A Day of Signs and Wonders
Page 12
Kathleen had a much more ordinary life than Emily. She and Jack attended boarding schools in England for three years. Her mother lived in London for two of them, and her father visited. Kathleen then went home to Victoria and spent the rest of her life in what is now called Point Ellice House, although she often visited England and Ireland with her parents. Kathleen had several romances, and a proposal that would have made her a titled Englishwoman—but she decided she didn’t want to leave her home and she never married. Her mother died when Kathleen was thirty-two. She took over as mistress of Point Ellice House, looking after her father until he died in 1905. After World War I, Jack, his wife, Mary, and their son, John, also lived in Point Ellice House. Kathleen’s diaries, although very unrevealing, describe a pleasant and busy social life of croquet, tennis, riding, golf, skating, and picnics. Kathleen carried on drawing and painting and was a member of the Victoria Sketch Club. I was unable to find out whether she and Emily knew each other as adults; but their paths must have crossed, and Kathleen would have heard of Emily, as she became famous. Kathleen died in 1945, the same year as Emily. She was seventy-eight.
Both Emily’s and Kathleen’s houses in Victoria are open to the public. Emily Carr House did not remain in the family but was bought by the British Columbia government and restored to its original condition in 1976. Now it is an interpretive centre for Emily’s life, art, and writing. Point Ellice House continued to be lived in by Jack’s descendants until 1975. It contains a remarkable collection of Victoriana, all of it original to the O’Reilly family.
There are several layers of reality in my novel. It was inspired by an autobiographical story of Emily’s called “Mrs. Crane,” from The Book of Small. In the story Emily and her sister, Alice, are sent to stay with the Cranes (not their real name), who lived next door to the O’Reillys on Pleasant Street. When I found this out, I wondered if Emily and Kathleen had ever met as children.
Emily wrote extensively about her childhood in prose that blurs the line between fact and fiction. I have freely borrowed some of these “facts,” and have also used facts relevant to Kathleen’s childhood that I found in the diaries and letters of the O’Reilly family held at the B.C. archives. The Great Comet of 1881 is also real. For accuracy I had to keep to what was true to the very white society of the time: terms like “Indian,” and the employment of Chinese servants. A few of the facts, however, such as the year and date of Pop’s birth and death, I have changed for the convenience of my story. And that is what it is: a fictional account of one imagined day in the lives of two very different girls.
Many thanks to the following, whose advice and knowledge made it possible for me to recreate an 1881 world: John Adams, Deirdre Baker, Sarah Ellis, Robert Gibbs, Theresa Molinara, Louise Oborne, Doug Rhodes, Jan Ross, Colin Scarfe, Gail Simpson, and Vanessa Winn. I am deeply grateful to my agent, Marie Campbell, and my editors, Hadley Dyer and David Kilgour. And, as usual, very loving thanks to my ever-supportive partner, Katherine Farris.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KIT PEARSON is an award-winning, critically acclaimed Canadian children’s author. Her books include A Handful of Time; the Guests of War trilogy (The Sky Is Falling, Looking at the Moon, and The Lights Go on Again); The Daring Game; Awake and Dreaming; A Perfect Gentle Knight; a Dear Canada book; and, most recently, The Whole Truth as well as And Nothing but the Truth. She lives in Victoria, B.C. Visit her online at www.kitpearson.com.
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ALSO BY KIT PEARSON
And Nothing but the Truth
The Whole Truth
A Perfect Gentle Knight
Whispers of War: The War of 1812 Diary of Susanna Merritt
Awake and Dreaming
The Lights Go on Again
Looking at the Moon
The Sky Is Falling
A Handful of Time
The Daring Game
CREDITS
COVER ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES/YUN
COVER DESIGN BY GREG TABOR
COPYRIGHT
A DAY OF SIGNS AND WONDERS
Copyright © 2016 by Kathleen Pearson.
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Published by HarperTrophy Canada™, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
FIRST EDITION
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Map of Victoria on p. vii by Dawn Huck
EPub Edition: July 2016 ISBN: 9781443444019
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