Sisters in the Wilderness by Charlotte Gray

Author:Charlotte Gray
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780143168362
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2000-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The Secrets of the Prison House

I n the spring of 1847, a stout figure, in black bonnet and shawl, made her way east across the bridge over Belleville’s Moira River. Susanna Moodie paused for a few minutes to watch the French-Canadian raftsmen, armed with long poles, leap from log to log as they steered rafts of timber through the foaming waters below her. Susanna’s sense of fashion had not deserted her in her mid-forties: as photos from this period show, she enjoyed wearing the latest style of collar on her dark gowns, and her hair was carefully dressed. But the years of hardship had taken their toll on her looks, as they had on her sister’s: the auburn in her hair had faded, deep grooves stretched from her nose to the corners of her mouth, and her thin lips were set in a straight, grim line. The lids of her deep-set brown eyes drooped; her shoulders hunched forward as she leaned over the balustrade of the bridge. The sight of the turbulent water brought back unhappy memories of Johnnie’s death only three years earlier. She quickly moved on, her chin thrust forward in the sharp wind. Once she reached Front Street, she turned north, ignoring the large sign over the first building she passed, advertising in large letters, “Intelligencer: George Benjamin, proprietor.” Susanna was on her way to see Belleville’s other proprietor and publisher, Joseph Wilson.

Joseph Wilson was the owner-manager of the Victoria Bookstore on Front Street. He had first appeared in Belleville around 1843 when he’d set up a bookbinding business and printing press. He loved the book trade and was eager to become a publisher as well as a distributor. In the mid-1840s he decided that the colony was ripe for some home-grown publications, and he started a whole batch of periodicals, under such titles as Wilson’s Experiment and Wilson’s Canada Casket. They were done on the cheap—Wilson just stuck into their pages any stories or news items that came his way. But his ambition was always to get on his payroll Belleville’s best-known writer, whose work was now appearing regularly in publications on both sides of the border.

The citizens of Belleville held in awe this accomplished woman who smoked a clay pipe as she hoed her vegetable garden or scattered seed for the hens in the backyard. But Susanna was also a controversial figure. First there was her treatment of George Benjamin in her widely circulated story “Richard Redpath. A Tale.” Then there was the Moodies’ troubled relationship with the new Congregationalist Church that they had helped to found in 1844. Apparently the couple had been considered a little too keen to argue church doctrine, and reluctant to perform church duties. They were expelled for their “disorderly walk and neglect of church fellowship”—a mysterious phrase that appears in the church records, which Susanna never explained in her letters or books.

Wilson didn’t care about ornery conduct or small-town gossip: he wanted the famous Mrs. Moodie. But Susanna,

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