3. The Realistic Romance.
The rapid expansion of the far West and such spectacular events as the ‘Klondike rush,’ gave a sort of feverish color to a life that previously had appeared one of toil, hardship, and stony endurance. Viewed imaginatively, that life now presented its hectic side, and the far West and the high North were exploited as literary fields of thrill, adventure, and excitement. Thus the second decade of this century saw the rise in Canada of the Realistic Romance. At its best this class of novel resembles the Community type but is speeded up with a more exciting and more complicated plot; at its worst it is lurid melodrama with realism interpreted as the portrayal of the sordid and seamy side of life. Very few of the realistic romances exhibit any distinction of manner and style. They are not concerned with the niceties of the art of telling a story but with the ability to keep the reader constantly keyed up to a high emotional tensity.
The Trail of ’98, by Robert W. Service (1910), is a story of the Yukon, with the spectacular elements of gold-rush days fully emphasised. The qualities of Service’s poetry are accentuated in his fiction. In the same year H. A. Cody began his career as a novelist with another Yukon tale, The Frontiersman. It is a story of love, adventure, and missionary experience. Rod of the Lone Patrol followed in 1912, adding a new fictional element which has been much exploited—the doings of the North West Mounted Police. Cody produced a long series of adventure novels with a variety of settings.
Other writers of the Realistic Romance speedily developed different aspects of Western life or staged their romances in different regions of the Great West or the Far North. We have room only for brief mention of some of the best known writers in this class.
Robert Stead’s novels are chiefly of the prairie farm and ranch—The Bail Jumper (1914), The Homesteader, The Cowpuncher, Dennison Grant, Neighbors. He is effective in reproducing the atmosphere of the prairie, the details of farm and ranch life, and characteristic bits of scenery; his stories are stronger in incident and action than they are in characterization.
Robert Watson began fairly well with My Brave and Gallant Gentleman (1918), a romance of England and British Columbia, that had touches of Borrow and Stevenson, but his later efforts have tended to cast themselves into more stereotyped forms. Robert A. Hood produced two adventure-romances of British Columbia, The Chivalry of Keith Leicester and The Quest of Alistair. Douglas Durkin exploited Manitoba in The Lobstick Trail. ‘Luke Allan’ (Lacey Amy) wrote several stories of cowboy life of which Blue Pete: Half Breed was significant because of the originality and individuality of its leading character.
John Murray Gibbon’s earlier fiction—in Drums Afar and Hearts and Faces—was English in its setting and concerned with psychological problems and studies of Oxford life. In transferring to an American literary habitat, he entered the ranks of the Realistic Romancers. His novel, The Conquering Hero, was a lively, melodramatic story of the Rocky Mountains and British Columbia ranches; while in Pagan Love (1923), he combined a startling mystery with an element of satire on the modern philosophy of business success.
Theodore Goodridge Roberts, younger brother of Charles G. D. Roberts, is essentially a story teller and much of his fiction shows the influence of Weyman and the historical romanticists of the latter years of the nineteenth century. His Brothers in Peril (1905), A Captain of Raleigh’s (1911), and The Harbor Master (1914) are stories of romantic adventure of very early days in Newfoundland, while Jess of the River, Rayton and Forest Fugitives have a setting in rural New Brunswick.
4. Historical Fiction.
The influences that produced the Community Novel gave to the Historical Fiction of this period a closer up view. Instead of the far-off days of the French regime, the historical field of vision became that of but a century or so past and writers essayed to revivify the times and personages of the War of 1812 or the Rebellion of 1837. A noteworthy example is C. H. J. Snider’s stories of the naval engagements on the Great Lakes, In the Wake of the Eighteen-Twelvers. With fine recreative imagination he enables us to live through incidents of daring, gallantry, and romance of these stirring battles. ‘Anison North’ in The Forging of the Pikes gives a realistic picture of Toronto of ’37, of the battle of Montgomery’s Tavern, and a pen-portrait of the rebel leader, Mackenzie. She lets us see ‘both sides of the story’ of the conditions that were responsible for the Rebellion.