Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [96]
Canadian Crusoes finally appeared in London in 1852. Its didactic tone and overtly Christian message found an appreciative audience. Elizabeth Strickland wrote to Catharine to tell her that her “Crusoes are very much admired,” and the book was well reviewed. The Observer praised the “freshness” of the text and the “truth and gracefulness” of its “description of American backwood scenery, animal and vegetable productions.” John Bull said it was “a prettily-conceived tale,” and “elegantly illustrated” (there were twelve engravings by William Harvey, a well-known illustrator). Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine was as enthusiastic as it had been for Backwoods. The reviewer was intrigued by descriptions of Indian settlements that were “very different from the delineations of the American novelists, and are probably nearer to the truth.” According to Sharpe’s London Magazine, Canadian Crusoes was “a very pretty book … full of interest and information.”
Despite the critical success of Canadian Crusoes, the book did not solve the Traills’ financial problems. Her London publishers paid Catharine only fifty pounds for the first English edition. Five years later, Agnes tried to negotiate a further fifty-pound payment for the second edition, which appeared in 1858. However, Arthur Hall, of Hall, Virtue, discovered he could get a far better price if he dealt directly with penniless Catharine rather than her virago of a sister. He managed to beat Catharine down to twenty-five pounds. Agnes was furious with Hall’s deviousness and Catharine’s naive interference in business negotiations: “My poor unlucky Catharine, I cannot say how annoyed I am at the cold-blooded villainy of that wretched man, and the worst of it is that I cannot do you any good because you have invalidated my agency…. Alas! that all my pains should have been thus circumvented! It is for you I grieve for it would have done me no other good than the pleasure of getting you out of your pecuniary straits through my good management of your books.”
In subsequent years, sales of Canadian Crusoes continued to go from strength to strength in Britain. Catharine was thrilled when the Edinburgh firm of Thomas Nelson showed some interest in a third edition in 1867. This time, however, Catharine had a better sense of the value of her copyright. When Nelson and Sons offered her forty pounds for both Canadian Crusoes and a second children’s book she’d published in 1856, Lady Mary and her Nurse, she considered the figure “shabby.” But she was too broke to argue, and decided that she had better accept. She was soon referring in her correspondence to her publisher as “that old humbug Nelson,” since in return for his fee Thomas Nelson also demanded extensive corrections and additions, and a change of title to Lost in the Backwoods. A Tale of the Canadian Forest (a “very stupid” title in the author’s opinion). Nelson then delayed publication, and payment, for fifteen years. By 1882, Catharine had earned from the English editions of Canadian Crusoe only 115 pounds—10 pounds less than she had earned from The Backwoods of Canada nearly fifty years earlier.
Even on her own side of the Atlantic, Catharine received a derisory reward for her work. The American publishers C.S. Francis, of Boston and New York, brought out an American edition at the end of 1852. Initially, Catharine was happy to have Francis as publisher because he promised her fifty dollars for the copyright. In 1853, Catharine wrote a joyful letter to Ellen Dunlop: “Francis sent me a nice present, and promised me