The Distaff Side of the Confederation Group:

Women's Contribution to Early Nationalist

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 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, and . 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 . 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 ," 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. She returned home face, to a not unhappy life in the bosom of her family, spent caring for aging Far from the Gatineau's foaming base I parents, entertaining friends, writing, And what strong potion hath he quaffd, attending meetings of half a dozen This:hardy son of a hybrid race, societies and sailing, which was the That upon this sun-bak'd blister'd real love of her life. t place Like Susan Harrison, Helen Merrill was upon a career in very modern fashion. sympathetic to the cause of Canada's She joined the staff of the Ontario Indians. She knew a great deal about Archives where her historical know• their history and customs because ledge and writing ability were greatly Napanee is located at the edge of a appreciated. The Oneida Band of the large Indian reserve. Helen and her Six Nations Indians adopted her into friend, Agnes Machar, the Kingston, their tribe and gave her the name, Ontario writer, were tremendous join• Ka-ya-tonhs, which means "a keeper of ers, much given to causes, no doubt records."(8) Later she officiated at due to their constricted, rather high- the Sir Isaac Brock Commemoration at level social existences, which might Queenston Heights. Finally, when she otherwise have verged on boredom. Both was almost fifty, Helen, an extremely were bird watchers, loved animals, handsome woman, married Frank Egerton, liked to entertain and liked to be on a former British army officer who had or near the water with their friends. come from Maidstone, England, to settle Both found inspiration in Lake Ontario in Toronto. where it joined the great St. Lawrence River, which they could see daily from Her work appeared frequently in The their windows. Week and other periodicals. It was much admired and anthologized, but she The Merrills were United Empire Loya• was too busy to polish and publish to lists, interested in preserving the any great extent. Instead, she pro• New England traditions acquired by duced a fascinating anthology of her their French Huguenot ancestors who own and her friends' work. This book, had landed in America in 1633. For Picturesque Prince Edward County, a many years, Helen toiled with Ottawa charming conversation piece in the archivist and poet, William Wilfred record of Canada's nationalist writers, Campbell, on a labour of love, gather• was printed in Picton in 1892(9). An ing information for an historical work early paper-back, it sold for twenty- on the Loyalist settlers of Canada. five cents and ran to 128 pages. The She edited for publication the 1792- volume contained several of her essays 1796 diaries of John White, the first describing a sailing trip taken by attorney general of Upper Canada. She herself, her brother and their liter• also presided as president of the Can• ary friends. There were snapshots of adian Society for the Protection of tj\e happy group at lakeside resorts Birds and as secretary of the United and^aome charming sketches of the Loyalists Association of Canada. Not COV«M and sand dunes. However, there until her father died did the tenor of the regional nature faded for the her life vary, and she moved to Toronto collection contained samples of the with her mother. There Helen embarked work of the major post-Confederation Scott and Lampman, Susan Harrison and writers—Campbell, Roberts, Scott, Pauline Johnson, she saw clearly the Sangster, Davlin, Bengough and several threads that must unite to create in notable women writers, including Canadians a strong and undeniable Charlotte Holmes of Picton, who later sense of identity—the heritage of the eulogized Lampman, Pauline Johnson, native Indians and Aleuts, and of the Agnes Machar and her friend, Annie later founding fathers, the French and Rothwell. Helen Merrill contributed English, together with the Loyalist in• several poems including "Sand Waifs," fluences brought from the eastern "The Little Forest Drummer," "The Lake United States. A hundred years ago, on the Mountain" and "Villeneuve nationalists were agitated by a pro• House." They are good examples of her posed education act in Manitoba, which impressionistic style and easy natura• would inhibit French Canadians who lism. lived there from educating their children in the language of their That her range extended farther is choice. Today, they would be suppor• made clear in another poem, "The Canada ting Canada's recent Official Languages Wind." For inspiration, her imagina• Act. In this setting, Helen Merrill is tion led her to look south to the an interesting member of the nationa• United States, east to her French and list movement. English ancestors and only glancingly west. Then she asked: A third woman writer of the period, Whence bloweth the Canada wind? Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald, further ex• Its path is the way of the world's tends our knowledge of women's partici• wide rim, pation in the early nationalist litera• The strange white tracts of the barren ture of Canada. zone, Immutable, luminous, wild and lone; At noon, on March 2, 1896, writer Spaces enduring through aeons dim. dropped into an Veiling the sky and the blue sea's Ottawa book store and bought a small brim, collection of poems by a writer he Striving for ever, yet never free, knew casually through a Toronto friend, Fetters which ever bind— journalist and biographer, Joseph Ed• The Canada wind is the keen north wind, mund Collins. He felt a sense of in• The wind of the secret sea, terest and was always glad to see And quickens the soul of me.(10) another Canadian writer in print. The contents moved him and when he finished reading the book at his office, he Obviously, Helen Merrill's chief source jotted down a brief poem on the fly of inspiration was the developing leaf. It can be read today in his nation to which she belonged. Like copy of Ethelwyn Wetherald's book, The dence. Perhaps her failing lay in be• House of the Trees and Other Poems, at ing too readily and totally committed, Queen's University, in Kingston. This to love, to social change, to politics, volume was given by Lampman's self- as in other important aspects of life. appointed executor, Duncan Scott, to She sustained at different times, ap• Lome Pierce, the late Canadian pub• parently, deep-rooted affections for lisher. Lampman's tribute read: two major writers, both well-known men in Canada who moved to the United Little book, thy pages stir States to expand upon their success. With a poet's brighter life; She never married. Under her pen-name, In days that gloom with doubt and Bel Thistlewaite (her mother's maiden strife, name), she achieved distinction as a To many a silent sufferer. solid journalist and as a writer of Thou shalt bring a balm for pain, high rank among women poets, and high Felt behind his prison bars, fame, both in Canada and the United The spirit of the sun and stars, States, where her books enjoyed joint The spirit of the wind and rain.(11) publication and excellent sales.(13) In those days, she was better known Although he was ten years married, than men like Lampman, Scott or Camp• Lampman was deeply troubled at the bell. In 1893, she presented a rather time by his hopeless love for an sensational report on "Women in Journa• Ottawa woman, Katherine Waddell. As lism" at an international conference in Professor Thomas O'Hagan of the Uni• Chicago; it was reported in The Week, versity of Ottawa wrote five years Canada's major literary periodical and later, "Miss Wetherald is the poetess a nationalist organ, on June 23rd.(14) of love," and the appeal of her work for Lampman must have been immediate. (12) This poet was born in Rockwood, Ontario where her father, the Reverend William Wetherald, was principal of Rockwood Of course, Ethelwyn Wetherald was more Academy. Educated at a Quaker board• than a romantic. She was a seasoned ing school in New York, then at Pick• journalist on the international scene, ering College outside Toronto, by an ardent feminist, totally involved thirty she was women's editor of the in the life of her day (and her day Advertiser in London, Ontario. It was was a long one, lasting from April 26, then that she began publishing haunting 1857 to March 8, 1940). She was an nature poems and love poems that im• active participant in the nationalist printed themselves on the memory, by movement who saw and evaluated the in• their undercurrents, more than by their fluence of the United States on the conventional rhymes. A poem about prospect of lasting Canadian indepen• birds and trees would suddenly soar into the universal tragedy inherent in 1904. A collection of her best one personal experience and conclude: hundred and sixty poems was published by William Briggs in Toronto in 1907. That was where the heart's guest A critic commented, "It was warmly Brooded months ago, welcomed generally, by reviewers and Where the tender thoughts pressed lovers of poetry, and it at once estab• Lovingly—and lo! lished for the poet enduring fame."(17) Dead leaves in the heart's nest The Governor General, Earl Grey, wrote Under falling snow.(15) to tell her how much he liked it and purchased twenty-five copies to give to Lampman would have sympathized with friends. After writing for the Toronto the lines in, "There Is a Solitude," Globe for some years, she retired to the 0 thou that feels the dust mount and family farm at Fenwick, Ontario. Her mount final books were The Last Robin: Lyrics Up to the jaded nostrils, smarting and Sonnets and the 1931 collection, eyes, edited by John Garvin, Lyrics and Son• There is a solitude within thy heart; nets . Like the other women whose work Go wash yourself.(16) has been briefly described, Ethelwyn Wetherald was a distinguished member of Miss Wetherald's second volume, Tangled that "grand old group of the sixties." in Stars, was published in Boston in Much can be learned from their daring 1902 by the Gorham Press which brought and their, intellectual integrity. out her next work. The Radiant Road in NOTES 9. Helen M. Merrill, Picturesque Prince Edward County (Picton: Globe Printing House, .1892), 128 pages. 1. Anonymous, "Our Library Table," The Week, 27 Nov. 1891, p. 836. 10. Garvin, "Helen M. Merrill," p. 522. 2. Ethelwyn Wetherald, "Some Canadian Literary Women: I. Seranus," The Week, 22 Mar. 1888, p. 267. 11. Archibald Lampman, untitled poem, written on the flyleaf of The House of Trees and Other Poems by Ethelwyn Wetherald. PS8473/A64L34, in the Lome 3. Susan F. Harrison, Pine, Rose and Fleur de lis (Toronto: Hart and Company, Pierce Collection, Queen's University Library, Kingston. 1891), pp. 1-70. 12. Thomas O'Hagan, Canadian Essays (Toronto: William Briggs, 1901), p. 82. 4. Duncan C. Scott, In the Village of Viger (Boston: Copeland and Day, 1896), 114 pages. 13. John Garvin, "Canadian Poets: VII. Ethelwyn Wetherald," Public Health Journal, Oct. 1914, pp. 636-640. 5. Susan F. Harrison, Canadian Birthday Book (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1887), p. 413. 14. Anonymous, "Literary and Personal," The Week, 23 June 1893, p. 712.

6. Wetherald, "Seranus," p. 267. 15. Ethelwyn Wetherald, "Dead Leaves," in Garvin, "Wetherald," p. 639.

7. Harrison, Pine, Rose and Fleur de lis, p. 33. 16. Ethelwyn Wetherald, "There Is a Solitude," in Lyrics and Sonnets by Ethelwyn Wetherald, edited by John Garvin (Toronto: Nelson, 1931), p. 233. 8. John Garvin, "Canadian Poets: XIX. Helen M. Merrill," Public Health Journal, Oct. 1915, pp. 519-5?* 17. Garvin, "Canadian Poets: VII. Ethelwyn Wetherald," p. 637.

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