(1996) and a wonderful little memoir of “the early days” written by a longtime resident, Mrs. David Fleming, and published by the Oshawa and District Historical Society (1960). I got a sense of what Upper Canada looked like, and how newly arrived travellers responded to it, from
Early Travellers in the Canadas, 1791-1867
, edited by Gerald M. Craig (1955), and from three first-hand accounts:
Our Forest Home, Being extracts from the correspondence of the late Frances Stewart
edited by her daughter E.S. Dunlop (1902);
A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada, The Journals of Anne Langton
edited by H.H. Langton (1950), and from John Langton's
Early Days in Upper Canada
(1926).

Gentlemen Emigrants
by Patrick Dunae (1981) explained what ill-suited pioneers the Traills and Moodies were. John Thurston's
The Work of Words, The Writing of Susanna Strickland Moodie
(1996) dealt with Susanna's shock at her first taste of the New World. Carole Gerson explored the two women's attitudes to native peoples, and pointed out how sympathetic they were, in her article “Nobler Savages: Representations of Native Women in the Writings of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill” (
Journal of Canadian Studies
, Summer 1997, Vol. 32,No. 2). Joan Holmes explained to me who the “Chippewa Indians” were.

CHAPTERS 8 AND 9

William Kilbourn gave us the best biography of William Lyon Mackenzie, and the liveliest account of the 1837 Uprising, in
The Firebrand
(1956). Donald Creighton provided more general accounts of the history of this period in
The Story of Canada
(1959) and in his magnificent biography
John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician, The Old Chieftain
(reprinted in one volume, 1998).

CHAPTER 10

I spent happy hours in Belleville Public Library's Canadiana Room, looking through old almanacs, county atlases and local histories for details of life in nineteenth-century Belleville. Information on George Benjamin came from Sheldon and Judith Godfrey's lively and sympathetic
Burn This Gossip: The True Story of George Benjamin of Belleville
(1991). Information on Robert Baldwin came from J.M.S. Careless's essay about him in the book he edited entitled
The Pre-Confederation Premiers: Ontario Government Leaders, 1841-1867
(1980). For these two personalities, and most others mentioned in this book, I turned again and again to one of our greatest national publications: the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
.

CHAPTER 11

Three local historians supplied me with a wealth of wonderful detail about the residents of the Rice Lake area during the last century.
Gore's Landing and the Rice Lake Plains
(1986) by N. Martin, C. Milne and D. McGillis brought home to me the spirit and eccentricity of so many early settlers. Rupert Schieder's introduction to the Carleton University Press edition of
Canadian Crusoes, A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains
(1986) and Michael Peterman's introduction to the Carleton University Press edition of Catharine's
The Backwoods of Canada
(1997) covered Catharine's experience with publishers, and the receptions accorded her books.

The most useful source on the slow and tortured development of the Canadian publishing industry is George L. Parker's
The Beginnings of the Book Trade in Canada
(1985). I also looked at Royal A. Gettman's
A Victorian Publisher, A Study of the Bentley Papers
(1960) and H. Pearson Gunday's
Book Publishing and Publishers in Canada before
1900 (1965).

CHAPTER 12

This chapter would have been impossible without a thoughtful and exhaustive thesis by Klay Dyer, entitled “A Periodical for the People, Mrs. Moodie and
The Victoria Magazine” (
unpublished thesis presented at the University of Ottawa, 1992). It shaped all my reactions when I read
the original
Victoria Magazine
, now reprinted by the University of British Columbia Press.