Other Selves by Janice Fiamengo

Author:Janice Fiamengo [Fiamengo, Janice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT004080
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
Published: 2007-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

I wonder if you will think my common-sense discredited if I say that I hold certain notions not utterly remote from Spiritualism! Don’t think I am at all in sympathy with that fantastic stuff which charlatans have found so conducive to their trickery. But I do believe that the physical change called death interposes between ourselves and those who have passed ahead a less absolute barrier than is generally supposed. It has seemed to me at times, & in private, that the barrier was quite thin! (7 March 1895; Letters 195)

This short passage suggests that Roberts had more than a cursory knowledge of occult movements. His use of such terminology as the thin “barrier” between life and death and the mere “physical change” brought by death demonstrates that he was familiar with the teachings of Spiritualism and the vocabulary of its practitioners. Furthermore, his reference to the “charlatans” and their “trickery” reveals that he was aware of the public outcry over fraudulent Spiritualist mediums that had plagued the movement since its beginnings in the 1840s.

Soon after writing to Ward, Roberts resigned from his position at King’s College and returned to Fredencion. Earth’s Enigmas was published a few months later, and much to his delight it sold quickly: he mentions in a letter to Snowdon Sun Scott, editor of the Saint John Sun, that after only six weeks it had “run through its first edition & a second edition is now in press” (27 April 1896; Letters 222). It was also warmly received by reviewers: William Morton Payne, writing in The Dial, declares that the stories are “noteworthy for their artistic finish and poetic feeling” (338). Similarly, The Bookman describes both it and Duncan Campbell Scott’s In the Village of Viger as “experiments in prose,” commenting that stories such as “Do Seek Their Meat from God” and “The Perdu” are “close to the mystery of life in the forest and lonely places” (366). More compelling is Francis Sherman’s review in The Canadian Magazine, in which he characterizes “The Perdu” as “a strange, beautiful story which…is surely more symbolic than the tales of realism are wont to be” (180). He also suggests that it has “a higher, newer meaning than anything that the greater of the realists have ever attempted” (180). As for Roberts, he considered it one of his most accomplished collections. He notes in a letter to Walter McRaye thirty-four years after its initial publication that “I shall love to have that extra copy of Earth’s Enigmas, Bless you. It contains some of my most significant yarns. Instance ‘The Perdu.’ The critics all miss the ‘enigmatic’ note, —because I dont[sic] stress it, as I dont[sic] like to be obvious” (24 November 1929; Letters 389). This letter indicates that throughout his life, Roberts remained convinced that his most significant narratives were those in which he struck an enigmatic, occult note.

What immediately strikes the reader is the collection’s title page design and the framed image that appears on it (Figure 1), which indicate Roberts’s preoccupation with myth and the mysteries of life.

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