Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [80]
In later years, Susanna would look back on these years as being the most prosperous she and John ever enjoyed. They had (as she wrote to a friend in England) “many of the luxuries of life or such as are considered so in the Provinces,” and the house was “a grand and comfortable home.” She had at least two servants—a maid and a handyman—which allowed her to establish a household routine that included as much reading and writing as possible. She rose at six o’clock, hurriedly read some prayers with her children, organized breakfast, made whatever bread and pies were required for the day, then sat down to write. She wrote steadily until dinnertime, turning a deaf ear to interruptions from the maid or children. After an early evening meal, she took a walk, then made or mended clothes until the light was too dim for her to sew any longer. Once the lamps were lit, she returned to whatever manuscript she was working on.
The worst tragedy of her life struck the family a couple of years after they had moved into the Bridge Street house. One night in June 1844, Susanna awoke to find her pillow drenched in tears. In her dream she had taken Johnnie, then five, to England, to visit her mother at Reydon Hall. Her older sister Jane had appeared and told Susanna that their mother had died years earlier, but that Susanna had never been told because her English relatives felt she already had so many sorrows of her own. Susanna was badly shaken by the dream and spent the following day wracked with homesickness and a strange sorrow.
A memorial tablet for Susanna’s two lost sons: “hope has faded from my heart.”
She was so preoccupied that she scarcely noticed that little Johnnie, who had been watching his two elder brothers fishing in the Moira, was late home. Suddenly an older child rushed into the kitchen, shouting that Johnnie was missing. John Moodie rushed along Bridge Street to the river and pounded up and down the bank, calling his son’s name into the deepening twilight. The child had been washing all the brook trout that his brothers had caught and had lost his balance as he leaned over the wooden wharf. Dunbar and Donald had been busy rewinding their lines and hadn’t seen him leave them. Nobody had heard Johnnie’s cries above the roar of the river. His father finally found the limp little body caught in the wooden supports of the wharf.
Susanna was devastated. The loss of her “lovely, laughing, rosy, dimpled child” was the “saddest and darkest [hour] in my sad eventful life.” Johnnie’s death plunged her into a despair deeper than she had ever known; she never entirely recovered her mirth and spontaneity. She brooded inconsolably for months and wrote heartfelt poetry about her loss.
But hope has faded from my heart—and joy
Lies buried in thy grave, my darling boy!
The tragedy had a profound impact on Susanna. It rooted her more firmly in her adopted land than any other experience. Johnnie was buried next to his infant brother George. Their mother visited their graves regularly. She grieved that these two sons would never see their mother’s homeland. Her love for her lost little boys made Susanna begin to think of herself as the mother of Canadian children rather than