But in “Hired Girl,” Munro quite precisely recreates her circumstances and a narrator who seems a close self-portrait. When the hired girl, Elsa, arrives on the island, named Nausicaä, Mrs. Montroy tells her that the name is from Shakespeare; knowing better, the narrator almost corrects her, but does not. She realizes her position. And at one point she comments, in a passage that certainly reflects Munro’s circumstances at home in Wingham at the time,
The work that I had to do here was nothing new for me. Like most country girls of my age, I could bake and iron, and clean an oven. This was the reason, in fact, that Mrs. Montjoy had sought out a country girl. In some ways the work was not as hard as it was at home. Nobody tracked barnyard mud into the kitchen, and there were no heavy men’s clothes to wrestle through the wringer and hang on the line.
After she’s worked there the summer, having learned much about her employers’ lives, little of it edifying, she asks Mrs. Montjoy about the circumstances of her daughter’s death, details she already well knows, just to hear the mother’s account and see her manner. Even so, “I thought myself blameless, beyond judgment, in my dealings with Mrs. Montjoy. Because I was young and poor and knew about Nausicaä. I didn’t have the grace or fortitude to be a servant.” This story ends with Munro’s recreation of herself then, in 1948, and with an affirmation of Munro’s passion for reading, for words: “Reading this, I felt as if I had been rescued from my life. Words could become a burning-glass for me in those days, and no shame of my nature or condition could hold out among the flares of pleasure.” Here Munro is remembering herself as she was during the summer of 1948, driven to read and to write, knowing just what she wanted to do.
During these years Munro was a presence in the young lives of the Cruikshank girls, Julie and Jane, who lived across the road and for whom she babysat with some regularity. Like the Laidlaws, the Cruikshanks also lived far out on the Lower Town Road, did not really fit in to Lower Town and so were not seen as part of that place. Julie, who would have been three or four during Munro’s last years of high school, remembers Alice as “a totally exotic creature” who delighted them by telling them an ongoing serial story when she came to look after them. “I would wait with huge anticipation until my parents went out again,” she recalls. Munro would ask Julie, the older of the two sisters, where she had left off before “and then she’d pick up and carry on again … this was a kind of never-ending story,” which delighted the girls. The stories themselves, she recalls, were geared to the mind of a four-year-old, for they had princesses in them and sometimes they acted them out. (Such stories bore some resemblance, certainly, to the Wuthering Heights-like novel Munro was working on then.) Cruikshank, who went on to become a cultural anthropologist and a university professor, credits Munro’s stories with inspiring her own academic interest in narrative.35
Such considerations notwithstanding, Munro’s “real life” – the phrase she used in Lives of Girls and Women and, altered slightly, again in “Miles City, Montana” as “real work” – was in her imagination as she developed as a writer. In “Miles City,” the narrator speaks of her “real work” as “a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself” and that, most clearly, was what Alice Laidlaw was doing as she walked to and from school, as she walked north from her home past the Cruikshanks’ toward their abandoned house, as she “thought her thoughts.” She was always reading and making up stories, partly imagined and partly as imitation of something she had read, the Wuthering Heights novel real and compelling, her own version written and imagined during those years. At that time too Munro was writing poetry and even submitted poems to Chatelaine, the Canadian women’s magazine, during 1945–46 – mercifully, she says now, none were ever published; “they all came back,” Munro has said, “and a good thing too. They were pretty bad.”
The effects of this were evident to all who knew her. As Munro has said, by the time she was fourteen she was “totally serious” about her writing. The year before, she had Audrey Boe for Grade 10 English, and she had her again in Grade 11. Boe, who was from Toronto and a graduate of the University of Toronto, had come to Wingham to teach in the fall of 1943; she subsequently married a man who worked in the foundry office, stopped teaching, and raised a family in Wingham. Over the years she kept track of Munro’s career and describes herself as her “first fan.” Boe gave writing assignments in her classes and, once they were handed in, she would read the best ones to the class. Munro’s were always read and they were always singular. Even though she wrote about “the normal things of everyday,” Mary Ross remembers, they were quite different from, and far more accomplished than, what other students wrote. They were of a different level altogether, making a commonplace subject interesting. As Munro herself said, as a student of English she “soared beyond all possible requirements.” The other students saw this quality in her; indeed, when Mary Ross came to write her “Prophet’s Address” detailing future expectations for her classmates, she envisioned Alice Laidlaw as a successful writer: “Her greatest short, short novel which had swept her to fame in ’53 was ‘Parkwater’s Passionate Pair’ ” and she now ensures the success of a magazine called “Candid Confessions.” (Her name on its cover was spelled “Alys,” Munro’s preferred spelling then.) For their part, many of Wingham’s adults also saw Alice’s potential. Ross describes her father as being particularly sympathetic to Alice since he recognized what a struggle these years had been for her – her family’s economic circumstances, the distance from town, Mrs. Laidlaw’s illness, and Munro’s additional household responsibilities. The Beecrofts, Ross remembers, were of the same mind.36
Audrey Boe recalls approaching Munro when she was alone in her Grade 11 classroom and telling her she must find a way to go to university. Others had done the same thing, so by the time she had reached her final high school years Munro knew about scholarships and was aiming at them. At the time, only a very small percentage of graduating students (and few girls) went to university, but Munro’s academic achievements clearly marked her, despite her family’s economic circumstances, as one for whom university was quite possible. There was no question of the family’s financial support – Bob Laidlaw was unable to provide any and, although Aunt Maud and Sadie Laidlaw might have helped, it was understood that they would eventually help Alice’s brother Bill as “the academic star of the family.” They did understand Alice’s going, though, and did not disapprove. They did worry that Alice, who had never had a boyfriend, so far as they knew, would never marry. The general view expressed then was that a young girl would be on her own (or on her way to getting married) once she was eighteen.
So Munro decided on a plan – the same plan pursued by Del Jordan in Lives of Girls and Women – for obtaining scholarships that would take her to university. She hoped she would get into the University of Western Ontario, in London. “These were competitive scholarships, so you had to get the best in a certain category.” Midway through Grade 12, Munro began studying German; it was not offered at her school but the French teacher – Miss MacGregor – agreed to stay after school to tutor her. “I had started it because I could look ahead – I knew what the categories for scholarships were,” and “if I didn’t take three languages other than English, I would have to take a math and I knew I couldn’t get scholarship marks on that. My math teacher agreed.” Thus as she completed Grade 13, Munro wrote the provincial exams in eleven subjects – composition and literature papers in English, French, German, and Latin plus Botany, History, and Zoology. She obtained first-class marks in all these papers save German authors and German composition, in which she obtained seconds. “I really wasn’t up on it enough to get a first,” Munro recalls, but writing the German exams saved her from mathematics. Along with ten other students who had “obtained standing in eight or more subjects,” Munro earned “the Honor Graduation Diploma”; as the highest-scoring student, she was named valedictorian of her class.37
Even so, after she took these tests Munro was worried about the outcome.
For purposes of scholarships at the University of Western Ontario, a student had to specify the papers she wished to be judged on. Munro had indicated English, French, Latin, and History. She knew she had missed a question on the French literature paper, and she felt certain that this lapse would keep her from obtaining the needed scholarship. She was so concerned, in fact, that she “started reading the Globe and Mail for ads for teachers.… At the time, teachers were scarce enough that the little far-off country schools and even schools [in Huron County] would accept a Grade 13 graduate without any training to be a teacher at all. They specified Catholic or Protestant, and that was that. Being a Protestant with Grade 13, I got a school in Oxdrift, Ontario” – in the northwest part of the province near Dryden, a very long way away. She was to be paid $1,100, much of it held back until the year was completed. “I had the contract on the dining room table ready to sign when I heard from Western that I had the scholarship.”
The Advance-Times detailed the awards Munro received, as well as her exam results, and it did so with some evident civic pride:
Congratulations to Miss Alice Laidlaw, who has been awarded a University of Western Ontario Scholarship for the highest standing in six Grade XIII papers including English, History, French and one other paper. This scholarship has a value of $50 cash with tuition of $125 a year for two years or a total value of $300. She also qualified for the school scholarship of tuition up to $125 a year for two years ($250 value) for obtaining an average of 75% on eight Grade XIII papers. Alice ranked first in English of all students applying for the University of Western Ontario. She has been awarded a Dominion-Provincial Bursary with a value of $400 per year. In eleven papers of Grade XIII Alice obtained nine firsts and two seconds. We wish her every success in the course in Journalism at the University of Western Ontario.
Accepting all this – and while they amounted to an impressive net amount, these awards ensured only two years’ study for a hardscrabble scholarship student – Alice Ann Laidlaw went off to university in London. In December, during the first Christmas holiday, she and her classmates who had also gone off – Mary Ross, for instance, was attending the University of Toronto – returned home for their high school commencement. As valedictorian, Alice Laidlaw gave another speech, this one a fit conclusion to her academic successes in Wingham, though beyond its delivery the Advance-Times reports nothing of what she said. Munro recalls that she wore a dark blue taffeta dress that she had bought by selling her blood, and that she said “the usual things,” though she also said that “high school wasn’t the greatest time in your life.” She was not nervous since she had been to university in London – she was already out of Wingham, and its standards didn’t matter so much any more. The commencement was a two-evening affair in the town hall; in addition to the handing out of diplomas and the acknowledgement of scholarships and awards, it included a student production of Pride and Prejudice, the play Munro later used in “An Ounce of Cure.” Listing Alice Laidlaw’s scholarships takes up most of the scholarship report in the paper, and she is followed by the person who won the Laidlaw Fur Farm Scholarship for the highest score on the Entrance examination.38
Years later when Munro had returned home to Huron County to live, she drew on memories of returning to Wingham from university in London in the draft fictional version of “Working for Living.” In this case, Jubilee had become Dalgleish, and Munro’s protagonist Janet thinks of the town she has just returned to – “where she was known” – as it contrasts with the university city and the life of a college student she has just left:
The waste, the frivolity, the shamefulness of that life seemed clear to her, particularly as she looked out at the ploughed fields, the golden stubble, the red and yellow woods, the dipping and sunny and nostalgic landscape that had replaced the city street. She was going to be a writer, very soon.
In order not to lose more of this feeling, she did not go into her house but set her books and suitcase and coat inside the porch door. The kitchen beyond was dark, the lights had not been turned on anywhere, which meant that her mother was probably asleep. Her mother slept odd hours, and was often most wakeful in the middle of the night[.] Her sickness had removed her from the ordinary course of life.
“She was going to be a writer, very soon.” Alice Ann Laidlaw had set off to London to begin university in the usual way, even though, she knew then, her real intention was to be a writer like her character. Janet comes home from university knowing that her real focus is on the place she came from, the place that she would write about to become the writer she sought to be. Just as Alice Munro was to do.
After she describes in “An Open Letter” the feeling she had for Wingham when she was a child, Munro finds an illustration, a correlative, for that feeling in another piece of art, writing,
There is a painting by Edward Hopper that says much better what I am trying to say here. A barber-shop, not yet open; the clock says seven and it must be seven in the morning, yes, a cool light, fresh morning light of a hot summer day. Beside the barber-shop a summer-heavy darkness of trees. The plain white slight shabby barber-shop, so commonplace and familiar; yet everything about it, in the mild light, is full of a distant, murmuring, almost tender foreboding, full of mystery like the looming trees.
So in the fall of 1949 Alice Laidlaw left Lower Town, left Wingham, left the only home place she had known, for London and the University of Western Ontario. Apart from visits over the years, she has never come back to stay, though she has lived nearby since 1975. Alice Munro was nevertheless destined ever and always to return in her imagination to Wingham, to her home place, a place “full of mystery like the looming trees.”39 She has probed its mysteries, perpetually recreating her town and its people – “Solitary and meshed, these lives are buried and celebrated” – in the stories she has written and continues to produce.
Boston Presbyterian Church, Halton, Esquesing Township, Ontario. Built on land sold by her Great-Great-Uncle Andrew in 1824, it figures in The View from Castle Rock. Many of Munro’s Laidlaw ancestors are buried to the left of the church.
The Code sisters as young girls: Sadie (Alice’s grandmother), Maud, Elsie, and May
The Code sisters as young women: Sadie, Maud, Elsie, and May. Sarah Jane “Sadie” Code Laidlaw (1876–1966), Anna “Maud”
Code Porterfield (1878–1976), Laura “Elsie”
Code Powell (1880–1934), Melissa “May”
Code Kennedy (1882–?)
Sadie (Sarah Jane Code Laidlaw) and Maud Code Porterfield (Leopold Street, Wingham)
Insert: Thomas (1844–1927) and Annie (1841–1913) Code, Alice’s great-grandparents from the Ottawa Valley A January 1879 map of Wingham, Ontario
CHAMNEY FAMILY PORTRAIT:
Front: Bertha Ann Stanley Chamney (1867–1935), Joseph Henry Chamney (1900–1970), George Chamney (1853–1934);
Back: John Gillman Chamney (1894–1972), Annie Clarke Chamney (1898–1959), Alice’s mother
Edward Melbourne Chamney (1892–1951)
Annie Clarke Chamney, ca. 1913–14
Anne Chamney Laidlaw, summer 1927, honeymoon, Christie Lake
Alice Laidlaw Munro’s girlhood home
Baby Alice with her grandfather George Chamney (ca. 1933)
Alice Laidlaw with her grandparents Sadie and William Code Laidlaw, ca. 1935–36
Alice and Anne Laidlaw, fall 1931, Wingham
Alice Laidlaw, 1933–34
Fox farm building, Laidlaw’s
Baby Alice (ca. summer 1932) with Reta Stapleton, a neighbour
Alice Laidlaw, ca. 1944–45
Alice and her sister, Sheila Laidlaw, on the Maitland River, ca. 1946–47
Wingham Town Hall, Josephine Street
Wingham Hospital, where Alice Laidlaw was born and her mother was treated
Wingham High School
Maitland River flooding, Lower Town Wingham
WINGHAM PUBLIC SCHOOL, GRADE 6, 1941-42
Alice Ann Laidlaw is third from t
he right in the second row.
WINGHAM HIGH SCHOOL, GRADE 12, 1947
Last three girls on right at the front: Mary Allen, Donna Henry, Alice Laidlaw
PROFESSOR ROBERT LAWRENCE’S ENGLISH 20 CLASS, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO, FEBRUARY 17, 1950
Woman in the front row: Joan Lawrence. Alice Laidlaw is the woman turned away from the camera while talking to another student, Diane Lane, on her right.
James and Alice Munro with Robert and Anne Laidlaw, December 29, 1951
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