The undercurrent of anxiety in the Macdonald house was spreading. Stuart had applied himself to his studies this year, but by February 1936, Maud described him as being “dull and languid.” Typically she did not ask him what was wrong. He became less communicative, not his usual joking self. Stuart knew all too well that his mother was opposed to his continuing relationship with Joy Laird. He did not like to hide his visits to Norval, as he was very uncomfortable deceiving a mother he loved and admired. Also, his mother’s disappointment over Chester’s marriage was very clear to him, and he did not want to add to her misery. Yet, Stuart believed that he should be able to make his own choice of a girlfriend. He both resented his mother for her attitude and thought himself weak for capitulating to it.
Stuart wanted nothing more than to make his mother happy, but he also felt deep and long-standing affection for Joy, his chum since the Macdonalds moved to Norval when he was eleven. As they grew older, their friendship developed into a romantic relationship. All through his years at St. Andrew’s, Stuart and Joy had corresponded. Joy had been offered no opportunity for further education beyond high school, so Stuart had lent her books for self-education. Joy was not only pretty, bright, and witty, but her buoyant personality made her full of laughter and fun, something in increasingly short supply in his own home. According to memories in Norval, the Laird home was always cheerful, a congregating place for young people. Drunk or sober, even her father could be good company. Stuart missed seeing Joy, who was popular in Norval with everyone, it seemed, except his mother.
Strangely, Maud did not contemplate her own role in making Stuart “dull and languid.” Even more odd, Maud was just then plotting her new novel, Jane of Lantern Hill, in which she depicted a difficult and controlling grandmother interfering in her grown child’s love life. The meddling brings grief to everyone concerned in the novel.
But much more immediate problems were at hand. Marriage and fatherhood had not settled Chester. He had solemnly promised his parents that there would be no more babies until he could support them, but he was drifting without focus or discipline, showing minimal interest in his legal studies. Then the stunning news came on April 19, 1936, that Luella had given birth to a second child, a baby son. Chester had not even informed his parents that Luella was pregnant again. In 1936, information about contraception was available to married couples, and Maud was furious at Chester’s irresponsibility.49
Even worse, Luella had not even informed Chester when she was taken to the hospital. It was her father, Robert Reid, who had felt it appropriate, indeed necessary, to inform both Chester and his parents by telephone that a baby boy had arrived. The baby—sadly, wanted and welcomed by no one in the extended family he was born into—was named Cameron Stuart Craig Macdonald. He was the spitting image of his father, from the moment of birth. This event pushed Ewan into another round of deep depression, worse than any he had experienced thus far. He was soon needing medications to sleep. On May 1, 1936, Maud wrote in her journal, “If everything was as it should be how glad and interested I would be in the first little grandson. But as it is I feel only bitterness.” On May 3, when Ewan was suffering his worst attack since coming to Toronto, she attributed this to the news of the baby.
Maud felt hopelessly dispirited, grieving over Chester’s disinterest in his own children and over his failure to take control of his life. He could speak brilliantly on myriad subjects, but he was impulsive, erratic, arrogant, and dishonest—hardly promising qualities for a lawyer. Maud was beginning to wonder if Chester actually had serious mental problems.
But May 1936 brought Maud one huge relief: in spite of his earlier slump, Stuart passed his second-year Medicine courses with flying colours. Chester would not receive his grades for another month. As she waited to hear the results, Maud needed medications to sleep. When the “pass lists” were finally printed in the paper, Chester had failed two of his law courses: Criminal Procedures and Torts. So soon after the birth of his unwanted baby, this news was overwhelming. Chester would have to write “supplementals” in the coming autumn; this meant a summer of worry for Maud.
July 5, 1936, was Maud and Ewan’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary; no one noticed the date except Maud herself. She wrote in her journal: “The greater part of those 25 years has been a nightmare, owing mainly to Ewan’s attacks of melancholia, intensified these past six years by Chester’s behaviour” (July 5, 1936).
Another terrible blow came to the Macdonalds on the morning of September 13, 1936: Ewan and Maud opened the Globe to read that Ernest Barraclough was dead, reportedly of a stroke. The death was unexpected, and it hit them hard. The Barracloughs had provided an oasis of discreet friendship in Maud’s and Ewan’s often beleaguered lives. The Macdonalds rushed out to Glen Williams to give Mrs. Barraclough support. But Ida was prostrate with grief and there was little that they could do. Shortly after Ernest’s death, Ewan went across the street to see Dr. Lane to renew his prescription for sedatives.
Ewan and Maud continued to visit Ida, hoping to help her recover emotionally. Unfortunately no on could protect Ida from the blows that were coming, one after another. Immediately, hurtful rumours started circulating—the first was that Ernest had committed suicide.50 Next, some of Ida’s relatives gave her the unwelcome information that Ernest had had ongoing “liaisons” with young women in his factory. This was unbearably hurtful, for Ida had idolized her husband. (Luella, who was also distantly related to Ida, said that everyone knew about Ernest’s extramarital dalliances during his lifetime, except, perhaps, his wife and the Macdonalds.) In the 1990s, old-timers still remembered and joked that Ernest had been “very fond of the women.” After his death, when the Macdonalds heard about his affairs, they found it very hard to deal with the stories. They had seen him as a pillar of the church and above reproach.
Ida had yet another unpleasant surprise coming—it turned out, when the account books were opened, that the mill was in serious financial trouble. Everyone in the community, including the Macdonalds, had believed the Barracloughs to be quite wealthy. Ernest and Ida had lived very well in a big, finely appointed house, and always drove new cars. Even though Ida was excessively corpulent, she always dressed stylishly, and the small, dapper Ernest dressed impeccably, too. Like most husbands of the era, Ernest had handled all the money, telling Ida nothing.
Ida next discovered that her husband’s estate left her only enough money to live on modestly, and that his will specified that she would lose even this if she remarried. It is unlikely that she would have remarried in any case, but this stipulation came on top of the allegations that Ernest had been unfaithful to her. Ewan and Maud were very shaken by all the after-death revelations, and their visits to cheer the inconsolable Ida became increasingly difficult “duty visits.” (She lived some thirty years after the death of Ernest.) Ernest’s death provided one more fallen star in their increasingly unstable firmament.
—
Maud had been worrying all summer over whether Chester would pass his supplemental exams. He had wasted three years in Engineering before he was thrown out. Now he had invested three years in law—two in articling and one in coursework—and he might be thrown out again. But on the morning of September 22, Chester informed his relieved mother that he had passed—with a 92 percent in one and a bare pass in the other. This meant he could continue in law school. If he could pass his second year of courses, there would be only one final year, and he could graduate in 1938. Maud felt relief that he had passed, but she also knew that he would have been at the top of his class had he worked hard.
As Maud ended the ninth volume of her journals in September 29, 1936, she sounded the classic depressive note: “I have lost every hope for things ever being better.” She added: “Everything I hoped and dreamed and planned for has gone with the wind. I am broken and defeated.”
In actual fact, during 1936 her books were selling well, her readership still adored her, movie rights were in the offing, and Stuart was doing well in
medical school and making a name for himself as an exceptionally talented gymnast in the University of Toronto’s gymnastic team competitions. The critical reputation of her books might have been under attack, but in 1936 she took in $6,093 in book royalties, and so was able to pay off a large part of her mortgage. Objectively, she had much to be thankful for. But all she could see was that Chester was heading towards failure.
She did not know for sure what was going on with Stuart now, either. Stuart had started a friendship with Margaret Cowan soon after their move to Riverside Drive, and Maud did all she could to foster this, thinking that the pretty, vivacious, and cultured Margaret was just the “right kind of girl” for Stuart. Maud had bought Stuart an expensive membership at the local golf club, thinking it an appropriate place for him to socialize with other nice girls from prominent families. Stuart also had ample opportunity to meet lots of young women at the University of Toronto. Although he was very popular, Maud suspected that he still exchanged letters with Joy and sometimes went to Norval to see her. When she had been on the Island that fall, the Webbs of Cavendish had casually referred to Joy as Stuart’s “girl,” and had spoken of their relationship as a suitable and serious one. That knowledge had all but ruined Maud’s otherwise happy vacation.
Then, a few days before his mother’s birthday, Stuart had come in after a date with Margaret Cowan and remarked in a significant way to his mother that it was a “good thing” they had left Norval when they did. Maud took this to mean that he had terminated the relationship with Joy. Nothing could have elevated her spirits more.
On her birthday, November 30, 1936, thinking that the romance with Joy was over, Maud spat out all her objections to Joy and the entire Laird family in her journal. Of Joy, she wrote:
Joy was common and cheap … but I would say with a good deal of the quality detestably called sex appeal.… Joy was certainly no companion for my son … I warned Stuart not to let himself get tangled up with any such people.… All these years [his relationship with Joy] has been … spoiling what had always been the beautiful relationship between us. The thought that one day he might ask me to accept that bootlegger’s spawn as a daughter was something I could not bear … (SJ 5 114–15).
These are strong words—and totally unfair, according to people from Norval. When Maud’s comments about Joy were published in 2004 (Joy was by then dead), there was a near-collective howl of indignation at this characterization of Joy and her family. The village asserted that the young Joy had been clever, pretty, poised, and full of personality. She was well liked throughout the community. As for her father being a bootlegger, the older residents of Norval said that every community had one or more, especially during Prohibition, and, in fact, many “respectable people regarded bootlegging as a useful business.”51The rest of the village took Mr. Laird as he was, and admitted he had a drinking problem; every community had a few characters who imbibed too much, but they were not ostracized unless they were destructive or “mean” drunks. When Lewis did go on a binge, his wife banished him out to “the Blue House,” a shack on the corner of their property, a cheerful gathering place for men who dropped in to chat or pick up a bottle and talk. The people of Norval—except for Maud—generally liked Joy’s father, despite his faults. No one was rich in Norval, and the other local people did not look down on Josie, Joy’s mother, as Maud did, for doing paid work outside her home. But once Maud made up her mind about people and their family status, she did not change her views. Nothing would make Joy acceptable to her.
The belief that Stuart had finally ended his romance with Joy unshackled Maud from the paralysis of worry. She had put her journal aside for three years, from 1933 to 1936, following Chester’s marriage. Now she had such a lift that she resumed writing up her journal at the beginning of December 1936. She began filling in retrospective entries from the notes she had kept those three years. Her creative work flew too: by the time the holidays came, she had only three chapters of Jane of Lantern Hill left to write.
But Christmas 1936 was a gloomy one: both boys escaped, leaving her home alone with dreary Ewan on an even drearier, rainy day. Stuart went next door to the Cowans for Christmas dinner, and Chester dutifully went to see Luella and his children in Norval. When Maud and Ewan tucked into their own roast goose that night, neither of them felt like talking. On December 31, 1936, Maud closed off her journal with the ominous statement that “a certain thing is making me very sick at heart.” She would not write anything again in her journal for over a year, until January 1938.
When Maud finally took up her pen on January 9, 1938, to write up all of the missing periods in her journals, she began by recapitulating her most difficult times. She labelled 1919 a “hideous year” (the year of Ewan’s first breakdown); 1933 and 1934 were “horrible beyond expression” (the year of Chester’s “forced” marriage and Ewan’s second breakdown); but nothing, she wrote, had been equal to 1937.
The story that began to unfold in 1937 about Chester—now twenty-two, married, and a father of two—is glossed over in her own journals. She felt that she must censor her journals because others would read them when she was dead, and “some things it would not be good for anyone but myself to know … [I] can never forget them and cannot tell them—to anyone” (January 9, 1938).
Nor did she write in her journals another story—that of her growing dependence on sedatives to cope with mounting anxieties. Throughout her journals, Maud mentions from time to time the medications that doctors gave either her or Ewan to calm them or to help them sleep, but these accounts are only incidental.
As 1937 opened, Maud, a determined professional, was still trying to write the ending of Jane of Lantern Hill. The book had to end happily, even though she was so wracked with apprehension over Chester that she could hardly concentrate. Chester was now taking the second year of his three years of law, but he was not studying. Nor did he seem to be going into the firm to work part-time, as required. She suspected the worst—that Chester was seeking female companionship outside his marriage.
Maud partially blamed herself for this turn of events. Understanding the value of social networking, especially for a young law student, she had thought Chester could meet more young people through the church. The Victoria-Royce Presbyterian Church Young People’s Society seemed a prime place to meet future community leaders. She had urged Chester to join the YPS, and he’d taken her advice. But instead of the YPS being a place where he could network with the “right kind of friends,” it became a venue to recruit new girlfriends.
Her relationship with Chester had become very complicated, and this was another reason why she wanted him to find more friends his own age. Since he had moved back home after his parents took up residence in Toronto, Maud and Chester had each been filling a void in the other’s life. They were both lonely, each cut off from the normal intellectual companionship and emotional support one might expect from a spouse. Chester had never been one to establish lasting friendships, and he played no sports, so he had more time to spend with his mother than Stuart did. (Stuart was always out of the house attending classes, practising with the University of Toronto gymnastics team, or socializing with friends, and when he came home, he ate and then went to his room to study.) Chester was always willing to drive his mother around, to accompany her to films, or to escort her to events, instead of studying. He was an insatiable reader—of everything except his law textbooks—and his mother loved discussing books with him. Maud valued his intellectual companionship, at home, walking to movies together, going for sodas at the local drugstore, or taking drives.
Initially a churlish “loner” who lacked social graces, Chester was learning from his mother how to “talk well” on many subjects outside of law. He was developing the ability to sail into a social gathering and make a very good impression with his fluent and informed conversation. Maud undoubtedly saw the “talking time” they spent together as grooming her son for success. He was a quick study.
In adolescence, Ch
ester had smarted because he’d thought that Stuart was his mother’s favourite, but finally he had begun to feel like the “number one” son.52 Perhaps she found in Chester a younger and more intellectual version of Ewan, and she began to dote on her elder son in a way that often made others feel profoundly uncomfortable. Years later, people from Norval remembered how Chester made big public displays of affection to his mother—long after Stuart, three years younger, had quit kissing her in public. In Toronto, Chester bestowed courtly public kisses on his mother, opened doors for her with the flourish of a royal footman, and generally played the role of the adoring and attentive son. In Toronto, Chester kissed Maud often and told her what a “good little mother” she was. To many, Maud appeared quite besotted with him. Some thought Chester’s kisses and hugs for his mother seemed more for effect than genuine, but this was probably unfair: like everyone else, he undoubtedly did enjoy his mother’s company and attention.
Maids remembered how Chester would come into his parents’ bedroom when his mother was resting and lie down on the bed beside her to talk, sometimes putting his head on her shoulder. She would pat him or sometimes run her fingers through his hair—in their view, an odd intimacy for a mother and a grown, married son.53 As Chester became Maud’s constant companion and chauffeur, Ewan receded further into the background. Now, in early 1937, with new social skills and confidence under his belt, Chester was ready for a new social life, involving very late hours and the family car. His hyper-excited mood alarmed his watchful mother.
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