Literary History of Nova Scotia

Re-Views of the Literary History of Canada

Part I.—The Significance of Nova Scotia

J.D. Logan

From The Canadian Magazine XLV1II, No. 1, Toronto, November, 1916

Editor’s Note—The present essay and those to follow it will form the second series of  historico-critical articles contributed to The Canadian Magazine by Dr. Logan The essays are based on his special series of lectures on the Literary History and the Literature of Canada, delivered in December, 1915, at Acadia University, Wolfville, N.S. The lectures had the distinction of being the first of the kind to be delivered at any university in the Dominion. They are in preparation for publication in book form. In the meantime, the material selected from them for publication in The Canadian Magazine presents re-views, that is, new and revised views, of some unrecognized salients in the literary history and the literature of Canada. The essays to follow the present article are entitled: Canadian Fictionists and Other Creative Prose Writers; The Second Renaissance of Canadian Nativistic Poetry; Canadian Poets and Poetesses as Lyrists of Romantic Love; and Canadian Poets as Verbal Colourists and Musicians. Either in theme, point of view, or treatment, or all three, the essays are novel and original.

IN historico-critical re­views or appreciations of literature, as distin­guished from essays in belles-lettres, what ex­cites intellectual interest and engages the fancy is not so much the persons and the times considered by a literary historian or critic as the novelty in his point of view, originality in his angle of vision in treating the poets and the prose-writers of a given country and period or periods. Until the publica­tion of Mr. T. G. Marquis’s illumin­ating and genuinely constructive monograph, “English-Canadian Lit­erature”, (Toronto, 1913), no syste­matic critical treatment of the origins, evolution, and æsthetic status of Canadian letters had been attempted. To be sure, Sir John Bourinot and Dr. Archibald MacMurchy had pub­lished excellent appreciative surveys of Canadian literature. But these surveys, as also the many magazine essays on the same theme by other critics, were annalistic, compendial, and quite without any philosophical, systematic, or even distinctive method of treatment. Moreover, the princi­pal Canadian anthologists, Dr. Dew­art, Mr. W. D. Lighthall, and Dr. Rand, have kept almost wholly to the annalistic method of reviewing the salient persons and themes in the poetic literature of the Dominion, as if these compilers and editors had not critically observed an evolution in it from bad or indifferent to good, from good to better, and from better to excellent and fine in imaginitive conception and in technical artistry. The magazine essayists, on the other hand, considered only individual Canadian men and women of letters, or discrete groups of them, without having any regard to their æsthetic origins, evolution, place and status in the corpus of Canadian literature or of literature in general. What the essayists wrote about the poets and prose writers of the Dominion was, for the most part, uncritical knocks or boosts, based largely on the critics’ personal antipathies or preferences. Until, then, the publication of Mr. Marquis’s monograph, indigenous lit­erary criticism of Canadian poetry and prose was unoriginal in point of view, and unphilosophical and un­systematic in method. The present essay and those to follow it have noth­ing specially to recommend them, save that their point of view is original, their method philosophical and strict­ly critical, and that, incidentally, they attempt to remove certain stubborn superstitions which still persist, even in Mr. Marquis’s mind, regarding the literary origins, genius, place, status and distinction of notable Canadian men and women of letters.

Turning now to my theme in this essay, The Significance of Nova Scotia in the Literary History of Canada, I remark that Nova Scotia has always taken a leading—in some respects, the leading—part in promoting and developing the spiritual, including the literary, culture of the people of the Dominion. Somewhat from priority of colonization and propinquity to Great Britain and the United States, but more from the moral energy of her immigrant population and the loyalty of their descendants to the intellectual interests and traditions of their forebears, especially the High­land Scots and Irish, though the de­scendants of the English settlers and of the immigrants from New England, New York and Pennsylvania who came to the Province in the latter half of the eighteenth century also played their important role, Nova Scotia was the first of the English speaking Provinces which were event­ually confederated into the Dominion of Canada to initiate and advance popular and university education. Also, in religious education, and in conceiving and carrying out big con­structive movements in church organ­ization and missionary enterprise, Nova Scotia took the initiative and has always been in the van of pro­gress. Again, to her enduring glory, Nova Scotia has the distinction of being the home and inspiration of the first strictly nativistic literature pro­duced in any of the four English-speaking Provinces that at Confedera­tion formed the original Dominion of Canada; of being, secondly, the æsthetic, habitat and the inspiration of the leader of the First Renaissance of Canadian nativistic and national literature, chiefly poetry; and of be­ing, finally, the homeland, if not al­ways also the inspiration of the initia­tors, or the most gifted and conspicu­ous leaders, of the Second Renaissance of Canadian nativistic and national poetry—a literary movement, how­ever, that has engaged at the same time the genius of the younger men and women of letters in all the Eng­lish-speaking Provinces of the Domin­ion.

It will be observed that I have ap­plied the epithets “nativistic” and “national” to different periods and phases of the literary history of Can­ada. I have employed this distinc­tion for good reasons. In the pioneer and the colonial periods, in all stages up to, and even for a decade or more subsequent to, Confederation, there were in Canada many verse-makers and prose writers who were not born in any of the Provinces of what is now the Dominion of Canada, though some of them were bred and educated in one or other of these Provinces. Their poetry and prose, whether in­spired by Canadian life and scenes or not, are rightly to be distinguished as colonial or British rather than as Canadian. On the other hand, while, prior to Confederation and for a de­cade or more after that event, there were writers who were born and bred in Upper Canada and the Maritime Provinces, and who now solely by vir­tue of historic retrospect in which the Canada that was once merely possible is seen made actual in the Canada of to-day, may be denoted Canadians, these writers got their literary themes and inspiration almost wholly from experience or phenomenon other than that which was (provincially) Canadian. So that to-day it is at least inept to categorize such poetry and prose as were produced in the Provinces of Canada, prior to Con­federation, as Canadian in the authen­tic connotation of the term; and it is certainly absurd to apply to them, or to even post-Confederation Cana­dian literature, until the rise of the Robertsian group of poets and prose writers in the Dominion, the epithet national. This literature, produced in the nineteenth century from 1830 to 1887 (the year of the publication of Roberts’s “In Divers Tones”) by writers born and bred and schooled in the Provinces is strictly to be de­noted as only nativistic provincial literature of Canada. It is nativistic, but not national, because the writers were natives of the as yet unconfederated Provinces, because either their subjects or themes, or their inspira­tion, or both, were chiefly indigenous to the writers’ respective homelands, and because what they wrote was really literature. On the other hand, the poetry and prose produced by the Robertsian group of native-born au­thors from 1887 to 1903, and from 1903 to the present, are both nativ­istic and national literature, and are to be categorized as strictly and genu­inely Canadian in the inclusive con­notation of the term.

Now, take a pen and on the geo­graphical map of Nova Scotia draw an ellipse, beginning at Windsor, passing the line through Grand Pré and Wolfville, then across the west­ern end of the Basin of Minas, next up to the Tantramar marshes, and back again to Windsor. That ellip­tical line and that ellipse of country embracing idyllic town, romantic vil­lage, valley-land, storied bluff and mount, haunted waters, misty marsh, and glamorous fields and skies, is the original Literary Map of Nova Scotia, and, by implication, of Canada. It all conscribes the pristine home, scenes, and inspiration of the first nativistic literature of Nova Scotia and the first national literature of the Dominion of Canada.

The first native Nova Scotian author of consequence and the first to make the beginnings of what, had he but inspired others or had follow­ers, would have become an original and genuine nativistic literature in Nova Scotia, and thus in Canada, was Thomas Chandler Haliburton, born at Windsor, N.S., 1796. Now in that year, it happens, in the Niagara dis­trict there was born another creative man of letters whose writings are in­cluded in the corpus of Canadian lit­erature, namely, Major John Richard­son. Haliburton and Richardson were active in creative letters (prose-fic­tion) during the same period. Rich­ardson published his romance, “Wacousta; or The Prophecy”, in 1832, and its sequel, “The Canadian Bro­thers; or The Prophecy Fulfilled”, in 1840. He is, therefore, to be regard­ed as “the father” of nativistic roman­tic fiction in Canada. On the other hand, Haliburton published his chief and most popular work of fiction, “the Clockmaker; or The Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick of Slickville”, serially in 1835-36, and in book form at Halifax and London in 1837, 1838, and 1840. Haliburton is, therefore, to be regarded as “the father” of the nativistic fiction of characterization and the criticism of society and man­ners, and also of nativistic humour in Canada. As Alfred Russell and Charles Darwin, working independ­ently and apart, simultaneously formulated the law or principle of organic evolution, so Haliburton and Richardson, writing independently and a thousand miles apart, created at the same time the first nativistic fiction produced in Canada, but with this difference that Haliburton is the first and only creator of a unique and distinct species of fictional character­ization and speech or humour.

To those who would, therefore, re­gard Richardson as entitled to the dis­tinction of being, as it were, the con­temporaneous co-creator of nativistic fiction in Canada, and to an equal place beside Haliburton, I must sub­mit two counts that give Haliburton the chief position of honour in pro­ducing the first nativistic literature in Canada. Without question Hali­burton was the more versatile and original genius. But aside from that fact, there is another important truth, the significance of which Canadian lit­erary historians and critics seem to have missed, or not to have divined. Though synchronously, as noted, Hali­burton and Richardson created, so far as Canada is concerned, two dis­tinct species of fictional prose, Hali­burton takes precedence over Richard­son in time and in literary origina­tion, by being the first systematic writer born in any of the old unfed­erated Provinces of Canada to see, with poetic vision, the romance in Nova Scotian ,that is, Canadian, his­tory, and to tell, with the interest, colour and emotional appeal almost of a work of pure fiction, the pathetic story of the expulsion of the Acadians, as he did, in his “Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia”, published in 1829, or three years be­fore Richardson’s “Wacousta”. At once real history and winning ro­mance, though, of course, not an his­torical romance of fiction, this work by Haliburton was the essential be­ginning of what, had he had imita­tors and followers, might have proved to be a permanent and genuine na­tivistic literature of romantic history in Canada. As it is, it is the begin­ning of nativistic creative literature in Canada.

How abortive in laying the founda­tions of a nativistic creative literature—a literature in the three species of history, fiction and humour—Haliburton’s genius and writings proved to be is one of the “curiosities” of the literary history of Canada, and a phenomenon by itself in general lit­erary history. Haliburton was one born out of his time, or born too soon, to have his gifts perpetuated by in­fluencing creatively other Nova Sco­tian, or, later, Canadian men of let­ters. So far as creative literature in Canada is concerned, Haliburton sim­ply happened.

It has been held, however, that by a trick of fate which has created a most astounding literary anomaly, Haliburton had considerable influence on American letters. He has been called “the founder of the American school of humour”, “the father of American humour”. That is a very uncritical belief and a superstition. For the present let the belief stand as sound. Now, if it be true, as some allege, that Longfellow and Parkman read Haliburton’s “Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia”, and that their reading of the work inspired the one to write in immortal verse the story of the winsome Aca­dian maid, Evangeline, and furnish­ed the other with his singularly en­gaging method of writing history, then Haliburton may be called also “the father” of American romantic poetry and of American romantic his­tory. Has any scholarly and reput­able critic yet been found who has maintained such a thesis as that Hali­burton influenced the creative genius and the methods of Longfellow and Packman? I can discover no such critic. Moreover, if Haliburton had really in anywise influenced Ameri­can men of letters, poets, historians or humourists, we surely should ex­pect to see the fact published in Pro­fessor Barrett Wendell’s supposedly inclusive and accurate “Literary His­tory of America”. So interesting and significant a fact, if there were such a literary fact, would not have escap­ed the notice and acknowledgment of Professor Wendell. Yet not only does he not record any influence of Hali­burton on American letters, but also he does not even mention the name of the Nova Scotian historian and humourist. But on this whole ques­tion, and particularly on the super­stition that Haliburton is “the father of American humour”, I shall write more fully and critically in my later essay on “Canadian Fictionists and Other Creative Prose Writers”.

While indeed Haliburton’s genius, as expressed in “The Clockmaker”, was fitted to originate in Canada a nativistic literature of humour, the odd fact is that, virtually, there is no such literary species in the Dominion, that is, no published works of humour by native-born Canadian authors which have the quality of genuine lit­erature. George T. Lanigan, had he lived, might have created a Canadian humour as such. Mr. Stephen Lea­cock is brilliantly striving—and for his part is succeeding in his endea­vours—to create a Canadian literature of humour, but he is not Canadian-born, or is only, as Mr. Marquis puts it, “a graft on the Canadian literary tree”; and, besides, Mr. Leacock writes his humour considerably after the American manner—satiric bur­lesque, deliberate commingling of serious conduct and character with extravagant nonsense.

All, then, that can be said to give Haliburton his rightful place and dis­tinction in the literary history of Can­ada is that, had the times and the cul­ture of his homeland, Nova Scotia, been ripe to receive and to be inspired by his genius and literary works, he would have been “the father” or founder of a nativistie literature in the three species of romantic history, character fiction, and humour in Can­ada; and that, secondly, in spite of fate’s refusal to give his literary gen­ius, labours, and vogue this glory, he has the greater glory of having been a creative writer sui generis—the first native son of any of the Provinces which now form the Dominion of Can­ada to produce original literary works that have enduring quality and a unique place not only in the corpus of Canadian literature, but also in that of English literature.

The first native-born Canadian con­structively to make real and perman­ent a nativistie and national literature strictly as such was Charles G. D. Roberts. If, as a matter of fact, he was born in New Brunswick seven years before Confederation, and edu­cated at the provincial university, it is much more, or altogether, signifi­cant that Roberts was spiritually re­born, æsthetically re-educated, and be­came imaginatively creative at Wind­sor. Nova Scotia. For ten years, be­ginning in 1885, or two years before the publication of his epoch-making volume of verse, “In Divers Tones”, while professor of literature at King’s College, he dwelt and communed with nature intimately, visited the haunts of earthly beauty, fed his senses with the pure delights of field and stream, lake and marsh, woodland and sky, tuned his heart to hear, with peculiar meaning and joy, the cries of the denizens of the wild-land, the murmurings, dronings, and shrillings of insects, and the myriad sweet songs of the birds, and lived over again in fancy and peaceful revery all the rare moments of choice sensation and spiritual ecstasy experienced in the gardens of happy existence. From and in Nova Scotia, then—from that love­ly area of country conscribing Wind­sor, the Land of Evangeline, the Gaspereau Valley, the Basin of Minas, the Tantramar marshes, and the dis­trict round again to Windsor, Ro­berts produced the first and consider­able of the best of his nativistic and national poetry, and began the syste­matic fluctuation of his genius in lyrism, romantic tale-telling, novel writing, and animal fiction which have given him international fame and vogue, and which have established for him a world-wide reputation as the most original, versatile and artis­tic—the very foremost—of living Canadian men of letters.

Besides being the first and most eminent of the systematic “makers” of a genuine Canadian nativistic lit­erature, with national “notes” in it, Roberts is, in several other ways, to be regarded as “the father” of the post-Confederation, that is, the strict­ly Canadian, literature of the Domin­ion. As in Roberts’s own case, so, wholly through Roberts, Nova Scotia became the inspiration of Bliss Car­man, the second most versatile and artistic of living Canadian men of letters. This happened because at the Roberts home in Windsor, Carman spent several of his growing, most impressionable, and most receptive years, coming directly under the per­vasive influence—the aesthetic culture and the tutorship in poetic technique of the elder poet, and in company with him making from Windsor as a centre excursions over the lovely and glamorous scenes and haunts of beauty near and beyond the Roberts home. There young Carman’s senses and imagination began to discover the beauty and glory of land and sea; and eventually he was inspired to emulate the elder poet, and thus to begin the writing of the winning lyrism for which Carman has become noted as a poet sui generis. Roberts, then, is the literary father of Bliss Carman. Further, having been the first Canadian of consequence to re­cognize, in a practical way, the poetic genius of Lampman, by publishing in The Week, Toronto, the shy, young poet” first respectable verses, Roberts is to be distinguished as the literary sponsor of Lampman, and as having made the latter’s career in letters pos­sible, just as he had, in another way, made Carman’s literary career pos­sible. Finally, if Roberts had no formative influence on the genius of the other members of the post-Confederatian group of Canadian poets and prose writers whom I denote as the Robertsian group, he at least caused Wilfred Campbell, Frederick George Scott, Duncan Campbell Scott, and, possibly, Pauline Johnson and Miss Marshall Saunders, to care ex­ceedingly, as he did himself, for fine craftsmanship, exquisite technical artistry, in what they wrote, whether poetry or imaginative prose. By his own fine artistry and by the influence of his example on his contemporaries, Roberts raised nativistic poetry and prose to a degree of technical finish that was never before reached, nor even attempted, by native-born Cana­dian men and women of letters.

Through Charles G. D. Roberts, then, and those of his contemporaries or confreres to whom, in one way or another, he was “the master”, a strict­ly Canadian literature—nativistic and national—began systematically to be developed in quantity and in aesthetic and artistic quality, until at length authoritative critics in England (Mat­thew Arnold, for instance) and in the United States (Clarence Stedman, for instance) were compelled to acknow­ledge that Canada possessed a really worthy corpus of original poetry and imaginative prose, beautiful or noble in spiritual substance and finely or exquisitely wrought in technique and form. As the inspirer, sponsor and leader of the first native-born group of systematic poets and prose writers of the Dominion, Roberts inaugurated the First Renaissance of Canadian let­ters, and is indubitably “the father” of Canadian nativistic and national literature strictly as such.

To Nova Scotia, therefore, directly through Charles G. D. Roberts and his poetry and imaginative prose, into much of which he has put the natural beauty and the romance of Acadian land, wild-life, legend, history and society, and indirectly through his formative and constructive influences on his contemporaries, belongs the unique distinction of being the ori­ginal home and the inspiration of the First Renaissance of Canadian poetry and prose, and of the first genuine corpus of authentic Canadian litera­ture. nativistic in origin and national in note.

To Nova Scotia, as I shall show in a subsequent essay, also belongs the distinction of having inaugur­ated the Second Renaissance of Canadian poetry. For a decade or more a school, or at least a group, of poets, unconscionable in moral and aesthetic taste and inartistic in tech­nique, whom I have elsewhere called “The Vaudeville School of Canadian Poetry”, has had astonishing vogue in the Dominion. Their day has at length passed, and a renaissance, in the spirit of the elder Robertsian group, is now active and in the ascendant. The initiators and the most noteworthy leaders of the Second Renaissance of Canadian poetry are natives of Nova Scotia. Here, how­ever, I may merely remark the fact, postponing the treatment of their work to a subsequent essay.

Meanwhile, to conclude: The sig­nificance of Nova Scotia in the Lit­erary history of Canada may be sig­nalized in a single sentence. Nova Scotia is the home and the inspira­tion of the first attempts to found a nativistic provincial literature in English-speaking Canada, and also of two movements which will leave to the Dominion the inestimable legacy of a genuine nativistic and national literature, aesthetically winning, artis­tically fine, and spiritually satisfying and elevating.