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By Root 1112 0

He was already planning to buy a two-hundred-acre farm on the Bay of Quinte, writing with his usual confidence, “This is the most desirable situation in Upper Canada in my opinion in every respect excepting the population which is very much disaffected.” He wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor, asking to be considered as a candidate for the newly established position of sheriff for the District of Hastings, based in Belleville. His hopes were raised when his letter was acknowledged with a promise that Sir George Arthur would consider him, “not only on your own account, but from the esteem and respect he entertains for Mrs. Moodie.” Ever the romantic, John also made the kind of gestures that always appealed to a woman who, despite her circumstances, loved pretty things. He bought her a soft woollen shawl (it cost six dollars they could ill afford). And he sent a parcel of new shoes, and bolts of fabric, so she could make their children some desperately needed clothes.

Susanna soldiered grimly on through the trials. She knew John was doing his best to get them out of the bush, so she rarely allowed the physical and emotional ordeals to trigger any reproaches to her absent husband. When the parcel of shoes and fabric arrived, she quickly acknowledged it: “You guessed the length of my foot exactly. No wonder—you know it so well, for surely if any man ever knew how to please a poor silly woman ’tis yourself.” She began to fantasize about co-editing, with John, a newspaper in a larger town: “I could take all the light reading Tales, poetry &tc. and you the political and statistical details.” Once again, her physical need for her husband ripples through the letter. “A state of widowhood does not suit my ardent affections… Oh do come soon—my heart aches to see you once again my own beloved one.”

With Catharine gone, Susanna had no one to talk to, no one to tell about how drained she felt at the end of the day. She was not the kind of woman who shared her problems with casual acquaintances. She was, however, a writer. The previous winter she had discovered that composing articles for the Literary Garland was “a great refreshment to me, instead of an additional fatigue. I forgot the hardships and privations of my lot whilst rousing into action, after long disuse, the powers and energies of my mind.” Now, during the harshest winter she would ever know, she burned to articulate her experience on paper, and explore her grief and fears within the discipline of the written word. She had to get her emotions out. So when loneliness overwhelmed her, and she felt her heart would burst with the need to tell John how she felt, she would get out of bed, light a candle and write a lengthy cri de coeur. By the time she had finished, the page would be crisscrossed with her outpourings and damp with tears. She would stare, mesmerized, at the pattern that her pen had made on the spongy homemade paper. After a deep, slow sigh, she would pick up her despondent litany and hold it over the guttering flame of the candle. The paper would blacken and flame up; then the sooty ashes would float down onto the table. With dry eyes, Susanna would return to her bed.

Only when there was a gap of more than a couple of weeks between her husband’s letters did her morale falter. She reread old letters, in which John described convivial evenings with his commanding officer, Baron de Rottenburg, at which everyone got drunk and “sundry missiles such as decanters, candlesticks, glasses &tc, were discharged.” Then her self-control broke, and the bitter reproaches erupted in letters that were sent. In July she wrote, “Surely dearest, we cannot have become indifferent to you that you should leave us in this dreadful state of uncertainty as to your plans and present situation.… Night comes, and no word from you, and I take poor little Johnnie into my arms and … bathe his innocent face with tears. Cruel Moodie, one short sentence which would tell me you are well [and] would remove this miserable state of anxiety.… While I had you to comfort and support me all trials seemed light,