PRINT SOURCE: Thomas Raddall Fonds, Correspondence. From Thomas Raddall to Mr. Andrew Merkel, 22 January 1945. MS-2-202 45.26.
Subject HeadingsT. H. Raddall writes his friend and Canadian Press journalist, Andrew Merkel, to congratulate him on his recently published book of poetry, The Order of Good Cheer. Raddall expresses his opinion that more quality work by Merkel and Charles Bruce was needed to advance Maritime poetry beyond Bliss Carman and Charles G. D. Roberts. After asking Merkel for information about Ottawa writer Wilfrid Eggleston, Raddall gives an overview of how his most recent novels are selling. Raddall proceeds to ruminate on the difficulty of finding appropriate themes and an audience in the midst of a war. Raddall goes on to relate that the many demands of all his volunteer commitments were making it very difficult for him to find the time to write. Yet he knew that social contact was important for his creative life. On a much lighter note, Raddall ends his letter by asking about the Poetry Society of Nova Scotia and quotes in full a poem he had written and carved into the wall of the Sable Island wireless station thirty years before.
|
January 22nd, 1945 Andy -- How are you and what are you doing? I hear golden words for "The Order of Good Cheer" right and left,1 and more than ever I'm convinced that the public should see more of your work, and in book form. Have you approached a publisher on the subject? It gripes me to read the reviewers' nostalgic references to Carman and Roberts,2 as if Maritime poetry burned its flame and died somewhere back in the Nineties. Why not show 'em that verse with lilt, with charm, and with something to say, has been written since and is still being written? I would uphold your work and Charles Bruce's3 against any poetry written in Canada in the past two decades. I admire the work of Carman and Roberts but I can't help feeling that some part of their fame emerged from their somewhat theatrical personalities, in short they were poseurs as much as poets. People in the '90's and Edwardian days loved that sort of thing, and this eternal looking back on Carman and Roberts makes me think somehow of a sentimental sighing of old ladies. Since the last war we have lived in a different world. Our ears are still tuned for music in speech but our eyes are free of the rose-colored spectacles and only the backward-lookers mourn their loss. In short, we don't go wild about a poet because he wears his hair long or his neckties loose or because he affects any of those eccentricities which were so lovely in Victorian eyes. Do you think I'm talking through my hat? I could name one (you know him well) who still affects in this day and age the whimsical-rover business which Carman wore out long ago. Well, then, let us have some published verse from working newsmen like yourself and Bruce. Can you tell me something about Wilfrid Eggleston, of Ottawa.4 I know that he writes and lectures, but what has he written and who is he? He said some nice things about my work in a recent address to the Montreal Women's Club, and I'd like to write and thank him -- and I'm ashamed to confess my ignorance of his work. "Roger Sudden" is doing very well -- 8,000 copies in the first two months in Canada. Doubleday Doran are bringing it out in New York this spring, and two London publishers are after the British rights. I understand that the British edition of "His Majesty's Yankees" sold out as soon as it reached the book- sellers, and now the publishers (Blackwoods) are up against the paper shortage again. It's a very unsatisfactory business but it can't be helped. I think I shall start another book next summer. In the meantime I'm still pottering away at a few short stories and articles. I'm not very happy nowadays. I worked very hard on "H.M.Y" and "Roger" and I suppose this is the hangover. War is a severe handicap to a writer of fiction: he is in the position of an actor whose audience is being distracted by a terrific brawl in the middle aisle. He has two alternatives. One is to give a running commentary on the brawl -- and as you see, the magazines and bookstands are full of tales about the war. The other is to have faith in his own play and put it across by sheer will-power -- which calls for the most exhausting concentration. It's the concentration that kills. One burden is off my shoulders, anyhow --I was president of the Queens County branch of the Legion during 1944, conducting most of the correspondence myself, and my house a sort of Mecca for every ex-serviceman in the place, and the phone ringing from morn to night. It reached a sort of climax last Fall, when for weeks on end I got no solid writing done -- starting a tale -- interrupted --on with the tale again -- interrupted -- trying it again -- thread lost somehow -- interruption -- tearing the whole thing up. Sometimes I was tempted to beat it back to our hunting camp at Eagle Lake, but of course I couldn't shuck off my responsibilities that way. I did get in a week's deer-hunting, though, and I take my walks every fit afternoon, which helps. The Legion is the most demanding of my social interests, of course, but I have many others which take time -- I'm a school commissioner, trustee of the historical society, committee member of the Red Cross, the local ARP, Victory Loan5 and God knows what else. Some things I've put behind me, like my commission in the Reserve Army -- the Colonel accepted my resignation but I felt like a heel -- I'd raised and trained my own platoon, taken them to camp and so on, and I felt I was letting them down. Believe it or not, Andy, until two years ago I even audited the books of Trinity Church! Community spirit is a thing I constantly preach, but I've come to the conclusion that a writer can't afford to practice it, at least he must set a rigid limit on it. A single phone call may ruin a morning's work, for there's a psychological moment when any interruption is fatal. At the same time one mustn't become a hermit, for that's fatal, too. Morris Longstreth put it very neatly,6 I think -- "the writer's real dilemma lies in the conflict between having the solitude needed for his work and the social experiences that give him his material and the salutory check to his phantasy." How is the Poetry Society getting along?7 I had an interesting evening in their midst and I hope they've forgiven me for refusing to make a speech. I might have quoted for their amusement (or horror) some doggerel I wrote on leaving Sable Island. I was eighteen then, and exuberant:- "Twelve months in any place, my friends, is quite a weary while. And when I have grown old and have grey hairs beneath my cap,I inscribed it on the wireless station wall and for all I know it's there yet, although I have a hunch they've torn the old place down and built something modern and I hope much more comfortable. The only heat was a small stove in the instrument room. A bottle of ink on my bedroom bureau froze solid in November and didn't thaw till the following March. My best to Tully and the family and not least yourself. |
|
|
1. Andrew Merkel, The Order of Good Cheer (Halifax: Imperial Publishing, 1944).