PRINT SOURCE: Thomas Raddall Fonds, Correspondence. From Thomas Raddall to Nita Sidiris, 15 February 1945. MS-2-202 47.56.
Subject HeadingsTo oblige a Dalhousie University student proposing to write an article on him for a forthcoming issue of the student newspaper, The Dalhousie Gazette, T. H. Raddall forthrightly answers over forty wide-ranging questions about his childhood, family life, career decisions, personal traits and tastes, character strengths and weaknesses, researching and writing methods, reading habits, and his heroes.
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February 15th, 1945. My dear Miss Sidiris, I shall try to answer all your questions but I warn you that I don't intend to write an autobiography for at least another twenty years, hence some of the answers will be short. Question 1. I was born in the married quarters of the British Army School of Musketry at Hythe, England. At six years I entered the Saint Leonard Boys' School there, left it at nine years when my family removed to Halifax, N.S. At Halifax I attended Chebucto School and the old Halifax Academy. I left the Academy (Grade Ten) to enlist in 1918. 2. I am married and have two children, a boy aged 10, a girl aged 8. 3 No pets. 4 I came to the neighborhood of Liverpool soon after I quit the sea in 1922, and took a job as bookkeeper in a small pulp mill. I still live here because I think it is an ideal home for a writer who likes fishing and hunting and because I like the town and its people. 5 I became a wireless operator in 1918 and served on various Canadian ships ranging from a transport to a 2500-ton tramp, and for varying periods on wireless stations at St. John, N.B., North Sydney, Pictou, Sable Island and Halifax. The greater part of the time was spent at sea, with such ports of call as London, Liverpool, Manchester, Plymouth, Southampton, the Azores, Boston, New York, St. John's Nfld., Wabana, Nfld., Newcastle, N.B. and so on. The most interesting was a spell in the cableship "Mackay-Bennett".1 6 I had a vague ambition to write, from the time I went to sea, but I did nothing much about it until I married in 1927, when I discovered that two cannot live as cheap as one. I had become deeply interested in the people of Queens County and their story and it occurred to me that I might satisfy my literary instincts and at the same time earn a little extra cash by writing for magazines.2 For ten years it was simply a useful hobby. By 1938 my tales in Blackwoods Magazine had received such favorable comment from people whose opinion I valued that I threw up my job as an accountant and devoted my whole time to writing. 7 My researches at the Archives3 have been confined so far to a period earlier than the establishment of Dalhousie University. 8 At first I wrote in longhand but I found this slow and tiring. I had to accustom myself to writing on a typewriter. Now it seems the natural way to write. 9 I usually write from 9 till noon. The afternoons I spend outdoors, fishing, hunting, tramping the roads, yarning with the folk I meet. In pre-war days, with unlimited gasolene, I wandered about the countryside a good deal in my car. I work most evenings from 7 to midnight, and when especially engrossed I may work till 2 or 3 in the morning. 10 My first short story, a tale of Sable Island, was bought by Maclean's Magazine in 1928. 11 My novel "His Majesty's Yankees", the fruit of ten years' research, is my most serious piece of work. Of my short stories I like "Blind MacNair" best. 12 Most of my fiction characters are drawn from life or from history -- which is life in another form. 13 My "fan mail" seems to me to be divided equally between men and women, perhaps the women write more. I'm not sure. 14 At present I am pottering at one or two short stories but chiefly I am browsing over Nova Scotia history in the period 1790 - 1860 in search of material for my next novel.4 15 I suppose my outstanding characteristic is stubbornness, a bad trait in many ways, but it has carried me over many difficulties. Apart from that, an abiding curiosity about people and the reasons why they do the things they do. 16 The abiding curiosity, probably. How should I know? 17 My worst fault? I asked my wife (who should know) but she refuses to decide. There are so many. 18 I have a number of pet hates. Who hasn't? I love music but I hate opera. And I hate spaghetti-and-cheese, and people who talk in theatres, and books in dialect, and people who phone when I'm working, and Sundays in Halifax and so on. Quite often I hate myself. 19 I haven't any idea.5 20 I'm an optimist about the post-war period. Apart from some weird political theories, and notwithstanding the Depression, the world made more progress in the 20 years after the 1914-18 war than in the 20 years before it -- in art, science, production, standard of living, everything. War is destructive but it stimulates men's minds for the work of reconstruction, and that stimulus is powerful and long-lasting, there is a follow-through that lifts the world willy- nilly by its own bootstraps. For five years, six years, millions of young men have been dreaming of a better world. What can come of that but good? 21 My notion of the perfect dish is lobster chowder. 22 I am very fond of travelling, by ship, air or motorcar -- but not by train. Travel is the only decent way to refresh the mind, it seems to me. If I could order a perfect life I would travel six months in the year and write the rest. 23 I don't quite understand what you mean by "interviewed". I interview all sorts of people all the time, in the course of my work. It would take too long to give particular instances. 24 Madame Chiang Kai Shek, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Katherine Hepburn -- but as a personality, not as an actress.6 25 What a question to ask! Well, I should like to meet Napoleon, for one. Because I was born in the army and learned to walk in a barrack square, I suppose -- and he was the greatest soldier ever. And I should like to meet Shakespear, to see how he worked, and where he got his material, and what manner of man he was. But most of all I think I should like to meet Jesus Christ, amongst the Galilee fishermen, say, to feel for myself the inspiration of his personality which set those other men afire. I don't say this out of piety, for in the ordinary sense I am not a bit religious. But to hold speech with such a man must have been a marvellous experience. 26 My most "unforgettable character" is my father. He was killed while leading the Winnipeg Rifles at Amiens in the last war. 27. Recreations? Answered under Question 9. 28 I smoke continually; pipe, cigarettes, and cigars -- when I can get them. 29 I have been a voracious reader from boyhood. I think I began with "Buffalo Bill", whose adventures sold at a penny an instalment.7 I liked Ballantyne, Cooper, Henty, Mayne Reid, Marryat, Stevenson. A much-travelled road and a good one. I still admire the skill with which my father led me along it. His one mistake was Dickens, whose works (apart from "Tale of Two Cities") I considered -- and still consider -- a lot of balderdash. Nowadays I find Ballantyne dull, Cooper absurd and Henty preposterous, but Reid, Marryat and Stevenson hold their charm.8 30 I still consider Sherlock Holmes9 the one and only detective worth reading about. The modern mystery story leaves me cold. There is too much mystery and not enough story. I'm aware that many people read them because they like to puzzle their wits. But in that case why not play chess? Miss Nita Sidiris, 52 Henry Street, Halifax, N.S. |
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4. THR is researching Pride's Fancy, published in 1946.
6. THR lists a few "prominent" women of interest to himself.