Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [143]
The following year, it seemed as though the manuscript might be published as “The Plants of Canada” by the Hamilton Horticultural Society, which was hosting the Provincial Agricultural Fair that year. But Catharine’s hopes fell when she was told that the Society had decided it could go ahead only with the help of a government subsidy. She dismissed the president of the Horticultural Society as “a man not to be relied upon” and despaired of the colonial government ever having the imagination to put money into a comprehensive catalogue of Canadian plants. In the opinion of Sir William Hooker, she had been told, “Canada was behind every one of the British Colonies and all civilized nations in Scientific literary effort especially in Botany.” Strickland amour-propre came to the fore as Catharine emphatically concurred with the director of Kew Gardens: “I think the Great Man was right—there is certainly a want of encouragement in this country for literary talent.” But she was driven as much by financial as scientific imperative: “I am so anxious to earn what will pay our bills that I write even when I have no hope of a market.”
Catharine refused to be discouraged. She laboriously copied out her manuscript, then sent it off to all the people she could think of who might recognize the value of her work and give it a public endorsement. One copy landed on the desk of Professor John Dawson, a geologist who had become principal of McGill College in Montreal; another arrived at the doorstep of William Hincks, professor of natural history at the University of Toronto. Catharine also sent a copy to George Lawson, a Scot who had published more than fifty articles on botany before his thirtieth birthday, and who had arrived at Queen’s College, Kingston, in 1858 to teach natural history. In 1860, he’d founded the Botanical Society of Canada, which was soon busy cataloguing Canadian plants and advising farmers on pest control.
In the end, it was none of these well-positioned or ambitious men who helped Catharine get her work in print, but her own niece, Susanna’s daughter Agnes Fitzgibbon.
The older Agnes Moodie Fitzgibbon got, the more she resembled her mother. She had Susanna’s delicacy of appearance and air of vulnerability that hid an iron will. She shared her mother’s sense of humour, wicked temper and stylish dress sense: her bonnets reflected Parisian modes, and her skirts were always as wide as fashion dictated. Sharp-featured and proud, with a penetrating gaze, Agnes was extremely beautiful. Since her marriage in 1850, Agnes had lived in Toronto, and, now in her twenties, she far preferred the diversions of a big city to those of rural life. She found Toronto at mid-century just as thrilling as Susanna had found London in the 1820s. And Toronto was exciting as it swelled from a muddy little port to a booming railroad city. Men were making fortunes in the milling, transportation and banking industries, and building monuments to their success in the form of splendid stone banks and office buildings.
Unfortunately, Charles Fitzgibbon was not one of the Toronto entrepreneurs making his fortune. He and his wife had little