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A Lost Autobiographical Tale by Catharine Parr Traill Jennifer Harris Document generated on 09/24/2021 11:55 a.m. Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne “The True History of My Brother Tom’s Dog” A Lost Autobiographical Tale by Catharine Parr Traill Jennifer Harris Volume 39, Number 2, 2014 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/scl39_2art12 See table of contents Publisher(s) The University of New Brunswick ISSN 0380-6995 (print) 1718-7850 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Harris, J. (2014). “The True History of My Brother Tom’s Dog”: A Lost Autobiographical Tale by Catharine Parr Traill. Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne, 39(2), 230–247. All rights reserved, ©2014 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ “The True History of My Brother Tom’s Dog”: A Lost Autobiographical Tale by Catharine Parr Traill Jennifer Harris lthough not as well known as her sister Susanna Moodie, author of Roughing It in the Bush (1852), Catharine Parr Traill is nonetheless a mainstay of early Canadian writing. Readers praiseA her genuine attentiveness to and fondness for the world around her as well as the wit and perception that she brings to her depictions of that world. Her resourcefulness, energy, and faith when faced with adversity continue to captivate. The Backwoods of Canada, Traill’s 1836 account of settler life, remains a key resource for scholars of early Canadian experience. Traill’s other writings, ranging from The Female Emigrant’s Guide (1854) to novels, nature writing, and collections of stories, continue to be studied for their own merits. Her more personal writings appeal to scholars interested in women’s lives and careers in the era. Notably, that Traill and Moodie both penned such compelling first- person accounts of emigration has made their lives subjects of interest not only to scholars but also to contemporary readers, as evidenced by the bestselling status of Charlotte Gray’s book Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill (1999) and the accompanying documentary (2004; see Sisters). For these reasons, a newly discovered autobiographical tale by Traill, “The True History of My Brother Tom’s Dog,” merits consideration for what it might tell us about the sisters and their early life in England. Likewise, its publication history highlights the ways in which the sisters participated in female networks of publication in later years. Considering the tale for its own literary merits draws attention to the choices that Traill made in crafting her work for popular consumption, particularly when the story is com- pared with her other writing for children, including a second previously unknown Traill tale, “Rover’s Visit to the Fair,” which appeared in the 1830s The Juvenile Keepsake, credited only to the “Author of ‘Nursery Fables.’” Catharine Parr Traill 231 The plot of “The True History” is simple enough, concerning the youthful visit of Traill and an unnamed sister — possibly Susanna, to whom Traill was closest — to the home of Mr. and Mrs. B. for tea, an event complicated by the unwelcome attendance of their brother’s impertinent and energetic dog, Toby, which cheerfully wreaks havoc. The story’s action depends on the dog’s antics; the dramatic tension, pathos, and humour result from the sisters’ complete inability to master the situation. That it is the dog that is victorious, and the sisters who sneak out with their metaphorical tails between their legs, is not lost on us as readers — in fact, it is key to our enjoyment of the story. Knowledge of the sisters’ biography and historical context enriches our appreciation of the social disaster of “The True History,” even as the story enhances our understanding of the sisters’ world pre-emi- gration. Susanna and Catharine were among Thomas and Elizabeth Strickland’s six daughters and two sons, all born between 1794 and 1807 in England. The family, initially at least, was upwardly mobile, purchasing several properties, including, in 1808, an attractive manor house known as Reydon Hall in Suffolk. However, a nation-wide finan- cial collapse, combined with the death of Thomas Strickland, left the family in severely straitened circumstances just as the sisters were reach- ing a marriageable age.1 In status-conscious late-Georgian society, in which propriety and respectability were crucial, even those middle-class young women with substantial financial resources were wary of any misstep for fear of impeding the marriage prospects for themselves and their younger siblings. The Strickland sisters, no doubt aware of their precarious circumstances and limited marital prospects, had every rea- son to adhere to the dictates of society. However, as Traill recounts, dogs do not observe the same social niceties. Traill does not conceal the identities of the majority of the individ- uals in the story. Her brother Tom retains his own name, though his youth is emphasized, making the narrator and her sister seem younger as well. John Fenn, the local rat catcher who originally gives the dog to Tom as a puppy, was also a real person. Mr. and Mrs. B., in whose home the majority of the story’s action occurs, are clearly James and Emma Bird of nearby Yoxford: James was a published poet and a figure of great “cheerfulness and vivacity”; Emma, née Hardacre, was the daughter of a bookseller and printer from nearby Hadleigh, “possessing a mind well stored with the knowledge best calculated to render her, as a wife 232 Scl/Élc — mother — friend — useful and estimable in her station” (Harral xi- xii). Together the Birds ran a stationers and booksellers business (which Emma continued after her husband’s death in 1839), suggesting that they had many interests in common with the Stricklands.2 We can date the events of the story as occurring sometime after August 1826, when the Stricklands are believed to have first made the Birds’ acquaintance. The friendship progressed rapidly: in 1828, the Birds named their tenth child Walter Strickland Bird (1828-1912).3 In total, the Birds had sixteen children, twelve surviving, a suitable number to provide the boisterous Toby with an enthusiastic audience for his antics in “The True History.” They included Samuel (1822), whom Traill also describes, as well as Henry and Charles, born a year apart (1825 and 1826), but effectively reworked as twins by Traill in her narrative. The second son, James, who also features in this story, accompanied the Moodies to Canada. The Bird parents have been mentioned in most contemporary bio- graphical accounts of the Strickland sisters, since some of their cor- respondence has survived.4 In comparison, the Fenns, the Stricklands’ economic and social inferiors, have merited no attention. Yet, though the Stricklands appear to have drawn rarely on the Birds for subject matter (Susanna Moodie being the primary exception in her depiction of young James Bird), the Fenns proved to be more tempting.5 The Fenn men in particular seem to have held a certain imaginative resonance for the Strickland sisters. The eldest, Eliza, wrote a sketch of John Fenn at an early age (Gray 337). Born in 1786, he was probably the first Fenn whom the Strickland family encountered when they relocated to Suffolk in the early nineteenth century.6 John’s son, Peter, born in 1816, also appears to have made an impression, as Agnes, the second sister, “bor- rowed” the name Peter Fenn for a character in her short story “Dorcas and Peter Piper, the Village Valentines.”7 Including “The True History,” Traill invoked the Fenns three times in print, including in Fables for the Nursery, in which “Fen, the rat-catcher,” is summoned with his fer- ret to catch and kill the mice that have wreaked havoc in the pantry (83). In Traill’s Little Downy: Or, The History of a Field Mouse (1822), a farmer bids “Fen, the rat-catcher, come, and bring all his dogs with him” to clear the mice from his field (2). Traill further named John Fenn in her unpublished recollections. In all of the stories by Traill in which he is named, Fenn is never a character so much as a plot device, his supporting role mirroring the class position that he occupied in real Catharine Parr Traill 233 life. Nonetheless, this does not mean that Traill was inattentive to the Fenns. Although she appears to confuse the Fenn father (John) and son (Peter) in the story reprinted here, it is notable that, after thirty-five years abroad, she correctly recalls the names of John’s children: Peter, John, Frederick, and Emma can all be positively identified. The clarity with which John Fenn, rat catcher, remained in the Strickland sisters’ minds can be related to the frequency with which he called at Reydon Hall, their Suffolk home. As one regular visitor and family friend recalled, “It must have been, now I come to think of it, a dismal old house, suggestive of rats and dampness and mould, that Reydon Hall, with its scantily furnished rooms and its unused attics and its empty barns and stables, with a general air of decay all over the place, inside and out” (Ritchie 43). Traill went further, describing “the noises made by rats or the wind” in the attic (Pearls 158). Any family so plagued would have had frequent recourse to the services that John provided.
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