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The Distaff Side of the Confederation Group

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The Distaff Side of the Confederation Group The Distaff Side of the Confederation Group: Women's Contribution to Early Nationalist Canadian Literature The growth of nationalism was essential to the development of a distinctive Canadian literature. The initial im• petus was given by events surrounding Confederation in 1867 and it was en• couraged the following year by the development of the Canada First Move• ment after the assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, one of the fathers of Confederation whose death became a write in the spirit of unity and a rallying point for the new nationalists. distinctive Canadian identity began to The creation of the Royal Society of take shape. Canada in 1882, in response to a hotly debated suggestion by the Governor The promotion of nationalism as a General, Lord Lome, brought together theme in prose and poetry has been Canadian scientists and historians, attributed to a handful of men born writers and academics. From its meet• about 1861, who were the members of a ings and the cross-fertilization of loosely structured literary circle now ideas it inspired came the challenge to called "the Confederation Group" or by Margaret Coulby Whitridge "the Group of '61." The leaders were Charles G.D. Roberts, Archibald Lamp- man, Duncan Campbell Scott, William Wilfred Campbell and Bliss Carman. Roberts, several of his brothers, his sister Elizabeth and his cousin, Bliss Carman, were at the centre of a small corps of Maritimes' poets who began writing in Fredericton, New Brunswick, about 1880, while Lampman, Scott and Campbell were all civil servants who began writing seriously after they moved to Ottawa. Roberts and Carman soon left Canada, like numerous per• ipheral figures of the group who mi• grated to the eastern United States or England, in search of the wider hori• zons and greater opportunities for financial reward and acknowledgement that are usually equated with success. The equally represented women in the This paper will focus on three Ontario group have been undeservedly forgotten women who lived within a one hundred or overlooked although, at the time, mile radius of Toronto and who deserve they were just as well-known in North attention as poets and as outstanding American letters. Active, liberated human beings: Helen M. Merrill, Susan and frequently well-educated, they Frances Harrison (better known as strove to establish themselves during Seranus) and Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald the decades from 1880 to 1900 in the who wrote under the nom-de-plume, Bel creative arts in Canada and the United Thistlewaite. Possibly Pauline John• States. Following the example of son was better known and Agnes Machar Roberts and others, several went to more versatile and productive. How• other countries in pursuit of literary ever, Machar, who wrote as Fidelis, success. Often they published under seems to have been a lesser poet and pen-names like "Fidelis," "Seranus," Johnson has received the attention she "Bel Thistlewaite," "Medusa," "Esper- deserves, so this paper is devoted to ance" and "Fleurange," and they wrote the achievements of three fine writers prolifically—poems, novels, critiques who previously have been neglected. of society and politics, short stories, essays and travelogues. Some even ven• Susan Frances Harrison's contributions tured into the writing of dramas and in prose and verse in North American operas, although with indifferent suc• and British periodicals and through cess. Some were newspaper reporters, publication of a number of varied teachers, archivists, naturalists and books made her favoured nom-de-plume, agitators. These women were innovators, Seranus, a "household word in the trail-blazing in their chosen fields. homes of literary Canadians," by 1891. The names and work of a few may be re• (1) She also wrote under the pen- membered: Agnes Machar, Susan Harrison, names Medusa and Gilbert King.(2) Sara Jeanette Duncan and, the maverick Harrison achieved success on the stage member of the group, the notorious in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, not Pauline Johnson. The names of other only as a singer and composer but also women writers who flourished in the for her spirited reading of her own late nineteenth century in Canada are poems, particularly her light-hearted now obscured and they have been denied villanelles describing French-Canadian the literary place they sought avidly life in Quebec and eastern Ontario, and which some merited. There was a which she knew well. These poems re• surprising number in their ranks—over veal her knowledge of the colourful two hundred women writing in every habitant life with remarkable insight settlement in Canada from coast to and humour. Poems like "Les Chantiers," coast. "St. Jean Baptiste," and "Gatineau Point," part of her poetic sequence, "Down the River" published in her book, collaborated with F.A. Dixon of Ottawa Pine, Rose and Fleur de lis, were a in composing an elaborate comic opera delight to hear and demonstrate her on a Canadian theme, the three-act kinship with the better known habitant work, Pipandor, which proved too expen• poet, Dr. William Henry Drummond of sive to stage when it was completed. Montreal.(3) These poems belong to a realistic genre that had been develop• In 1886, Seranus published her first ing steadily in Canada and could be book, Crowded Out and Other Sketches, seen in the prose of Charles Roberts, describing effectively and romantically Edward William Thomson and Duncan the beauties of Muskoka and the land• Campbell Scott, whose work was col• scape of lower Canada. This was fol• lected and published in 1896 in the lowed in 1887 by a collection of ex• book, In the Village of Viger.(4) cerpts of Canadian poets, Canadian Birthday Book, which included thumb• Susan Frances Riley was born in Toronto nail criticisms of the authors. Lamp- in 1859, daughter of an Irish inn• man, the lyric sonneteer, was described keeper, proprietor of the Revere House. as a writer "of fugitive verse of high She was educated in private schools merit, mostly Swinburnian in style," and, when her family moved to Montreal, although she knew the poet well enough she studied English and philosophy at to realize that the name of Swinburne McGill University under a distinguished was anathema to him.(5) She may have member of the Confederation Group, Pro• been retaliating for a description of fessor Clark Murray. At sixteen, she herself, attributed to Lampman or a began writing and publishing poetry friend, as a lady who "sometimes wrote under the pen-name, Medusa. She be• fragments instinct with intense pas• came an active member of the Montreal sion." She was not a woman who wanted Ladies Literary Society and was well to be remembered for fragments of pas• known in musical circles as a soloist sion in the printed world. and composer. The musical compositions of the ambitious teenager were soon be• ing published in Canada and the United Harrison's most acclaimed collection States. These talents were appreciated of poems, Pine, Rose and Fleur de lis, by J.W. Harrison, an Anglican church appeared in 1891 and received high organist, whom she married and accom• praise. For a time she was Ottawa panied to Ottawa. The new Mrs. Harri• correspondent of the Detroit Free son attained fleeting fame as composer Press.(6) The Forest of Bourg-Marie, and singer of "A Song of Welcome" to her first novel, written on a French- the new Governor General, the Marquis Canadian theme, was published in 1898 of Lansdowne, on his first public ap• and her only other novel, Ringfield, pearance in Ottawa in 1883. She also appeared in 1914. Her final collec- tion, In Northern Skies and Other He sleeps, with his hand on the burning Poems, was published in 1912. haft, This hardy son of a hybrid race!(7) Her absorption with French-Canadian In villanelles like these, she expounded cultural traditions, her knowledge of upon the problems affecting Canada's the Metis and Indian races in Canada native people. This particular poem, and her understanding of their fate as with the setting of the Gatineau River, minority groups, despite their prior a few miles from Ottawa in the Gatineau claims, made her an important Hills of Quebec, combines her major nationalist writer. She was a talented themes—the beauty of the natural poet and novelist who earned her place scene against which Canadians of very at the centre of the Confederation different origins acted out lives that Group. A quotation from her popular were often tragic in destiny, a set• book, Pine, Rose and Fleur de lis, will ting heightened by her awareness of illustrate this point: man's humanity. The half-Indian, half- GATINEAU POINT French lad is tormented by conflicts A half-breed, slim, and sallow of face, inherent in his mixed heritage—con• Alphonse lies full length on his raft, flicts that have not yet been resolved . The hardy son of a hybrid race. Lithe and long, with the Indian grace, Helen Merrill was another light-hearted Vers'd in the varied Indian craft, and personable poet in the Confedera• A half-breed, slim, and sallow of face. tion Group, one who barely escaped the He nurses within mad currents that regional epithet that characterized chase— many of the four hundred and fifty voices in the Group, originally thought The swift, the sluggish—a foreign to consist of five men, three of them graft, in Ottawa and two in New Brunswick. The This hardy son of a hybrid race. daughter of a county court judge in What southern airs, what snows embrace Picton, Ontario, she was born in near• Within his breast—soft airs that waft by Napanee and was educated at Ottawa The half-breed, slim, and sallow of Ladies' College.
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