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    Susanna Moodie
    Susanna Moodie
    Susanna Moodie
    Ebook177 pages1 hour

    Susanna Moodie

    By Anne Cimon

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    About this ebook

    Susanna Moodie was already a published author when she emigrated from England to Upper Canada with her husband and baby in 1832. The Moodies were seeking financial security and a better life in the colony, but they found themselves struggling to make a living on a bush farm. Despite her primitive life in the backwoods and the demands of caring for her children, Susanna continued to write and publish. In 1852 her best-known book, Roughing It in the Bush, was published in England. A Canadian edition appeared in 1871. Roughing It in the Bush has endured both as a valuable social document of the Canadian pioneer experience and as a work of literature.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDundurn
    Release dateJan 1, 2006
    ISBN9781770706804
    Susanna Moodie
    Author

    Anne Cimon

    Anne Cimon is a writer and poet, living near Montreal, Quebec. She has published four books of poetry. Cimon has also worked as a freelance writer for many years and her book reviews and literary articles have been published in many Canadian and U.S. magazines and newspapers.

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    • 2/5
      While Susanna Moodie: Pioneer, by Anne Cimon does a good job of chronicling the life of this important Canadian historical figure, I felt nothing new was added to the already considerable body of work written about Susanna. Unfortunately Cimon's attempts to humanize and make immediate this remarkable historical woman fail, in my opinion, and therefore diminish the credibility of the work. We are, as readers, given Susanna's dialogue, both external and internal, that reads more like a novel than a biographical exploration.And while Cimon may have chronicled Susanna's life very well, there are other historical details, minor if I'm to be truthful, that further diminish the credibility of the work. There is a scene where Susanna sits to table before an assortment of pies, currant, cherry, pumpkin and others, which, as any domestic aficionado would know, is unlikely, given the range of harvest periods for these fruits and inability to preserve these goods, especially on the frontier, in a form that would allow for the making of these sorts of pie fillings. And this is just one of several instances of a lack of detailed knowledge of the gritty realities of day to day pioneer life.It remains, for me, that if a person wishes to read about Susanna Moodie, the best possible recourse is to read her own words.Apologies, Anne, I wish I could have been more positive.

    Book preview

    Susanna Moodie - Anne Cimon

    Susanna Moodie, 1803-1885.

    Anne Cimon

    Anne Cimon is a Montreal literary journalist and poet. Her articles and reviews have appeared in such publications as Books in Canada and the Montreal Review of Books. Her interest and research in nineteenth-century literature is reflected in her articles and inspired a series of poems in her book No Country for Women (Mosaic Press, 1993) on the nature writer Henry David Thoreau.

    She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Concordia University in 1993 with a Specialization in English Literature. In 2002, she won a prize from the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick for her essay on the Canadian poet Irving Layton whom she studied with. Her first book A Skin of Snow, a collection of poetry and prose, appeared in 1981 when she lived in Toronto. She has published two bilingual books that reflect her French heritage: All We Need/Tout ce qu’il faut (Borealis Press, 2002) and An Angel Around the Corner/ Un ange autour du coin (Borealis Press, 2004).

    THE QUEST LIBRARY

    is edited by

    Rhonda Bailey

    The Editorial Board is composed of

    Lynne Bowen

    Janet Lunn

    T.F Rigelhof

    Editorial correspondence:

    Rhonda Bailey, Editorial Director

    XYZ Publishing

    P.O. Box 250

    Lantzville, BC

    V0R 2H0

    E-mail: xyzed@shaw.ca

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    Susanna Moodie

    ANNE CIMON

    Susanna

    MOODIE

    PIONEER AUTHOR

    Copyright © 2006 Anne Cimon and XYZ Publishing.

    All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

    Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

    Cimon, Anne

           Susanna Moodie: pioneer author

           (The Quest library; 28)

           Includes bibliographical references and index.

           ISBN-13: 978-1-894852-19-7

           ISBN-10: 1-894852-19-2

           1. Moodie, Susanna, 1803-1885. 2. Frontier and pioneer life – Ontario. 3. Ontario – Social life and customs – 19th century. 4. Authors, Canadian (English) – 19th century – Biography. I. Title II. Series: Quest library ; 28.

    PS8426.063Z62 2006          C813’3.          C2006-940992-7

    PS9426.063Z62 2006

    Legal Deposit: Fourth quarter 2006

    Library and Archives Canada

    Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

    XYZ Publishing acknowledges the support of The Quest Library project by the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the Government of Canada.

    The publishers further acknowledge the financial support our publishing program receives from The Canada Council for the Arts, the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles.

    Chronology: Clarence Karr

    Index: Darcy Dunton

    Layout: Édiscript enr.

    Cover design: Zirval Design

    Cover illustration: Magali Lefrançois

    Photo research: Anne Cimon and Rhonda Bailey

    Printed and bound in Canada by AGMV

    (Cap-Saint-Ignace, Québec, Canada) in October 2006.

    International Rights:Contact André Vanasse, tel. (514) 525-2170 # 25

                                        E-mail: andre.vanasse@xyzedit.qc.ca

    To Eileen,

    and always,

    my family

    The Visionary Woman who is intuitive and sees into the future

          reveals messages – sometimes dark prophecies, sometimes

                      visions of light – and is suspect to the rational mind.

          – Linda Schierse Leonard, Meeting the Madwoman

    Contents

    Prologue: A Strange Land

      1 Country Girl

      2 Bluestocking

      3 Enthusiasm and Love

      4 The Crossing

      5 Rough Canadians

      6 Letter to the Governor

      7 Colonial Woes

      8 Fame and Family Rejection

      9 Niagara Falls

    10 Under a Spell

    11 Legacy

    Epilogue: The Dark Angel

    Afterword

    Chronology of Susanna Moodie (1803-1885)

    Sources Consulted

    Index

    Quebec City, lit by an autumnal glow, appeared as a shrine to

    Susanna from the deck of the ship she had been on

    for nine weeks.

    Prologue

    A Strange Land

    I felt that I was a stranger in a strange land; my heart yearned intensely for my absent home. Home! the word had ceased to belong to my present – it was doomed to live for ever in the past; for what emigrant ever regarded the country of his exile as his home?

    – Susanna Moodie, Roughing It in the Bush.

    Susanna, unable to stay in the dank interior of the cabin, had come back on deck for some cool air and a last look at the panorama of Quebec City. She stood tall and straight at the railing of the brig Anne and watched as the moon rose and cast mysterious gleams upon the landscape. Towering pine trees seemed to frown down upon the St. Lawrence River, which flowed rapidly between rugged banks.

    How could she possibly find words to describe this sublime landscape? And yet she felt a familiar pressure, the desire to capture it on paper for others to experience. At twenty-eight, Susanna had left London a well-known literary figure, and she had copies of her first volume of poetry in her luggage. She had married John Dunbar Moodie a little more than a year ago, on April 4, 1831. Now they had a baby, and like hundreds of emigrants from Scotland, Ireland, and Britain who filled the ships anchored in Quebec harbour, they were seeking a better life in the colony of Upper Canada.

    The Anne, jammed between other vessels in the crowded harbour, had suffered serious damage during the night when a larger ship accidentally plowed into its deck. Many of the passengers were awakened by the loud noise and rushed up to see what had happened, Susanna among them.

    What’s all the confusion? Susanna inquired of Captain Rodgers. Surrounded by a group of women who had become hysterical with fear, he couldn’t speak.

    Let the poor man alone, Susanna exclaimed, We must go below deck. We’ll be safer there.

    The force in her voice convinced the dozen or so women to follow her. Susanna hadn’t allowed her own fears to show.

    Let’s pray, she suggested.

    One young woman cried that she didn’t know how to pray.

    Just repeat the words after me.

    And Susanna had begun to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

    Now, a towline had been attached to a huge steamer, which began to tug the Anne out of Quebec harbour. Enveloped in black smoke and flinging red sparks out of its funnel, the steamer resembled some firebreathing demon. Susanna stood at the railing of the Anne and struggled with her anxious thoughts. Will we even reach our next destination, the port of Montreal? she wondered.

    In the darkness she felt like a pilgrim, her head filled with visions, her fate in the hands of Providence, as the ship carried her up the river into a strange new land.

    Thomas Strickland purchased the Elizabethan manor Reydon Hall

    in Suffolk when Susanna was five. She liked to hide in the attic

    to write stories with her sister, Catharine.

    1

    Country Girl

    I am the creature of extremes, the child of impulse and the slave of feeling.

    – Susanna Moodie, Letters of a Lifetime

    Susanna Strickland was born on December 6, 1803, in the village of Bungay, Suffolk, England. She was the sixth daughter of Elizabeth Homer and Thomas Strickland. She followed Eliza, Agnes, Sarah, Jane, and Catharine Parr (named after the sixth wife of Henry VIII). Born sickly, Susanna was quickly baptized at St. Mary’s Anglican Church, for her parents feared the worst. Her given name had a tragic connotation because the name recalled Susanna Butt, Thomas Strickland’s first wife, who had died while giving birth. Her brothers, Samuel and Thomas, followed, to complete the Strickland family.

    For a child with a poetic temperament like Susanna, rural Suffolk was an ideal place to grow up in. Only a few kilometres away in the Lake District, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were leading the Romantic Movement with their Lyrical Ballads. First published in 1798, this volume would later influence Susanna deeply.

    At three years old, Susanna played with her sister’s

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