The Story of Sonny Sahib (1894; 1895), by Sara Jeannette Duncan

In January of 1895, a reviewer for the British journal The Academy waxed eloquent about the delights of Duncan’s The Story of Sonny Sahib, which had just been released in book form.

And oh, what a relief to turn from this dismalness [Miss Theo Gift’s Wrecked at the Outset] to Mrs. Everard Cote’s charming, winsome, and every way delightful Story of Sonny Sahib! True, it begins somberly in the darkest days of the great Mutiny, but after the first sad chapter there is nothing but brightness and grace and beauty. It is a very slight, filling little more than a hundred small pages, and perhaps the restoration of the brave little Sonny Sahib to the father who had believed himself childless as well as widowed reads more like a fairy-tale than like a transcript from the life of every day; but, then, in the India of a generation ago fairy-takes sometimes came true, and whether true or not they are very welcome after even a short course of contemporary realism. The Story of Sonny Sahib can be read easily between, say, London and Brighton in the fastest train, and it will make that or any other hour brief with pleasantness. — Review of The Story of Sonny Sahib. The Academy (5 Jan. 1895): 10.

The novel began its life as a submission to a story competition that was subsequently serialized in The Youth’s Companion (Boston) between 12 July and 16 August 1894. It is a simple tale of the bravery of a young British boy, saved by his ayah during the Sepoy Rebellion, and reunited with his father after revealing his honourable British character. The trope was not new; the best example is perhaps Kipling’s Kim, published seven years later, in 1901. (I’ve always wondered to what extent Kipling knew Duncan’s work. They were both journalists working in India, but as far as I am aware they never met: Duncan lived India after her marriage to Everard Cotes in December of 1890; Kipling left India in 1889. Duncan was in Calcutta in the spring of 1889, however, so who knows… but there is no documented evidence of a meeting.)

Given the jingoism of the story, Sonny Sahib is not one of Duncan’s most admirable of works. It is interesting as a collection of stereotypes but, as a children’s story, is sadly unrelieved by Duncan’s characteristic irony. It is nevertheless interesting to see the differences between the six-chapter serialized version, posted here (page images and searchable pdf, and the ten-chapter published version, available through the Internet Archive project.

 

 

A letter from Sara Jeannette Duncan

This morning I received an email from Debra Martens, author of the Canadian Writers Abroad blog, who shares my interest in Sara Jeannette Duncan. Debra has found a fascinating item on sale on AbeBooks: “Autograph Letter Signed by Duncan Jeannette.” Which is to say, a letter purportedly written by Sara Jeannette Duncan on Ladies’ Empire Club letterhead, but with no date and an illegible addressee.

The text of the letter is as follows:

Dear Lady [Mullin?] Thanks for your note. I hope dear A’s things are now safely sailing through the Bay under my berth. Do come in to tea tomorrow, here, about five. I shall be in and expecting you; but if you can’t, let me know. I am off on Thurs – and won’t, I fear, have another chance of seeing you.

And it is signed, as much of her correspondence was, “S.J. Cotes.”

We can extrapolate the date and location from the letterhead and the comment “Do come in to tea tomorrow, here,” As Duncan stayed in the Ladies’ Empire Club in February 1904. She had been in Canada in December of 1903, and was back in Simla, India, in March 1904. That is not to say that she didn’t stay at the LEC on some other occasion, but Marian Fowler’s research, such as it is, suggests not (Redney: A Life of Sara Jeannette Duncan, Toronto, Anansi Press, 1983), and I have found no conflicting evidence.

The bookseller is Robert Wright Books, in Tamworth, Ontario, and one wonders how the letter made its way there… and also who is going to come up with the asking price of $300. Were I in Ontario, though, I would certainly be going for a visit to Tamworth to see the actual letter, and compare the writing against the letters I do have scans of. And oh, if only I had $300 to spare for such delightful ephemera!

If any of you buy it, please let us know!

The Ladies’ Empire Club, c1992, photo by Karyn Huenemann

“A Forgotten Grief,” by Sara Jeannette Duncan

“Duncan, Sara Jeannette. “A Forgotten Grief.” Later Canadian Poems. Ed. J. E. Wetherell. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1893. 186-87.

A Forgotten Grief

“It Might Have Been,” by Sara Jeannette Duncan

Duncan, Sara.  “It Might Have Been.” Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review 5 (Sept 1880): 290.

Today is the 121st anniversary of the marriage of Sarah Janet Duncan to Everard Charles Cotes, Professor of Entomology, Indian Museum, in Calcutta, India.  A poem by Sara Jeannette Duncan in their honour…

This poem was published while Sara Duncan was living as a teacher in Strathroy, Ontario. It is the only published piece signed in Strathroy that we have found.

 

“A Minister of Grace,” by Sara Jeannette Duncan

Duncan, Sara.  “A Minister of Grace.” Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review 5 (Dec 1880): 627.

A Minister of Grace

We call thee Sympathy, in our rude tongue,
Discerning not they lovelier, heaven-giv’n name
Whereby the angels know thee. In no wise
May we command thee—thou art subtly born
Of soul-similitude, or common grief;
Yet souls for lack of thee must daily die!
Thou lurkest in the warmth of clasping hands,
The inner life of human brotherhood,
And often shinest glorious in a tear!
Thou sharest half, and soothest all, their pain,
And from the depths men mutely cry to thee,
All empty-hearted if thou comest not!

“Autumn,” by Sara Jeannette Duncan

Duncan, Sara.  “Autumn.” Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review 5 (Nov 1880): 494.

“Conscious,” By Sara Jeannette Duncan

Duncan, Sara.  “Conscious.” Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review 7 (1881): 417.

Conscious

To know a song of songs in all the air,
And strive in vain to catch the echoes faint!
To love in truth, a flower surpassing fair,
Yet lose its perfectness with blind restraint!

To hate this darkness and to long for light,
Yet grovel closer to our shadowy earth!
Essay, with sparrow’s wings, the eagle’s flight,
What boon is knowledge of our own unworth?

The untold sweetness of the flower and song
Hath here a herald. A glad hope that we,
Rejoicing in full noontide, shall be strong,
Whispers the secret of futurity!

Adelaide Hunter and her Far-Flung Relatives

As promised, here is the fourth of our “Adventures in Research,” previously published on the now-defunct CWRC project blog.

Adelaide Hunter Hoodless and Amelia Hunter Tennant

by Karyn Huenemann

Adelaide Hoodless, portrait hung at the Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead

This is a bit of a shaggy dog story, so I hope you will bear with me; the way it weaves in and out of past and present peoples’ lives brings me back to one of my favourite epigraphs, E. M. Forster’s “Only connect…”

This year [the original post was published on 20 November 2012] marks the 200^th anniversary of the War of 1812, a moment in history that has always interested me greatly. Notable is that many of the battles between 1812 and 1814 took place in Brant County, Ontario, a location that has similarly always interested me greatly. At a Children’s Literature conference down in North Carolina in 2007, I met fellow academic Dr. Lisa Wood, now a close friend, who lives in Brantford and teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University. Putting these details together, it is not surprising that last September I pulled my history-loving daughter from school and travelled across to Brantford ostensibly to see a historical reenactment of the Battle of Malcolm’s Mill, the last battle of the war fought on Canadian soil.

My daughter was very patient with my concomitant design of visiting the homes and haunts of the myriad of, as she calls them, “dead women writers” who hailed from the Brantford area. My interest in Brantford began over 20 years ago when I discovered Sara Jeannette Duncan, but the more I learned about early Canadian women writers, the more fascinated I became with the seeming coincidence that so many Canadian “female first” achievers came from Brant County: not only Sara Jeannette Duncan, but also E. Pauline Johnson, Emily and Augusta Stowe, June Callwood, and Adelaide Hoodless. There are others, I know; I have not compiled a comprehensive list, although I would love to.

The evening after we arrived in Brantford, Lisa (whose historical period is the 18^th century) called in her early Canadian Literature expert and friend, Dr. Kate Carter, whose name many of you may know, as she worked on the Orlando Project. Over tea—or was it wine?—we drew up our game plan. During the discussion, Lisa casually mentioned: “oh, yes, Adelaide Hoodless: she’s a relative of mine…” and my spidey senses began to tingle…

Adelaide Sophia Hunter (1857-1910) was born at what is now the Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead near St. George, Brant County, national headquarters for the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada, the first branch of which Hoodless was instrumental in founding. Her father died shortly after her birth, and her mother struggled to keep the homestead running, while still managing to educate her children. Adelaide moved in with her older sister, Lizzie, while attending “Ladies’ College,” where she met John Hoodless, who became her husband. Their fourth child, John (1888-1889), died in infancy, apparently from tainted milk. Adelaide Hoodless took it upon herself to campaign for better attention to sanitation in the delivery of milk in urban settings; from there, her career as a domestic science educator and an activist for women’s education took off. In addition to a number of articles and government publications, she published Public School Domestic Science in 1898, “a compilation of recent scientific findings derived from the application of chemistry to the understanding of food values, preservation, and preparation” (DCB), aimed at prospective teachers.

Adelaide and John Hoodless

Lisa’s great-great-grandmother, it turns out, had been adopted by Adelaide Hoodless’s sister Amelia. Lisa had tried to discover more, but the records were sketchy and inconclusive. Even the Dictionary of Canadian Biography notes that Adelaide was the youngest of 12 children, a list (found in family records on ancestry.ca) that does not include an Amelia. When we visited the Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead, the director remembered Lisa from their shared attempts at discovering more about the elusive Amelia, whom even the historians at this National Historical Site were not 100% sure was not apocryphal. Intrigued, and loving a mystery, as well as helping others, and of course playing on ancestry.ca, I promised to try to track down a real, documented connection between Adelaide Hoodless, the seemingly non-existent Amelia, and Lisa’s great-great-grandmother, Mary MacKay.

Late into the night, Lisa and I poured over ancestry.ca. We telephoned her mother to get all the details she could remember about who married whom in Mary MacKay’s more immediate circle, including the name of the adopting family (verified by the historian at the Adelaide Hoodless Homestead): Tennant. Eventually, we found what we were looking for: a Mary MacKay listed on the 1881 Census of Canada as living with James and Amelia Tennant and their 5 children, in Toronto. From there, we traced Mary MacKay’s line to her immigration to the United States, and virtually met her descendants searching back up their family tree into Canada. Mary married an American man named Solon Washington Barnes, and we even have photographs of her husband and son, as well as records of all of her other children. Significantly for my friend Lisa, Mary MacKay bore Gertrude Barnes in 1897; who bore Gertrude Buckle in 1916; who in turn bore Mary Kerpan in 1937; and Mary Kerpan is my friend Lisa’s mother.

Solon Barnes, Junior

But we had travelled a long way from Adelaide Hoodless, which is of course where my interest began and still lay. The shaggy dog has travelled all the way from a small homestead near St. George, Ontario, in the 1850s to Michigan, USA, and back to Brantford, Ontario, so close to where it all began. In tracing this web of relations, we discovered that—despite the Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry—Adelaide Sophia Hunter Hoodless was born on 27 February 1857, youngest of possibly 13 children* of David Hunter and Jane Hamilton of St. George, Brant County, Ontario. It feels satisfying to have solved a mystery that others have wondered about for years; I love ancestry.ca.

(*Two boys appear in family records, both born in 1853: Joseph (1863-1913) and George. We can find no record of George on ancestry.ca, so he either never existed or is a twin who didn’t survive until the 1861 census.)

 

“Pauline Johnson,” by Margaret Fairley

Even in 1954, female critics were lamenting the exclusion of Canada’s Early Women Writers from the canon of Canadian literature, such as it existed at that time. In this 1954 article in the magazine New Frontiers, Margaret Fairley tells us that E. Pauline Johnson, now recognized as an iconic early Canadian poet, was “cold-shouldered by the clique of poets and novelists who [were[ more at home with the cosmopolitan writers of the United States and Britain than with the people of Canada.”

Yet the number of our authors who have written articles on Johnson, published contemporaneously or long after her death, speaks to her popularity throughout the decades; Sara Jeannette Duncan even interviewed her for the Toronto Globe in 1886. As with so many early women writers, modern critical interest in E. Pauline Johnson is finally restoring her to her rightful place within her national literature. This article by Margaret Fairley was part of the movement towards such restoration.

One again, I have posted images of the pages as well as a searchable pdf of the article. The two poems included are by E. Pauline Johnson.

CEWW is awarded a Canada 150 grant

2017 is Canada’s sesquicentenary. In celebration, the federal government has made available a number of grants to help make the world more aware of Canada’s history as well as Canada as the nation we have become. Thanks to the hard work of Carole Gerson (any of you who have filled in a SSHRC grant application will fully appreciate the degree of commitment here), the Canada’s Early Women Writers project received a grant to extend our work.

While the bio-bibliographical database over at CWRC continues to develop, we have added a new, simpler database project. With technical contributions from the Digital Humanities Innovations Lab at Simon Fraser Library, we are building a database of all of the authors that we have identified, regardless of how much—or how little—we know about them. This new database will include authors’ names; alternate names; birth and death dates and places; residences; books written; books, anthologies, collections, and periodicals contributed to; and a note field. The site will include a feedback mechanism, so we will be able to update the data, adding or correcting as necessary. Sometimes all we have is a pseudonym and the fact that the author contributed to the Canadian Poetry Magazine; sometimes that is enough for an interested member of the general public to identify her. And off we go…

In addition to being a repository of disparate but connected gems of data, the database will permit facetted searches. This means that you can find, for example, all of the women who published in The Week magazine and were born in Brantford, Ontario, between 1860 and 1870. Interesting fact (and, obviously, why I chose this example): that would include both Sara Jeannette Duncan and E. Pauline Johnson.

Here is the office announcement of the Canada 150 grant, on the SFU website. Further announcements will be made once the database is available to the public. We’re cleaning up the data now, so it shouldn’t be too long. I hope.