The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (667 page)

At present she was staying beside Lake Ontario, but Mazo often recalled her past vacations beside Lake Simcoe, as well as her earliest years in Newmarket. She had good reason to be nostalgic, for the places and people of her childhood and youth had disappeared almost entirely.

The farm south of Newmarket where Mazo’s Grandpa Lundy had been born and raised had been sold out of the family in 1920 while Mazo and Caroline were mourning the deaths of Bertie Roche and James Harvey Clement. Three years later, in 1923, Mazo’s Uncle Danford Roche had died, as had the last of Caroline’s paternal uncles, Uncle David Clement.

And now Uncle David Clement’s widow and children were selling his land, which included the frame house that Grandfather Clement had built almost one century earlier. Uncle David’s children did not want to farm.

The last of the Willson sisters, Aunt Mary (Willson) Rogerson, had died in 1924. And now Aunt Mary’s only son was selling that land too. He did not want to farm either.

Uncle David Clement and Aunt Mary Rogerson both lay in the pioneer Clement Cemetery now. How well Mazo remembered the view from the gates of that cemetery!

Mazo imagined herself standing at the gates of the Clement Cemetery with her back to the frame house built by Grandfather Clement. She imagined that the old red-brick house of Great-great-grandfather Lundy was behind her back instead. She imagined that the 1828 Lundy house was superimposed on the property that Grandfather Clement had acquired from the Crown in 1828.

Combining the Lundy house and Clement land was a way of expressing the sisterhood that Mazo and Caroline felt and lived, even though they were just cousins. It was a way of saying that Caroline Clement had become a Lundy – almost.

Mazo remembered that in the old days in Cherry Creek, there was Willsons’ Hill and Clements’ Hill. She imagined that the Willsons were called the Vaughans, and the Clements, blended with the Lundys, were called the Whiteoaks.

Mazo remembered that there was still one last Clement grandson and one last Willson grandson farming in the old Cherry Creek district of Innisfil Township – now called Fennell.

The Clement grandson, Robert Clement, farmed half of Grandfather Clement’s original eighty-hectare grant from the Crown. The Willson grandson, Norman Willson, farmed the forty hectares of Grandfather Willson.

These last grandsons – cousins of Mazo and Caroline – were symbols to Mazo of a passing way of life. The other grandchildren were scattered from Buffalo, New York to Vancouver, British Columbia. They were working as everything from marine engineer to forester.

The fictional characters, Renny Whiteoak and Maurice Vaughan, would also be symbols for a passing way of life. A traditional life. A life that revolved around the seasons of the year. A life that was tied to the land. Land that was handed down from father to son…

The Clements loved horses… Of course Will Roche had loved horses too. And dogs even more than horses…

That clinched it! Renny Whiteoak must be a horse-and-dog man! He must raise thoroughbred horses! And he must own purebred dogs.

Renny would not hunt foxes like the wealthy did. He would be fox-like himself, lodged in his comfortable old home as a fox is lodged in his burrow. Renny would not be rich. He would be hounded by creditors…

Mazo also thought about the place where she and Caroline were now staying and the people who lived there. Trail Cottage, which was little more than a shack, was located near a stately house called Benares. Benares, named after a military station in India, had been built about seventy years earlier by a Captain James Harris. Oddly, Benares reminded Mazo of the lost past of Caroline and herself.

Like the home of Grandfather Clement, Benares was located a few kilometres away from an Anglican church named St. Peter’s. Also like the home of Grandfather Clement, Benares was located a few kilometres away from a large lake. Like the home of Great-great-grandfather Lundy (and that of Great-grandfather Clement in Niagara), Benares was of Georgian or Colonial style. Actually, Benares had a similar floor plan to the home of Great-great-grandfather Lundy; it was also made of red brick; and its grounds were very similar in size, shape, and topography!

Mazo decided that, like the real Captain James Harris, the fictional Captain Philip Whiteoak had named his Canadian home after his home in India. Mazo’s Great-great-grandfather Bryan
might
have gone to India with the British army. After all, he had been in the Royal Artillery. So why not have Grandfather Philip Whiteoak stationed in India before he emigrated to Canada? It sounded exotic and suggested the vastness of the British Empire in the nineteenth century. What’s more, it offered a possibility for a catchy title.

Mazo chose the name “Jalna” from a list of British military stations in India provided by a man in Caroline’s government department. “Jalna” was short and looked good when Mazo wrote it out.

In 1925 and 1926, while Mazo was working on the novel she titled
Jalna
, she was not altogether isolated. In both Toronto and Clarkson, Mazo and Caroline had friends whom they visited regularly. In Toronto, Mazo was still a member of several writers’ organizations, including the Canadian Authors Association, and by now she was acquainted with well-known writers such as Morley Callaghan, Raymond Knister, and Charles G.D. Roberts. In Clarkson, there were the Livesays for companionship: not only Fred and Florence but also Dorothy, their precocious older daughter, a poet. Dorothy Livesay, born in 1909, began attending university in Toronto in the fall of 1926. She would go on to become one of Canada’s foremost poets.

Mazo finished
Jalna
late in 1926, shortly after she and Caroline moved to a new, upstairs flat at 86 Yorkville Avenue in Toronto, a house owned by Gertrude Pringle, a niece of Ernest Thompson Seton, the famous Canadian author of
Wild Animals I Have Known
. Pringle herself was the author of a book about etiquette.

Mazo ended
Jalna
with a scene featuring the oldest member of the Whiteoak clan, Gran Whiteoak. The old matriarch, Adeline Whiteoak, is celebrating her onehundredth birthday. Surrounded by her family, she is sitting in a “pool of serene radiance.” Over her shoulders is a “black velvet cloak, lined with crimson silk.” Her hands, “glittering with rings,” are “resting on the top of her gold-headed ebony stick.”

Gran Whiteoak is rich and cunning, as well as old. Throughout the novel she has kept her family in suspense as to who will inherit her fortune.

Renny Whiteoak, almost forty and Gran’s oldest grandson, is the prime candidate to inherit. He has already inherited the house and grounds from his deceased father, Gran’s third and youngest son, Philip Whiteoak Junior. Renny is the manager of the estate and the head of the family. But is Renny worthy of his authoritative position? True, the other candidates all have obvious flaws: Eden is unfeeling and unfaithful, Piers is ignorant and headstrong, Finch is strange and awkward, and Wakefield is selfish and insincere. But Renny is not perfect either. He seems to care more about horses and dogs than people. He has not been tested in love.

In the early chapters of
Jalna
, two of the younger Whiteoak brothers, both in their twenties, suddenly marry. Farmer Piers elopes with lovely Pheasant Vaughan, the girl next door whom he secretly meets in the wooded ravine. But Pheasant is the illegitimate daughter of Maurice Vaughan, who was once engaged to Meg Whiteoak, when he and Meg were young. Meg had called off her marriage to Maurice because of the birth of Pheasant!… Then poet Eden wins the sophisticated Alayne Archer in New York City. But Eden is a cynical scoundrel.

Outraged at Piers’s betrayal, Meg, now middleaged but still angry with Maurice, leaves Jalna in protest. Then Finch, an intense, artistic adolescent, is horrified to discover that Eden is dallying with Pheasant. Finch tells on the adulterers. Piers’s marriage to Pheasant is damaged, and Eden’s marriage to Alayne is destroyed. Piers forgives Pheasant, and Eden flees. Now Renny can openly express his secret love for Alayne. But will he?

Mazo sent the manuscript of
Jalna
to Macmillan, her usual publisher, and it was accepted. But before the type was set, Mazo heard about an international competition being jointly sponsored by the
Atlantic Monthly
(a magazine) and Little, Brown, and Company (a book publisher), both based in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. The closing date of the competition was February 17, 1927. Macmillan released the manuscript so Mazo could enter the competition.

In Boston, the first reader of Mazo’s manuscript was a librarian from the Boston Public Library. She did not like
Jalna
.

“This is the story of a large love-making family in Canada, dominated by the old grandmother,” reported the librarian. “The brothers have unseemly affairs with their sisters-in-law, and there is quite a lot about the stable, including the odour. Not recommended.”

Jalna
became a contender for the prize only after Edward Weeks, a member of the editorial board of the
Atlantic Monthly
, picked up the manuscript because he was intrigued by its title and impressed by its professional typing. He read it and liked it. He passed it to the other readers.

Over the next two months, the field of 1117 entries was narrowed to twelve, then six, and then one unanimous choice.

In the spring of 1927, Mazo received congratulations in the form of telegrams and bouquets from acquaintances, a letter from Prime Minister Mackenzie King, and dinner invitations from important institutions. At the most impressive dinner, the City of Toronto gave Mazo a silver tea service. Mazo thanked the City of Toronto, and called it the city of her birth. (This was a little white lie.) Then Charles CD. Roberts toasted Mazo and thanked her for having “proved beyond a doubt that there actually is something called Canadian literature.”

At another dinner, the Arts and Letters Club gave Mazo a life-sized portrait of Bunty. (Mazo cherished the portrait for years.)

In the fall of the same year,
Jalna
was advertised in every important newspaper in the United States and Canada. On October 7, the book was published. Within a month, eighty-five thousand copies sold.
Jalna
went on selling extraordinarily well. Mazo, already rich from the prize, rapidly earned a fortune from royalties. Happily, her money troubles were over.

Unhappily, her nervous troubles soon returned. After her 1927 win, Mazo became a public figure. This meant she had to deal with many people very often, something she found difficult.

When her publishers asked for a photo of her, Mazo sent a snapshot taken when she was in hiding in Niagara Falls before the
Jalna
win was announced. Bunty in the foreground and the Spirella Corset factory in the background looked fine, but Mazo in the middle did not look like a winner.