Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [146]
Frontispiece for “a most valuable addition to the literature of Canada,” to which citizens of the newly-minted Dominion eagerly subscribed.
Agnes Moodie Fitzgibbon’s lithograph of a trillium: she and her daughters hand-coloured 5,000 illustrations.
Catharine chose her tone deliberately. She wanted the large-format, literary volume to “foster a love for the native plants of Canada” and persuade readers to pay attention to the “floral beauty that is destined sooner or later to be swept away, as the onward march of civilization clears away the primeval forest, reclaims the swamps and bogs, and turns the waste places into a fruitful field.” Her preface acknowledged that “the scientific reader may possibly expect a more learned description of the plants, and may notice many defects and omissions,” but Catharine was writing for people like herself, not for lofty scientists.
Once Agnes had finished her lithographs, Canadian Wild Flowers took most of 1867 to put together. “I got the proof sheet and Agnes’s design of the specimen sheet for the book of Canadian Flowers,” Catharine wrote to her daughter Kate in February that year. “I re-wrote one article and corrected and sent it by post to Lovell.” Although she acknowledged that it was mostly her niece’s work, she was soon getting as irritated with Lovell and Agnes as she had been with the Hamilton Horticultural Society. “I have been writing at my flower book but have not heard from Lovell …how very uncourteous these publishers are.” She resented the way that Agnes failed to consult her on every detail. She complained to Susanna that “I do not even know who is correcting the press for Agnes writes hasty letters and seldom comes to the point on business matters.” She knew Susanna would sympathize with her exasperation—Susanna knew Agnes’s haughty manner all too well.
Exasperation apart, Catharine did her bit to sell subscriptions. She and Kate did the rounds of likely readers in the Peterborough area. Loyal friends like Frances Stewart bought several. “Your approval dear friend of the book,” Catharine wrote to her, “cheered me not a little for I was much disappointed with my share of the work.” But other potential buyers looked askance at the high-priced, large format volume. Catharine described to her daughter Annie how “[a] hard-fisted, hard-headed hardware merchant … looked … as if he would have liked nothing better than throwing one of his hammers or hoes at [Kate’s] head when he paid down hard cash for his book. One man kept us a long time in suspense, and at last declined on the plea that his children always tore all the books in his wife’s drawing room to pieces, calling on a lean, ill-favoured vinegar bottle of a wife to endorse the fact which she did saying, ‘I guess they do.’ I merely hinted that it was rather a bad plan to let them destroy things. ‘Wal I guess it is but they will do it so it’s no use buying things to be tore up,’ she said—so there was an end to the matter.”
The proposed volume received a better reception amongst the English relatives. By now, Agnes Strickland had resumed a regular, if frosty correspondence with Susanna, who had described to her English sisters her own and Catharine’s various writing projects. Agnes was in a forgiving mood, because she had discovered yet another rich run of royals for Elizabeth Strickland and herself to write about: the Tudor princesses. She loyally promised to support Canadian Wild Flowers. “I hope that [the work that] your interesting daughter Agnes … and dear Kate are preparing will answer,” she wrote to Susanna in 1868. “I have not heard the price, but I will subscribe for a copy.”
The first edition of Canadian Wild Flowers appeared at the end of 1868, and it was an instant triumph. It was the first botanical book for the general reader; it had been put together by two indomitable women; and it was a proudly Canadian production at a most propitious moment. The previous year, to the accompaniment of brass bands, blazing fireworks and sonorous speeches, the United Provinces (present-day Ontario and Quebec)