by Cecily Ross
“We will find a way out of here, Susanna. I promise. I am going away, and I know that is hard. But it is the beginning, a step on the road to a new life. I know it.”
An ember of something like hope stirred inside me. I let it flicker for an instant and then doused it before it burned too brightly.
As we may not be together again for a very long time, I relaxed my usual strictures last night and allowed my husband more than a few liberties, for which he was inordinately grateful. It has become something of a joke between us that he is forced to plead for conjugal benefits that, he argues, surely should be his by right. I am glad he has a sense of humour. And I pray I do not come to regret our little celebration.
Now that he is gone, I fear the silence that lies behind all the noisy exertions of our days will swallow me entirely. To drown it out and keep a piece of him close, I sing to the children and hum to myself as I go about my work. “Oh where and oh where does your Highland laddie dwell . . .”
JANUARY 24, 1838
Emilia has enlisted my help on a mission of mercy. Louisa Lloyd and her family are in severely straitened circumstances. It seems Captain Lloyd abandoned the family again four months ago, this time taking the eldest boy with him. Mrs. Lloyd has been forced to sell their last cow. She and her second son, a boy of eleven or twelve, can barely cut enough wood for fuel, let alone manage the farm. For months now, they have subsisted on a few bad potatoes. Emilia said that a group of generous ladies in Peterborough had directed her to pay Mrs. Lloyd a visit to confirm the extent of her misery. My friend asked me to go with her to Dummer Township, taking what we can spare to bring some relief to the deserted mother and her six little ones.
Standing here in this dim cabin with its smoke-blackened walls, with my children clamouring for her attention, their clothing as ragged as any London street urchin’s, I waited for Emilia to absorb the pathos of my own situation. She looked radiant, prettily turned out in a fine woollen cape and matching hat, apple-cheeked from her snowshoe along the lake with two-year-old Harry strapped to her back. Motherhood becomes her.
I have not a penny to my name or clothing warm enough for a journey such as she proposes. It is nine miles through the bush on a narrow, ill-used trail. Nevertheless, perhaps foolishly, I have agreed to go. Short of food as we often are, we are not yet starving. And Jenny, who nurtures a deep attachment to Mrs. Lloyd, her former mistress, pleads with me to do what I can.
My friend and her son spent the night, and Emilia and I lay awake for hours, whispering in the darkness like schoolgirls, planning our expedition of mercy in great detail. Serious as our business is, I was reminded of the nights of my girlhood, of Reydon Hall and my sisters, our childish pursuits, our harmless ghosts and imaginary friends. Oh, how our present troubles carry within them the sad echoes of past joys.
Before we fell asleep, Emilia told me that following the failed rebellion in December, Mr. Shairp left Toronto for Texas to investigate the opportunities there that we have been hearing so much about. “He will be away a long time—all winter, at least.” She paused. “I think he would rather be anywhere but here.” Then in the darkness, I could almost feel her gathering herself together, her hurt turning to defiance. “Anyway, I don’t care if he ever returns. I am more fortunate than Mrs. Lloyd. I have my parents. And you.” I took her hand and pressed it. Despite her bravado, I think she loves her lieutenant very much.
Today, we asked Mr. Traill for his assistance. As I hoped, my brother-in-law has risen to the occasion. A light came on in his eyes that I have not seen in ages as we told him of our plans. I believe that the travails of others often serve to wrench us from the swamp of our own despair. Contemplating Mrs. Lloyd’s condition, I am thankful for what resources I still possess, and my resolve to carry on has been strengthened. Mr. Traill immediately offered to bring his farm sleigh tomorrow morning and drive Emilia and me through the beaver meadow to the edge of the great swamp, which will shorten our journey by at least half. After that, we must continue on foot, cutting through very wild country until we reach Dummer Township.
Jenny, who will remain here with the children, has spent all afternoon baking bread and wrapping a large piece of boiled venison. Emilia has brought with her a smoked ham and several buffalo robes. Mr. Traill is contributing more bread and bacon, and at my sister Kate’s insistence, precious tea and sugar.
Neither of us has ever met Mrs. Lloyd. Emilia tells me she is said to have a warm and gentle disposition, but she is a proud woman. I wonder how she will respond to our gifts, well-intentioned but charity nonetheless. When I imagine myself in a similar situation, I cannot decide whether gratitude or shame would be the stronger emotion.
JANUARY 28, 1838
I am so exhausted from our journey that I have scarcely left my bed since late Wednesday night, when what I believe must be the longest day I have ever endured finally ended. Emilia has slept continuously for the past thirty-six hours. I have persuaded her to stay with us until her strength returns. What an ordeal. Now, as I begin to recover, I feel a weary satisfaction knowing that we have brought relief to others less fortunate than ourselves. But an ominous shadow lingers too, for while I have not reached the depths of deprivation I witnessed in the house of Louisa Lloyd, in my heart I know that there but for the grace of God . . .
What we encountered that day chilled me even more than the raw wind and my freezing hands and feet. Just before we arrived at her doorstep after our long trek, Mr. Traill and James (having decided to leave the cutter with Colonel Caddy and accompany us all the way) waited down the road at a neighbour’s, not wanting to alarm Mrs. Lloyd with a posse of saviours. Emilia and I knocked on the door of the respectable-looking log house. A thin stream of smoke rose from the chimney, and though the property seemed in good enough repair, there was a disquieting sense of abandon to the dilapidated outbuildings and sheds. A young boy of about twelve finally responded to our increasingly insistent summons, stepping out onto the snow-covered porch in his bare feet and closing the door behind him.
“We have walked here all the way from Douro to see your mama,” Emilia explained, “and we would very much like to speak to her.”
The boy politely said that he would see if his mother would receive us and re-entered the house, leaving us out in the cold. So many minutes passed that we were about to leave our bundle of food on the doorstep and join Mr. Traill and James across the road, when the door reopened and the boy ushered us into a living space not much different from my own modest home. Mrs. Lloyd was seated on a rude bench by the fire, wearing a delicate muslin dress that she must have hurriedly donned—the only respectable thing she had left, I imagine, but entirely unsuitable to the setting or the climate. She presented a picture of forced composure. Her hands were folded in her lap, her hair pinned back in an untidy bun, her chin raised and tilted slightly in polite inquiry as to our purpose. Here, amid the inevitable squalor, Louisa Lloyd’s beauty and attitude reminded me in an instant of my own mother and her determination to keep up appearances at all costs.
Standing behind her with his hand on his mother’s shoulder was the boy who had let us in. Seated on a stool at her side was a girl not much younger, wrapped in a worn blanket and cradling in her arms a baby swaddled in rags. Another little girl wearing rough burlap knelt on the floor at Mrs. Lloyd’s feet, looking up at us with luminous dark eyes. The little tableau was like a sad parody of a Gainsborough. In the corner, on a rough bedstead, two little boys huddled beneath an old quilt pulled up to their chins. A pot of water bubbled over the desultory fire, and on the table were six peeled potatoes. A small black dog eyed them possessively.
No member of this heart-rending scene uttered a sound as I placed the sack of provisions on the table, but their collective gaze followed my movements with a patient intensity that was as eloquent as any cry of hunger. At last, Mrs. Lloyd spoke.
“I don’t believe we are acquainted?” she said, her tone wary but respectful.
Emilia, who had been st
anding behind me, stepped forward. “Mrs. Lloyd, we have not met, but like you, we are officers’ wives and mothers too. We have walked all the way from Douro to bring you this, this . . .” She indicated the sack of food, which lay there now, radiating salvation.
I jumped in. “It is only a little bacon and a few supplies to tide you over. We are hardly strangers, Mrs. Lloyd. Your girl Jenny has served my family this past year. She baked the bread with her own hands and sends it as a gift for Eloise—little Elly, she called her.”
At this, the doe-eyed girl at Mrs. Lloyd’s feet uttered an exclamation and covered her mouth with her small hands. “Mama,” she said, looking up. “It’s from Jenny?”
A hardness came over Mrs. Lloyd’s features. But her tone was almost jaunty. “You are very kind, but we have enough. We will manage, I’m sure. My son and I . . .” As she spoke, the baby began to cry—not cry really, but mew like a kitten. The older girl pulled it closer, and as she did, I could see the bare flesh stretched tightly over the infant’s tiny ribs.
“Mama,” said little Elly, getting to her feet and facing her mother, “please. It’s from Jenny.”
A faint whimpering came from under the ragged bedclothes, and at the sound, the pride in Louisa Lloyd’s face melted like a painting left out in the rain. Without a word, I began unpacking the food.
Slowly, their sad story unwound. They were, indeed, on the verge of starvation, having sold their last cow several weeks ago for six dollars and a bushel of potatoes, the last of which were slated for lunch that day. As for the cash, it was in the form of notes drawn on the Farmer’s Bank—an institution long gone from this world—and utterly worthless.
Mrs. Lloyd maintained her composure and offered us a cup of tea and something to eat before she would allow her children to help themselves. Before we could accept, Mr. Traill and James appeared, urging us to go as it was nearly two o’clock and we had the long trip back to Douro ahead of us.
In a single day, we walked more than twenty miles to Dummer and back in the bitter cold, through tangled, dense swampland, fording icy streams, climbing snowy ridges and trudging along endless rough tracks with no nourishment except the bowl of porridge that sent us on our way. Many times as we made our way home at the end of our mission, and as the miserly winter light faded with the afternoon, I wondered how I would find the strength to take another step. Exhausted in body but exalted in spirit, I was reminded of Rosalind in the Forest of Arden. “Oh Jupiter, how weary are my legs!” And yet, plod on we did until we recrossed the great swamp and reached the beaver meadow. There, at the edge of the bush, to our considerable relief, we found Colonel Caddy waiting with the sleigh for the four of us. Mr. Traill and James Caddy rode up front with the colonel while Emilia and I nestled into the straw and buffalo robes on the bottom of our conveyance and slept the remaining four miles home, where a warm fire and a meal of fried venison and hot fish awaited.
It was a humbling experience. I will never forget Louisa Lloyd’s dignity and gratitude, but also the look of hunger in her eyes at the sight of that cured ham. Civility and savagery were inextricably mixed in her person at that moment, and I was reminded that there is an element of both in all of us. I only pray that the contest between them in my own breast is never settled in favour of the latter.
FEBRUARY 2, 1838
Brutally cold. This morning, we awoke to find everything frozen solid. The water in the cooking kettles had turned to blocks of ice, and yet I dared not add too much wood to the stove for fear the pipes would overheat and set the roof on fire. Damn Moodie. He knew those pipes would not see us through another winter. The children whimpered like a litter of forlorn pups as I struggled to dress them, and then they huddled by the meagre heat of the stove, gnawing on frozen crusts of bread while I waited for yesterday’s coffee, still solid in the pot, to thaw for my breakfast.
When Jenny came in from feeding the animals, her cheeks and the tips of her fingers were bloodless, the colour of milky tea. She does not complain, and I think her gruff forbearance is the only thing that prevents me from giving in. It is difficult to describe this cold to anyone who has not experienced it. The temperature at dawn was fifteen degrees below zero, and although it had risen somewhat by noon, a stiff wind makes it feel much colder. Exposed skin becomes numb in a matter of minutes. I cannot send Kate and Addie out to play, as they have no adequate shoes, and so we are cooped up in here, where the temperature is only a few degrees warmer, but at least we are out of the wind. Outside, the sun shines brilliantly through a veil of ice crystals that hangs like frozen mist in the air, air so crisp it seems it could shatter. The snow underfoot screeches with every step, and the tree branches creak and complain in the wind. Nothing else moves. No birds or other living creatures. And yet, venture out we must. Today, Jenny and I will somehow take the swede saw to a fallen beech at the edge of the clearing if we are to have firewood to get us through another month.
Moodie has written to say that my poem “An Address to the Freemen of Canada” has been published in a new Toronto journal, The Palladium of British America. The editor, Charles Fothergill, has asked for more. In his editorial, he calls me “Daughter of a Genius—and Wife of the Brave!” I am grateful for such extravagant praise, but humbled though I am, I wonder why my talents, such as they are, should be attributed to others, both of them men.
And I have just received a letter from a John Lovell, editor of the Montreal Transcript, requesting permission to reprint the poem. Even better, he is starting a magazine called the Literary Garland and has asked me to be a regular contributor of both prose and poems, for which he promises prompt and generous payment! I have sent him four more.
Moodie is to leave Toronto within a week for Niagara, where his regiment will be positioned in order to repel invasions from the rebels, who are said to be skulking south of the border. Apparently, the traitor Mackenzie has persuaded a small contingent of Yankees to join his crusade to “free” Canada.
And so my dearest one moves even farther away from me. How I miss his happy face, his encouraging words. How I loathe this interminable winter.
As I feared, my usual visitor is late.
FEBRUARY 17, 1838
This child, this demon that somehow emerged from my womb, shall surely be the death of me. Or I of her. Sometimes I think Addie will drive me mad with her incessant demands and her terrible temper. Even when she is happy, she sings and whirls about with an energy that will not be subdued. But when her intentions are thwarted or her desires denied, she erupts into uncontrollable fits of hysteria. Today, I snapped. She refused her supper, a squirrel pie I had laboured over for hours. Fresh meat, after weeks of nauseating monotony, of nothing but roasted potatoes and salted fish. Fresh meat thanks to Jenny’s skill with a slingshot. But no, the littlest duchess pushed her plate onto the floor and demanded toast and jam. And when I ordered her to her room, she threw herself to the ground, screaming and kicking like a deranged dervish. The boys left the table and began fighting over a wooden rifle until Dunbar struck Donnie over the head and he started howling. A raw wind rattled the windows, blowing snow through the holes in the walls that appear as quickly as we can patch them. Something inside me let go. I pulled Addie to her feet and slapped her hard, but it was like pouring oil on a fire. She threw herself against me, then against the table, and then the only thing that seemed to matter was how to make it stop. I started shaking her. I could feel myself being drawn into the maelstrom, into the swirling chaos of my daughter’s fury. Katie too began to cry, pleading with her sister.
“Addie, Addie,” she begged. “Stop, please stop. Mama, don’t. Mama?” But it was like a voice coming to me from far away, from a place I had already left.
If Jenny had not come back from the barn at that moment, I fear I might have done real harm to my own child.
She is sleeping now. Jenny held the sobbing little demon in an iron embrace until her rage subsided, and then soothed her with warm milk, and yes, toast and jam. If I have learned an
ything from this, it is that in a battle with a four-year-old, unless you kill her first, she will always win. I am ashamed. If only their father were here with his flute and his playful distractions.
Without him, it is as though a light has been extinguished in our home, and in its place are only shadows and dark joyless corners. Emilia has returned to Peterborough for the rest of the winter. My sister Kate, with an exhausting mile of snow-bound forest separating us, seems as far away as spring.
FEBRUARY 28, 1838
In a burst of energy, I have hammered divots into a dozen maple trees for my first attempt at sugaring off. The days have been mild and sunny, the nights below freezing—perfect conditions for the sap to run. Thus far, we have collected enough to fill the large kettle Jenny has hung over a tripod in the clearing. The girls are kept busy gathering firewood to keep the cauldron boiling day and night. The promise of sweet maple treats spurs them on.
Maybe it is the spring-like conditions, or maybe the beginnings of another life stirring inside me, but I am blooming with eagerness to begin the work of sowing and growing that only a few months ago, I viewed as chores dreamed up by Satan himself to torment me. The nausea and fatigue that usually accompany my condition are absent this time. And perversely, I find myself welcoming this birth as a harbinger of better things to come.