Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [110]
At the same time, the Moodies were once again finding the wolf at the door. John’s income as sheriff was falling, largely because of the hostility of Belleville’s Tory lawyers. And Susanna’s main source of income in Canada had disappeared with the collapse of John Lovell’s Literary Garland in 1851.
Perhaps it was all these worries, alongside the stress of her row with Agnes, that caused Susanna’s descent into serious illness for much of 1852. Two physicians were called in, which meant heavy medical bills. They recommended a recuperative boat trip to Toronto (where she could visit Agnes) and to Niagara Falls. She underwent the voyage, but it didn’t do her health much good—by November, she was “a sort of living skeleton,” she told Bentley, “the very ghost of my former self.” Nevertheless, it provided her with some new literary material with which she could fulfil her publisher’s request for a sequel to Roughing It in the Bush.
Eager to capitalize on Susanna’s success, Bentley had asked her for “an account of the present state of society in the colony.” Eager to earn some money fast, Susanna supplied something rather different: a manuscript in which she cobbled together some reflections on Canada at mid-century, three pieces she had intended for Roughing It and a couple of character sketches she had already written. She decided to structure the book around her voyage to Niagara Falls, inserting the other pieces plus some new material along the way. The device didn’t really work, the style (imperious rather than confessional) was less attractive than Roughing It, and the resulting book, Life in the Clearings versus the Bush, never came together. Nevertheless, it tells us a lot about both Susanna and Canada.
Susanna started off by defending herself from the criticisms of her first book. She went out of her way to talk about Canada’s potential, particularly for honest labourers. “Canada has become almost as dear to me as my native land,” she insisted, and the country “appears to us a giant for her years, and well worthy the most serious contemplation.” She explained to readers that her references to Irish immigrants were “drawn with an affectionate, not a malignant hand,” and that her comments on life in the bush were intended to warn “well-educated persons not to settle in localities for which they were unfitted by their previous habits and education.” She took a swipe at her sister Agnes, by quoting “An English lady” who told her to stop writing about Canada because “Who, in England, thinks anything of Canada?” Such an attitude, sniffed Susanna, “savoured not a little of arrogance, and still more of ignorance, in the fair writer who, being a woman of talent, should have known better.”
Susanna was more careful in Life in the Clearings than she had been in Roughing It: she scarcely mentioned her own family, and she certainly didn’t caricature her neighbours. Fame had put Susanna on the defensive, and made her a self-conscious commentator. She often ducked serious debate (“It requires the strong-thinking heart of man to anticipate events, and trace certain results from particular causes”), although she could not resist riding some of her favourite hobbyhorses, such as the absurdity of expensive mourning clothes and the importance of universal education.
The book gives us a glimpse of a middle-aged woman who had become a personality within the society that she was writing about, and while she was travelling, she was invited to tour some of the colony’s most interesting sights and meet some of its most notable citizens. Had Agnes been presented with such an opportunity, she