The Lost Diaries of Susanna Moodie

by Cecily Ross

  “Mama? Consider what you are proposing. Please.”

  She turned her face and looked out the window. I followed her gaze and I do not know if her mind was registering the extravagance of the yellow briar rose climbing the garden wall. It is said to be more than a hundred years old, the oldest of its kind in the parish. And it struck me right then as I held my babe to my breast that its thorny beauty would likely outlive us all, that it would bloom year after year without reservation or prejudice whether we stayed or sailed. The reflection made me feel as tiny as a grain of sand. Mama looked again at me, her eyes faded and blue, and the sadness there moved me nearly to tears.

  “I cannot bear to lose you both,” she whispered.

  I placed Katie once more in her arms and let myself out into the garden for a last look. Standing in the deep shade of the chestnut trees, I could almost hear my long-lost brother, little Sam, entreating me to hurry, to catch him if I could, as he vaulted the stile, dodging the sheaves of newly cut hay on his way down to the river. I thought how cruel that I should be leaving dear England just as the colours and sounds and smells of my girlhood are at their most striking, that the gorgeous exuberance of an English spring should be in my memory forever enveloped in a bittersweet haze.

  MAY 21, 1832

  High winds and driving rain have prevented our departure for the past two days as attempts to row out to the City of Edinburgh have proved impossible in the billowing seas. Moodie says we must leave tomorrow no matter what the weather, or we are in danger of missing our connection at Leith with the ship on which we have booked passage to Canada. So violent were the waves pounding our Suffolk shores yesterday that I thought our party would surely drown before my husband at last relented in response to my pleas and ordered the boatman to return to the beach. Even in the midst of my terror, I marvelled at Moodie’s courage as he stood in the rowboat’s bow, drenched to the skin, clearly exhilarated at this chance to pit himself against the wild and indifferent seas, as though by sheer force of will he could conquer what God had wrought.

  As Hannah and I cowered with the infant in the stern, I thought of Lord Byron’s lines: “and should I leave behind / The inviolate island of the sage and free, / And seek me out a home by a remoter sea.”

  Now, safe in my own rooms, at least for the moment, I cannot help but wonder how, if we were nearly defeated by the waves pounding this “inviolate island,” we will fare on the arduous voyage that lies ahead?

  Until tomorrow.

  JUNE 15, 1832 (LEITH, EDINBURGH)

  It has been nearly a month since our arrival in this carnival seaport where everyone seems to be on their way to or from somewhere else, and the crooked, cobbled streets are a babel of tongues from around the world. I have never seen the likes of it—the harbour crowded with brigs and schooners, the stone quays and warehouses piled high with Norwegian barley and timber, furs from Quebec, Dutch clocks, Russian wheat, and wines from Portugal and Spain. The native Scots are as warm and romantic as Moodie has always described them, and I have spent many hours trying to capture the cadences and rhythms of their speech on paper. Edinburgh is surely a city of romance and poetry. The day Moodie and I climbed Arthur’s Seat, the hulking rock that presides over the city like a sleeping dragon, and looked out over the steeples and turrets of this ancient metropolis, I almost wished that our journey might begin and end here in this exalted and civilized place.

  But with these endless and unforeseen delays, the dread that dogs me like a mangy cur has returned. We did indeed miss our connection, and our passage sailed without us two days before our arrival here. I suggested to Moodie that we might travel by coach to Glasgow and find a ship there, thus sparing us the necessity of sailing around the stormy northern tip of Scotland, but my husband rejected the notion, saying the forty miles of road to the west coast is a pothole-strewn track. Perhaps, but I believe his true motive is a hope of gazing one last time upon the red sandstone cliffs and rocky outcroppings of his Orkney home as our ship sails past. In this, I cannot fault him.

  Still, not many ships anchored here travel that route, and so our choices have been limited. If Moodie has his way, we are to leave the day after tomorrow aboard The Flora, bound for Quebec. But when he took me this morning to the docks for a last-minute inspection of the vessel, I was appalled at its filthy condition and the fearful appearance of the captain, a one-eyed, lame wretch whose vigorous and constant cursing turned the air black and blue. Aboard this floating prison, we are meant to share a vermin-ridden cabin with fourteen other unfortunate souls of dubious origin. I insisted Moodie cancel our booking at once.

  “Susanna,” he said, “stop this. You will do as I say. We have no choice but to proceed as planned. The Flora may well be the last ship to sail this season.” His tone made my jaw ache with anger, but I said nothing. I am resolved, however, to find another ship to deliver us to our uncertain future. Surely it is not my wifely duty to agree to the unthinkable.

  JUNE 16, 1832

  We have booked passage aboard The Anne on July 1; it will be the last ship to leave this port for Canada this year. I saw the notice nailed to a gatepost yesterday on one of my rambles about the city and ran back to the Black Bull, where I found Moodie in earnest conversation with some of his new friends. We immediately located the ship, and I was relieved beyond measure to find it a floating paradise compared to the ark of pestilence to which my husband had previously condemned us. Moodie has deemed her a small but worthy vessel. A ninety-two-ton, single-masted brig, she is captained by a dour but well-spoken Scot called George Rodgers and has a crew of seven and an energetic terrier named Oscar. Our small party will be the only cabin passengers sharing a spartan but clean outer room with an adjoining berth for me and little Kate. Another seventy-two cheap fares will travel below decks in steerage. Weather permitting, the voyage will take about six weeks to reach Montreal, and I admit that now it is settled, I cannot believe how eager I am to be off.

  AUGUST 11, 1832 (GRAND BANKS, NEWFOUNDLAND)

  For ten days now, our ship has floundered and flapped like a dead whale adrift in seas that heave and roll and heave and roll, enveloped in a fog so thick, it makes it difficult to breathe. Suspended here between the briny depths and the invisible sky, we inhabit a kind of purgatory, silent and windless, with the creak and groaning of timbers, the flap of sails constant and yet not loud enough to drown the moans and cries that emanate day and night from steerage. Whenever I think my own misery is too much to bear, I try to consider the plight of the seventy-two wretched souls below, crowded into a space not more than sixty feet long and ten feet wide. Men and women and children, all their belongings sharing the fetid hold with the rats and the stinking bilge for seven weeks now. It is a miracle none has died and disease is not rampant. I fear, however, that whatever empathy I may once have mustered for the lower classes has deserted me entirely. The smell, even here above deck—a nauseating miasma of rotting food and unwashed bodies, of vomit and excrement—fills me instead with waves of revulsion for their sorry lot.

  Captain Rodgers says we are becalmed on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and that if the fog would only clear, we might even catch a glimpse of land by now. He says there is no telling how long these doldrums will last. So near and yet so far. Land. Occasionally, an iceberg emerges from the fog, brooding and magnificent, but of land we have seen nothing since leaving Scotland.

  The steerage passengers are starving, the provisions they brought with them long gone or spoiled. We are all of us in more or less the same boat. The captain is rationing what little fresh water remains, as well as the ship’s store of hard biscuits and a few sacks of oatmeal. We are obliged to consume copious quantities of ale (which, absurdly, adds an edge of merriment while its effects last, making the tedium slightly easier to bear) or the strong, bitter tea brewed by the crew. Until these last endless days, I have been spared the seasickness that has plagued so many, but finally, these roiling, roiling seas have prevailed and turned me inside out with a wr
etched nausea. I am unable even to nurse my little Kate, who must subsist on the spoonfuls of thin gruel I manage to coax into her tiny mouth. Hannah, perhaps infected by the prospect of egalitarianism that awaits us at our destination, has abandoned her nursemaid duties, claiming her “condition” prevents her from carrying on. And yet she seems well enough to engage in the most shameful flirtation with our supposedly Calvinist captain. With little to do as The Anne bobs like a cork in the ocean, the pair spend many hours in the “privacy” of his berth while Moodie and I pretend not to notice, since we have learned that confrontation of any kind is to be avoided in such close quarters.

  My husband is not bothered by the deplorable conditions; indeed, he seems to relish hardship. He says he views these trials as a challenge to his ingenuity. It is the boredom, the excruciating monotony of life at sea that afflicts him most. And so he spends his days shooting at seabirds or trolling for codfish that the crew say can grow to more than ten feet in length. What he would do if he were to hook such a leviathan, I do not know, but so far luck has eluded him.

  This morning, Moodie proposed that he and a tall fellow called MacDonald take one of the lifeboats on a little fishing excursion. Captain Rodgers, to his credit, forbade it, saying the unpredictable winds could come up at any time, and if that happened in their absence, The Anne would be compelled to sail on without them. I placed a fond, firm hand on my husband’s arm and silently thanked the captain for his prudence and authority.

  Playing the part of the submissive, forbearing wife is a role that continues to prickle like a burr in my stocking. Even when I know better, I am expected to smile and submit. It is not in my nature.

  SEPTEMBER 11, 1832 (COBOURG, UPPER CANADA)

  We disembarked at Cobourg’s ramshackle jetty two days ago, just as darkness was falling over the town. I must say Cobourg is not much improved by daylight—what little I have seen of it, that is—but at least we are all fed and somewhat rested. The window of this hotel room, which is ours only until tomorrow, looks onto the unpainted side wall of a smithy, and we have been serenaded since before dawn by the steady clang of iron on iron and the intermittent exhalations of a very large bellows. Nevertheless, now that I have the luxury of four walls and a table to write on that does not pitch and roll like a wild horse, I am determined to chronicle the rest of our journey into the dark heart of this incomprehensible land while the memory is still fresh. Tomorrow, we move to the Steamboat Hotel, which Moodie assures me has a pretty view of the town’s crescent-shaped harbour, where three schooners and our own William are moored. My husband has been waxing enthusiastically all morning about our prospects, until I fear I was compelled to ask him to leave me to my writing. But as soon as he left, I was overcome by an uncontrollable fit of weeping and longings for home that I could hardly suppress. I know he is trying to cheer me up, but I cannot fathom his optimism and I find it has the opposite effect on my own spirit.

  Our first sight of Canada came in the early hours of the morning on the second-to-last day of August, after we had been at sea for more than eight weeks. It was not, however, the joyous occasion I had anticipated, as the high cliffs of the Gaspé, when they finally emerged from the thick fog, seemed as unreal as an obscure dream, without the reassuring solidity I had imagined for so long. Percé Rock was little more than a shadow lurking on the horizon. The place is called Cape Rosier, and we sat at anchor there for a day or so while a party went ashore to take on fresh water and, thanks be to heaven, some milk for the baby, as well as a store of potatoes and coarse bread, which the captain distributed among the steerage passengers, who received their rations quietly and gratefully. When we finally pulled anchor and began our voyage down into the mouth of the St. Lawrence, I felt as though we were being swallowed whole by a great and terrifying unknown.

  Two days later, we arrived at Grosse Isle, Quebec. From a distance, in the early morning, the island looked like a slice of paradise. Moodie pulled me from my berth just as the sun was rising out of the endless blue expanse behind us. It cast a rose-and-yellow light on the wide, misty river and the still far-off but unmistakable shorelines before us.

  We pushed through the throng of steerage passengers already gathered on deck and found a place at the portside rail, from where we could see Grosse Isle, one of an archipelago of green and rocky outposts that would be our first landfall after so many weeks at sea. With one arm wrapped tightly around my waist to shield me and our daughter from the jostling crowd, which, like us, fairly vibrated with excitement at the sight of our new land, Moodie stabbed at the clear morning air with his free hand.

  “Will ye look at that, my darling girl,” he said in an awed whisper. “A sight for sore eyes, shore an’ it is.” (After so many months in the company of his fellow Scots, my husband’s brogue had become as thick as the porridge he loves.)

  There, floating in the calm waters before us, lay a low expanse of green rocks edged with white sand beaches and dotted with black-roofed cottages. So placid and idyllic did the place appear that it occurred to me we might have been approaching the dear, dear shores so recently left behind. Whether it was from sadness or anticipation or simply weakness brought on by so long at sea, I felt a cramp of longing rising in my throat and tears burned my eyes.

  The Anne anchored into a quiet bay a mile or so off shore, and the chaotic process of disembarkation began—men, women and children crowding one another for places in the two boats that would ferry them to dry land. As cabin passengers, Moodie and I were not required to go ashore, but all those in steerage were instructed to leave the ship to be inspected for signs of cholera and other diseases before being allowed back on board. As well, every article of bedding and clothing had to be taken ashore and washed thoroughly. Captain Rodgers told us that anyone showing signs of illness would be placed in quarantine (that’s what the tidy cottages—actually rude sheds, I soon learned,—were for) and left there until they either recovered or died.

  When I remarked upon the pleasant aspect of our destination, the captain laughed. “Many things look well at a distance,” he said in what might have been one of the longest speeches I had yet heard him deliver, “which are bad enough when near. Isle of Death is what I’d call it.”

  Despite this dire summation, I could hardly wait to set foot on terra firma, and the closer we came, the more I was overcome by an almost maddened craving for a slice of freshly baked brown bread and English butter. Imagine my distress when our captain refused me permission to leave the ship, saying Grosse Isle “was no place for a lady.” Instead, Hannah was sent ashore with our laundry, and a gleeful Moodie and Captain Rodgers joined the last boatload to see about obtaining more badly needed supplies.

  “Bread and butter,” I called pitifully from the top deck as I watched them pull away in the ship’s crowded dinghy.

  They returned a few hours later, empty-handed (the supply ship would not arrive from Quebec until the next day) but with the welcome news that the captain had relented and I would be allowed off the filthy prison after all, perhaps the following day.

  I soon came to see why the captain had been so reluctant to allow me to go ashore. If the watery doldrums we had endured a fortnight ago constituted purgatory, then the scenes of debauchery and misery I witnessed on the swarming island could be described as hell on earth. While the captain pulled rhythmically at the oars, his back to the approaching land, Moodie and I sat in the stern with little Kate in my arms and Oscar the terrier bouncing at our feet. From a distance, the thousands of persons scurrying here and there over the rocks and sand appeared as busy and diligent as worker bees, laying their blankets and cloaks to dry on the sun-warmed stones, scrubbing shirts and breeches in the kettles provided or in the natural indentations of the rocky shore. Children cavorted in the mid-afternoon sun, with the gulls screaming and flapping overhead.

  The idyllic scene began to disintegrate the closer we came. The first thing that assailed us when we were within hailing distance of the island was a chorus of curses
and complaints, raucous laughter and ear-shattering screams, the noise carrying across the water as clearly as though we were sitting in the midst of the writhing mass of humanity before us. It seemed that each hideous syllable was hurled like a jagged rock in our direction. Oscar’s persistent barking could barely be heard above the din. Finally, I gave Kate to my husband to hold and placed both hands over my ears in rebellion against the onslaught of curses. Rodgers continued rowing with uninterrupted intention, a broad smile cracking his leathery face.

  “So, Mrs. Moodie, welcome to Canada.”

  I looked at Moodie in amazement, and not wanting to appear squeamish in front of the captain, I suppose, he cocked his head to one side in a gesture of helplessness.

  “It’s the Irish, Susanna.” He pointed to a ship just visible around a point of land to our right. “They arrived yesterday, three hundred and fifty wretched souls added to the thousand or so sick and dying already abandoned here.”

  A few moments later, our little boat scraped ashore and Rodgers jumped out and pulled it onto the granite shelf. Moodie gave me his hand, and with great awareness of the symbolic import of the occasion, I placed one foot upon the unforgiving surface of my future.

  And then, as quickly as I could, I drew it back with a cry of surprise. Because that rock was as hot as molten lead. How the shoeless throngs milling all around us could bear it I do not know. Moodie urged me on and we skipped as quickly as we could over the undulating shield, through the half-naked savages who, in their animal delirium, paid no attention to our respectable little party. As much as I could, I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, not just to avoid the scenes of pandemonium, but also because, in places, the rocks were slick with excrement and vomit. There was a real danger of falling and, despite Moodie’s steadying arm, being trampled in the melee. Delighted to be on land, Oscar wove through the crowds in delirious circles while the screaming children chased him with sticks. Half-naked women, their skirts rolled to their waists, bosoms bared to the world, fought over scraps of clothing and tattered blankets. Men lay about drunkenly in the afternoon heat, cradling bottles of brandy and rum. To my great disgust, I was obliged to witness a filthy youth in flagrante delicto with a woman who by all appearances was completely insensible. I could see that even Moodie was disturbed by the atmosphere of anarchy and misrule that surrounded us, and when a tall, ragged man wearing only a tattered greatcoat leapt into our path, brandishing a shillelagh, my husband pushed him roughly and sent the demonic fellow sprawling face-first to the ground.