Highways of Canadian Literature

by J. D. Logan; Donald G. French

A minor species of the Historical Novel is found in the novel of pioneer life which seeks to put into a permanent record pioneer experiences and conditions of sometimes considerably less than a century ago. Adeline M. Teskey did this for the Niagara Peninsula and the building of the first Welland Canal with In Candlelight Days (1914). Archie McKishnie told of the conflict of the ‘bushwhacker,’ who delighted in the freedom of the woods and streams, with the incoming tide of settlement in Love of the Wild, drawing upon the historic figure of Colonel Talbot for some of his characterization. Anison North blends a colorful picture of the enjoyment of outdoor life with a pioneer line fence feud in her Carmichael. In Kinsmen Percival J. Cooney relates a strange story of Scottish feudalism—an example of the clan system with its autocratic laird—which actually existed in Canada.

Few Canadian writers have found leisure to follow the example of Gilbert Parker in writing Historical Fiction in Old World settings, but this has quite recently been done in a highly distinctive style in novels appearing over the signature—‘E. Barrington.’ The Ladies, semi-historical stories of the eighteenth century; The Chaste Diana, a story of Polly Peacham of ‘Beggar’s Opera’ fame; The Divine Lady (1924) tells the love-story of Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton.

5. Imaginative Fiction.

In one sense all fiction is imaginative. There is, however, a species in which pure imagination plays a much greater part than in the Community Novel, in Historical Fiction, or in the other types discussed in this chapter. Marjorie Pickthall’s work is the highest example of this. She wrote, not with the reproductive imagination nor with fancy, but with the faculty defined by Matthew Arnold as imaginative reason. Into the texture of her fiction she wove poetic imagination and poetic significance derived from her clear, absolute, and sympathetic understanding of the human heart and of the hidden springs and the meaning of existence, from her superior and inclusive sympathetic intelligence. Thus she was enabled to write stories of the most varied settings and of the most wildly differing characters with equal convincingness.

Little Hearts (1915), is an engaging tale of the days of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ with its conflict chiefly between loyalty to the Crown, and fidelity to the spirit of humanity. It pictures ‘little hearts,’ men of small fortunes, and small (as the world sees it) ambitions, in their pathetic existence, more pathetic because of finely brave in the midst of many both petty and heroic vicissitudes of fortune, of mean victory and noble defeat. The novel preaches no didactic moral but it silently teaches Christ’s philosophy of struggle and defeat—‘He that loseth his life shall find it.’ It impresses unforgettably how little after all are the greatest hearts, and how little we lose or gain in any defeat or triumph which is merely earthly defeat or triumph.

The Bridge (1922), has the same theme, with the pain and cruelty of love, of unfulfilled seeking, and the final triumph of a soul that saved itself by losing itself in inward self-knowledge and self-sacrifice. It is set against a background of the tremendous beauty of the Great Lakes, scenes of storm on land and water. Technically, it is farther from perfection than Little Hearts; it has less structural unity, less smoothness of style. At times the emotional situations seem overdrawn; nor are atmosphere and setting definitively localized.

The collection of short stories—Angel’s Shoes (1922)—embodies examples of Miss Pickthall’s perfect artistry as a short story writer. These stories are clear, vivid, colorful, and of almost the highest type of creative imagination. They may lack, occasionally, a warmth of humanity that is present in the work of other writers of poorer craftsmanship.

Less distinctive but belonging to the few Canadian novels of this class is The Window Gazer, by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, a romance of a man who ‘fell in love with his wife.’ Blended with the characteristics of the novel of pure imagination there are here slight touches of the Realistic Romance and the Community Novel. A somewhat curious literary phenomena is found in Mists of the Morning by this same writer, which began in the style of the Imaginative Novel and ended as a Realistic Romance.

6. Some Miscellaneous Types.

To the ranks of the Animal Romancers this period has added at least one writer who approaches the subject in a new way. The attitude was apparent in the nature passages of Gaff Linkum (1907) and became more a quality of Archie McKishnie’s work as he continued to write short stories and novels of animal life. We find it crystallized in Openway (1923). Roberts is the intellectual animal psychologist; Thompson Seton, the literary scientist; W. A. Fraser, the objective story teller; but Archie McKishnie impresses us with the sense of his comradeship with the creatures of the marsh, the wood, and the stream. He is their interpreter but not as an outside observer. He lives with them, loves them, protects them. Thus when he writes animal stories he rises to his best literary style and achieves a beauty and smoothness that is not always found in his other writing.