Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [100]
Since there was no budget for contributors, most of the material in The Victoria Magazine would come from the pens of Susanna and John Moodie. They aimed high, describing themselves as “literary philanthropists wishing hearty and heartfelt success, to every sincere pioneer in the exalted and noble cause of mental improvement.” Despite (or, perhaps, because of) all the scars they carried from John’s unhappy experiences as sheriff, they also hoped to avoid political controversy. Any writing “which awakens angry and resentful feelings, rarely tends to improve the heart, or produce those great moral changes, which must take place before we can hope to realise a permanent improvement in mankind individually or in the mass.”
The first month’s issue included Susanna’s account of her arrival at Grosse Ile in 1832, with its vivid description of the hairy Irishman who had shouted, “Whurrah! my boys! Shure we’ll all be jontlemen!” In later issues, she wrote about her first view of Quebec City from the St. Lawrence River and a hurricane in Douro. But Susanna quickly found that she had little time to shape and polish these “Canadian” pieces, as she and John struggled to fill twenty-four pages each month. The Moodies fell back on formulaic historical tales and romance to provide the promised “entertainment” for readers. Most were set in England and Scotland, but several more that they wrote were set in exotic locales, like Italy and Persia, that they had never visited. Susanna recycled tales she had published in the London annuals fifteen years earlier. John reused anecdotes about the Cape Colony that he had already published in Ten Years in South Africa. Susanna also put the squeeze on her sisters for articles. Catharine, now living in Wolf Tower and eager to help her “beloved Suze,” obliged by sending to Belleville stories she had been unable to sell elsewhere. Agnes sent several pieces, including one of her stirring and sycophantic odes to royalty, entitled “Death of Edward, Prince of Wales.” John tried to spice up the pages (and fill in space) with puns, riddles, acrostics and funny rhymes. “Whizz, whizz—buzz, buzz—dotti, dot, dot, dot, dot, / Here’s lots of news, but we can’t read a jot,” read his cheerful verse entitled “The Magnetic Telegraph.”
However, the Moodies were keener on “moral and mental improvement” than on amusement, and there was a tut-tutting tone to The Victoria Magazine. Even an article on practical jokes is a finger-wagging catalogue of public ridicule and humiliation. Their thinly disguised editorial priority was to promote a system of “common schools” in Upper Canada.
The Moodies had the best of intentions in their campaign to establish an educational system in the United Provinces. They realized that the colonies desperately needed men of education to fill all the public offices. The colonial government relied on immigrants educated in Britain to become the registrars, attorneys, sheriffs and court officials in cities like Montreal and Toronto, and towns like Peterborough, Belleville and Cobourg. Most first-generation Canadians, especially those raised in the backwoods, were barely literate. Susanna and Catharine had taught their own children to read and write, but in their letters, they bemoaned the sketchy education of their offspring. The children attended local public or private schools (usually run by enterprising widows who charged tiny fees) only when they had decent clothes and weren’t needed at home. Catharine’s eldest son, James, wrote despairingly to his aunt Susanna that his only option in life seemed to be to remain at home, “droning out my existence on an uncultivated farm, merely doing work that a common Irish servant can do much better.” He envied his mother’s education: “What I would not give to have sufficient talent and education to employ myself in writing.” Catharine’s second son, Harry, spent a few months at a Peterborough grammar school, but