by Cecily Ross
DECEMBER 20, 1832
Still the Harrises refuse to leave. And Moodie tells me we have no recourse, that we shall likely be forced to spend the winter in this place. I am ashamed to say I broke down completely, and in full view of everyone. I wept and exhorted God to deliver us from this purgatory. It was a pitiful display of weakness and a stain upon the resilient English spirit I have always taken pride in. This journal has been a solace, a private place where I can express my terrible longings for the life I have left behind. I pray it helps to give me the strength to endure.
The snow lies everywhere, deep and silent and foreboding. The only respite from days and nights imprisoned in our dank and smoke-filled hovel are a short, well-trodden path from our front door to the woodpile and another in the direction of the barn, paths that are obliterated daily by a dogged wind. There is no escaping the cold, no relief except sporadic sessions in front of the fire before I return to my chores with stiffened limbs and a heavy heart. The tips of my fingers are bloodless and white, as numb as my nerves are livid. Moodie and Bel are not as bothered by the freezing temperatures and carry on with almost cheerful resignation. Their stoicism shames me all the more. But James, like me, seems weighed down by the harsh weather and the low, brutish light. Katie seems oblivious, creeping around the cabin, happily exploring the only world she has ever known and (the thought is like a knife in my heart) may ever know.
The idea that in a few months, likely next June by my calculations, our dear girl may, God willing, be joined by another little one should be a source of great joy. Instead, I am beset by doubts about bringing another child into this coarse, cold country. It is as though childhood does not exist here. The young offspring of our neighbours are as dull-eyed as aged mules, worn out already by an inadequate diet, a lack of any kind of discipline and the want of a proper education. They are as wary and wily as hardened criminals, and whatever innocence they are born with turns as sour as spoilt milk almost before they can talk. Old Joe’s eight children are a slovenly, listless lot, and yet their desperation touches something in me. Just a week ago—hearing that the eldest, Phoebe, a girl of about fifteen or sixteen, was ill—I put aside my ill will and went by the house to see if I might help. To my dismay, I found the girl feverish and shivering in a heap of old blankets, attended to by two old women trying to persuade the patient to swallow a bowl of raw eggs, and plastering her thin chest with reeking poultices of mustard and chicken fat, treatments intended to “drive out the poisons.” I pleaded with Mrs. Joe to call a doctor, but she refused, saying her daughter is prone to these fevers and would be as good as new by morning. Last thing I heard, the girl is still ailing and her condition has become one more reason the family cannot leave the premises. I am determined not to let the Harrises’ hostility erode my civility. Perhaps if they get to know me, if I reach out to them as a neighbour and a friend, I can appeal to their better natures and persuade them to leave. It is what Kate would advise, I am sure.
Moodie is ecstatic at the thought of enlarging our family and is certain this time I will surely bear him a son.
DECEMBER 22, 1832
A letter from Kate. It has taken three months to find me by a route so circuitous, I cannot begin to describe it. Mail from England takes less time to get here. My sister has written to say that she and Mr. Traill have been living at the Douro home of their generous neighbours, the Stewarts, until their own house, eleven miles farther north, is built.
“My hostess, Frances Stewart, emigrated ten years ago,” Kate says. “She is generous and cultivated and has become my dear, dear friend. I cannot tell you what I have learned about pioneer life from this remarkable woman.” Kate claims she is now an accomplished baker, botanist and anthropologist, having amassed a large collection of Indian artifacts and all manner of plant specimens. From the sounds of it, my sister and her new friend spend their days playing the piano and pressing weeds between the pages of Ruskin and Hobbes.
Meanwhile, my brother Sam has secured for the Traills a land grant adjoining his own farm on the shores of Lake Katchewanooka. While the women amuse themselves with arrowheads and bits of pottery, my brother is familiarizing Thomas Traill with the intricacies of axes, ploughs and scythes.
“You cannot imagine what a comfort it is to have found such civility in so remote a place,” wrote Kate. “We have landed in an oasis of Englishness far removed from the Yankee squalor of Hamilton Township, your descriptions of which have made me laugh until I cried.
“Happy Christmas, dearest Susanna, to you, Mr. Moodie and dear little Kate.”
Her letter filled me with hope that I too might find a friend, someone like her benefactress, Mrs. Stewart, schooled in the ways of a settler’s existence and yet familiar with the values I continue to cherish, though I admit none of them has prepared me for this life. I know nothing about even the most basic domestic duties—baking bread, wielding an axe, dispatching a chicken, planting peas. Yesterday, Moodie plunked a muslin-wrapped parcel on the table and, hands on his hips, dared me to open it. “For you, my little duchess.” I unwrapped it to reveal a large, greasy hunk of blood-tinged fat.
“What am I to do with this?” I asked.
“Beef tallow,” said Moodie, “a gift from Betty Fye.” And when I wrinkled my nose, he laughed. “For making candles and soap, my dear. Think of the money we’ll save.” He winked at Bel. Damn his enthusiasm.
JANUARY 10, 1833
Following a brief period of mild weather that taunted us as cruelly as a mirage in the desert with the unlikelihood of spring, the brutal cold has returned. The ground is frozen solid and covered in snow, making travel over the previously impassable roads possible. Moodie decided to take advantage of the favourable conditions and make the journey to Douro Township to visit Sam and the Traills. I begged him to allow me to go too, as I could hardly contemplate remaining here alone with the trees and the snow and the cold, cold wind, but my condition and the difficulty of such a journey—at least two days by sled and on foot—made it impossible.
He and James left yesterday in the bright, brittle sunshine. The sleigh, borrowed from Albert and Betty Fye, is as exuberant a contraption as can be imagined. Painted bright red and drawn by two horses outfitted in shiny black harness decorated with a myriad of little brass bells, the jaunty conveyance jangled gaily down the road as Katie and I waved the men on their way. Long after it had disappeared from sight, we could hear its cheerful clamour gradually fading into the forest.
The brief elation I felt then disappeared with the failing light of day. For most of the night, I could hear the wolves howling, a sound as mournful and foreboding as loneliness itself. At first, the wailing was just a rumour, but soon the beasts seemed to be moving closer and closer. I stayed up until our last candle sputtered into oblivion, listening until the eerie chorus stopped and all I could hear was the sound of the giant pines creaking in the wind. After stoking the fire, I crawled into bed, but I did not sleep.
JANUARY 15, 1833
This morning, I left Kate in the care of Bel and struggled through the snowdrifts to call on the Harrises. My excuse: to prevail upon them to lend me a wax candle until I can bring myself to attempt making my own. But truly, I was yearning for human society of any kind. It meant setting aside my pride, as I have railed eloquently and publicly against the colonial propensity for “borrowing” from one’s neighbours, a tendency that in practice is more like theft, since almost nothing that has left my house has ever been returned.
The candle was handed over by the much-improved, monosyllabic Phoebe in return for a canister of rum. On every other occasion we have met, though I try to speak to her in a friendly way, the girl has kept her eyes cast down, refusing to acknowledge my existence. This time, however, as she passed me a pair of hand-dipped rush lights, she tilted her head and raised her eyes to mine, appraising me with almost brazen curiosity. I asked her how she was feeling and she nodded shyly. We were alone, standing on the front veranda of what should be my house. The so
unds of domestic squalor tumbled through an open window.
“Phoebe,” I said, an idea beginning to percolate, “have you ever been to school?” Of course, I knew the answer. She lowered her eyes again and shook her head.
“Can you read?” She looked at me as if I had asked her if she could fly.
“Pa can,” she said. “A little. But he has no use for it.”
“Would you like to?”
“I dunno.” Then she actually smiled. “Maybe.”
“All right, then. I will give you lessons. We can begin tomorrow afternoon. Come by after your chores are done.”
We’ll see if she shows up. In any case, I now have my candles and I won’t have to spend another evening with the firelight casting ghosts on the walls but never giving off enough light to work or read by. I try not to reveal my terror of the dark for fear of frightening Katie. I have even attempted a few childish songs at bedtime, but the quaver in my voice is more unsettling than the silence. Bel, more resigned than afraid, curls up on her pallet as soon as the sun goes down and remains there for the night, occasionally whimpering in her sleep. As hard as I try, I cannot banish from my fevered mind a story Moodie related, as though for our entertainment, of a creature living in the forest, half man, half beast, known as Windiga. The Indians say it is driven by an insatiable appetite for human flesh, and that its malevolent spirit awakens on cold winter nights and wanders the woods in search of sleeping victims. I lie awake for hours, listening with a thumping heart, certain that every sigh of the wind and moaning tree limb signals a death too terrible to contemplate. I know it is superstition, but with only the night noises and the ominous silence behind them as reassurance, I nurse an unshakable conviction that Moodie will return to discover nothing but our savaged, half-eaten remains and the snow vivid with our dying blood.
In the clear light of day, I resolve to conquer my fears, to rise above these base surroundings and the unending cold by throwing myself wholeheartedly into my work. I have two poems under way. The first is a paean to sleigh bells, the sound of which as Moodie drove away allowed me a brief respite from my depression. It is a music I strain to hear once more, for it will herald the return of my beloved.
’Tis merry to hear, at evening time,
By the blazing hearth the sleigh-bells chime;
To know the bounding steeds bring near
The loved one to our bosoms dear.
The other, I fear, is a less salutary composition that expresses some of my disenchantment with this Canada:
The swampy margin of thy inland seas,
The eternal forest girdling either shore,
Its belt of dark pines sighing in the breeze,
And rugged fields, with rude huts dotted o’er,
Show cultivation unimproved by art,
That sheds a barren chillness on the heart.
Now that I have my candle, I intend to compose a letter this very evening to a certain Dr. Bartlett, editor of The Albion, a New York literary journal of eminent repute, entreating him to publish my work.
And then there is the education of Phoebe Harris. May it also bear fruit.
JANUARY 18, 1833
My dearest Moodie has returned from the wilds of Douro Township, brimming with good spirits and welcome news of my cherished sister and the little brother I have not laid eyes upon for nearly eight years. Kate and Mr. Traill are “thriving” he declared with his usual enthusiasm, providing, like most men I have ever known, scant detail as to their actual state. I questioned him more closely and learned that my sister is to bear her first child this summer. To think we will be facing the travails of birth at close to the same time and yet will be kept apart by a few miles of impassable wilderness. Forty miles! That is all that lies between me and the consoling companionship of my childhood soulmate. To Moodie’s dismay, my tears flowed unchecked as memories of those distant halcyon days flooded my imagination.
I could not stop.
“Susie, Susie, please. I cannot bear this.” He placed his strong arms around me and I laid my head on his shoulder. Perhaps it was the strain of the long days and nights he has been away, perhaps the quickening of life inside me, but I made no effort to calm myself and turned on my husband, raging through my anguish.
“I feel about this dreadful country as a condemned prisoner must feel about his cell. My only hope of escape lies in the oblivion of death. And then to be separated so cruelly from the one person who could support me in all of this.”
He lifted my chin with his thumb and forefinger, and I saw the concern in his blue eyes.
“You have me, Susanna. I am here. Always. I would give my life for you. You have everything to live for. Stop it, please.”
Now, as he lies sleeping, I am calmer but still filled with fear for the future. How can he be so buoyant? By what quirk or trick of nature does John Moodie see only light and possibilities where I am cast down by every twist in the road? He, like sweet Catharine, meets every hardship, every trial with bottomless reserves of optimism and cheer. If only I were blessed with such sanguinity. Still, there are times when I fear their positive dispositions blind them to a host of negative realities. At least my dark side allows me to gird myself against the inevitable hardship that lies ahead.
It sounds as if my sister is passing her first winter in the New World in relative comfort. She and Mr. Traill have moved again and are now living in a “sturdy and generous” log cabin closer to Sam and his family, while their own is under construction. The letter Katie sent back with Moodie describes in rapturous detail her blossoming friendships with two new neighbours, the Shairps and the Caddys, particularly Emilia Shairp, a young Englishwoman “of gentle manner and adventurous spirit.”
“I am learning,” Kate wrote, “that with a little practical diligence, it is possible to make a home in the lonely woods an abode of peace and comfort.”
Sometimes I think my sister has landed on another continent from the one I currently inhabit. How is it she finds herself surrounded by genteel, educated women, also skilled in the arts of jam and bread making, while I am reduced to begging for candle stubs from sullen, backward harpies? Why should Kate be favoured again? My childish heart protests the unfairness of it.
She doesn’t mention her husband, whom Moodie, who never utters a discouraging word, described as “a little subdued.” When I pressed once again for details, he ventured: “The harsh weather has not improved Traill’s disposition. I believe he would be much better if he engaged in physical activity. But he prefers to sit by the fire with a well-worn volume of Voltaire on his lap as he stares into the flames.” Come spring, Mr. Traill will have as much physical activity as he can tolerate when he and Kate move to their new home, sixty-five uncleared acres on Lake Katchewanooka, near the mouth of the Otonabee.
Moodie saw nothing in his travels north but beauty and possibilities. For days, he has been enthusing about his brief sojourn in the backwoods.
“They possess,” he said, describing monumental forests punctuated by archipelagos of shining lakes, “a grandeur that aroused in me an indescribable awe for the powers of nature.”
“Yes,” I ventured, “powerful enough to break the backs and hearts of strong men.” But he pretended not to hear me.
“In the presence of such grandeur,” he continued, addressing himself exclusively to his little daughter now, “all human endeavour seems small and irrelevant.”
He then informed me that with Sam’s help, he has set about securing title to his own property on the shores of Lake Katchewanooka.
“Who knows. Perhaps one day we will move there,” he said, adding that Sam has reminded him that his military land grant will expire if it isn’t claimed within two years. “Anyway,” he said, bouncing Katie on his knee, “I’m sure we have nothing to lose.”
And now I cannot stop thinking about Kate and Sam and the gentle society they have cultivated (it is not just the soil that needs tending—what of the soul?), while I languish, freezing to death, in a cow
shed.
Still no sign of my errant pupil. I have already devised a few simple exercises for her, and I am surprised at how much I relish the prospect of bringing a little light and refinement to the poor ignorant girl. Perhaps if I can be of some use to our rough neighbours, I will find their society more palatable.
JANUARY 20, 1833
My foolish and short-lived vocation as a teacher has been thoroughly crushed. Old Joe Harris arrived on my doorstep this morning in a half-drunken state. It took me a few moments to understand what he was on about as he attempted to spew his vitriol through teeth clenched firmly about his ever-present pipe. He finally removed it after I invited him in and tempted him with a cup of rum. As I suspected, his ire concerned his daughter Phoebe. Apparently, he thinks I am “puttin’ ideas in a poor girl’s head.” After accepting the refreshment, he exhorted me to mind my own business and stay away from his family if I know what’s good for me.
“You and your fine fella act like we are the dirt under your feet,” he railed, stabbing the smoke-dimmed air with the aforementioned pipe in one hand, though he was careful not to spill a drop of the drink he held in the other. “Your book larning and fine manners is of no earthly use here. If you spent less time mooning over ‘the finery of autumn’”—there was a sneer in his voice as he said this (apparently he had seen my poem in the newspaper and taken the time to read it)—“and more time gettin’ your hands dirty, you wouldn’t be livin’ worse ’n the livestock you and the mister have to borrow money to feed.” He looked around the shed in disgust.