Errington, E. J.

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

Comptes rendus / Book Reviews 191paroisse de Beloeil fut originale non pas parce quelle était moins riche que Saint-Denis ou Saint-Charles, mais parce que cest là quon observe dans toute son acuitéla faiblesse du leadership et la paralysie par la peur.En somme, un petit livre plein de faits qui soulèvent bien des interrogations,notamment sur la vision de Greer. Incidemment, la citation tirée de la lettre adres-sée, soit-disant le 5 mai, au capitaine Dufresne de Beloeil par Eusèbe Blanchette deSaint-Hyacinthe, lui transmettant un ordre menaçant du général Brown, ne peutavoir été écrite que dans les jours précédant la bataille de Saint-Charles (p. 25).Fernand OuelletYork UniversityJ. I. Little  The Child Letters: Public and Private Life in a Canadian Merchant-Politician’s Family, 1841–1845. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens Univer-sity Press, 1995. Pp. ix, 177.Della Stanley  A Victorian Lady’s Album: Kate Shannon’s Halifax and BostonDiary of 1892. Halifax and Boston: Formac Publishing Company Limited, 1994.Even in todays world of computers, demographic and census analysis, and whatis called the structural methodology employed by social and family historians,the gems of historical research remain the diaries and family papers of ordinaryfolk. A journal or a collection of letters enables an historian to give faces andfeelings to what are often nameless groups. They remind us that those whom weoften consider actors on an historical stage  the merchant, the politician, or theVictorian woman  were real people with fathers and wives, friends and familyobligations. They were people who went to the doctor, worried about money,bemoaned the weather, and coped with everyday concerns. They were people whoselives, actions, beliefs, and motivations were, in the end, never as simple as we atfirst presumed, and they often do not quite fit our carefully argued analyses andgeneralizations. This becomes particularly evident when diaries, journals, andpersonal correspondence are presented as texts in their own right. Such is the casewith both monographs considered here, A Victorian Lady’s Album, edited by DellaStanley, and The Child Letters, compiled by J. I. Little.A Victorian Lady’s Album presents the complete 1892 diary of 18-year-old KateShannon, the second youngest child of a relatively affluent Halifax judge. Likemany others of her sex, class, and rank in Canada at the end of the nineteenthcentury, Kate seems to have kept a diary as a matter of course. What for Kate wasunique about this year and what makes the diary so valuable and intriguing is thatshe decided to flavour [her] bare record of facts and to use the diary to recordher thoughts and feelings, sometimes as a private confessional. Certainly, the journaldoes chronicle Kates daily activities  helping in the house, taking long walks,accompanying her mother to meetings of the WCTU, skating, conversations with192 Histoire sociale / Social Historyfriends and family, and writing botanical reports. The diary also records, however,Kates emotional as well as physical passage from adolescence to young woman-hood. When Kate was finally convinced to put up her hair, for example, she noted,I didnt want to a bit but they [her mother and cousins] all seemed to think it washigh time I did (p. 60). Far more serious for Kate was the painful realization thatchildhood friendships were fragile. Kate recorded her bewilderment, growingresentment, and finally deep hurt as she watched her two best friends, Millie andWinnie, become increasingly involved in other relationships.The flavour of Kate Shannons eighteenth year, which is so evocative from thejournal entries, is certainly enhanced by the presentation of the volume. Stanley hastransformed the diary into a traditional Victorian ladys album, copiously illustratedwith photographs (unfortunately unidentified), reproductions of picture postcards andcalling cards, and other material, including sketches apparently drawn by Kateherself. Together with Stanleys brief introduction, these provide for the uninitiatedreader a vivid sense of the sights, sounds, and smells of Halifax and Boston at theend of the nineteenth century.There are a few problems with the presentation. At times, the lack of a list ofcharacters or detailed annotations and explanations of particular events, organiz-ations, institutions, and places referred to in the diary is intensely frustrating. Moretroubling, perhaps, is that Stanley is too quick in her introduction to present Kateas an almost stereotypical Victorian. Certainly, as Stanley points out, Kate wasprimarily interested in her friends and family, not in weighty social, economic andpolitical concerns of the public arena (p. viii). But I question whether the journalreally reflects as sharp a division between the public and private world as Stanleyposits. For all that Kate Shannon was a respectable, young, middle-class woman,she was also part of a wider world and a world in transition. Kate recorded, matter-of-factly, her visits to the doctor and dentist and an extended journey she and hermother made, without male accompaniment, to Boston. Her growing unease aboutthe relationship with Millie and Winnie was personal; there was no indication thatKate considered that they were challenging gender or social norms by attendingcollege. It must be remembered that A Victorian Lady’s Album is intended for ageneral readership. Judged both within this context and as a valuable resource forfurther study, the Album works. So too, in a very different way, does J. I. Littlesedited volume, the Child Letters.Marcus Child was a merchant-politician from Stanstead, Lower Canada/CanadaEast. The volume reproduces, in their entirety, the almost daily correspondencebetween him and various family members, letters written while Marcus was inKingston, attending as a member of the colonial legislature in the early 1840s. Mostof the letters were written by Marcus himself. However, a significant portion arefrom Lydia, his wife, Elizabeth and George, their children, and a few from otherfamily members.For any political historian, the letters are invaluable. As editor Jack Little outlinesin his carefully crafted introduction, Child was a moderate reformer whose ambi-tions tended to be limited to his local constituency (p. 27). Marcus Childs letterschronicle his views about proposed legislation, the concerns of his constituents, andComptes rendus / Book Reviews 193his social and political contacts with members of the government. Among otherthings, Child recounts the antipathy of Kingston residents to members of the assem-bly and the debates, as seen from the back benches, over moving the capital. Itis clear that Child took his duties to his constituents and to his colony seriously. Healso took considerable pride in what little political influence he could exert. AsLittle perceptively states, the correspondence provides a view of political affairsfrom someone who was at the margin of power (p. 4)  a perspective not oftenavailable to the historian.Although Marcus Child could be seen as representative of any local politician inthe mid-nineteenth century, the collected correspondence weaves a far more com-plex and intricate picture. Despite weeks and months away from home and his busi-ness, he continued to maintain a strong attachment and commitment to both. Hisown letters clearly outline his preoccupation with the state of his business and thehealth and well-being of his wife and children. Frequently, Child complained whenhis wife and children did not immediately respond to all his letters. His wife Lydiaand daughter Elizabeth often answered that they had little new to report. Moreover,as Elizabeth wrote to her father in late November 1843, Just bethink yourself, mydear Father, of the mighty difference there is, between the Seat of Government, andthis quiet place ... and how much more material you have at your command out ofwhich to manufacture an epistle, than your loving wife and affectionate daughter(p. 116). For Lydia and the others at home, there was little time to write, andfamily letters tended to be reports about the state of the store, health of the family,and the day-to-day concerns of managing and working in the household. As Littleemphatically states, the greatest value of the Child letters lies in their combinationof politics with family (p. 5).The publication of the Child correspondence is an invaluable contribution tofurthering our understanding of the colonial period. What makes this volume sovery fine, however, is the contribution of the editor. The introduction is a nuanceddiscussion and analysis not only of the letters, but also of the issues that they raise.Little places the Child papers firmly within a sophisticated understanding of theimpact that gender and class had on those individuals and families who were partof the burgeoning colonial middle class. The introduction weaves the story of theChild family into the broader tapestry of colonial politics, economics, and society.This is done without losing any sense that Marcus Child and his family were realfolk  concerned about their souls, their personal relationships, and their pocketbooks. To make what initially seem to be rather dense letters more accessible, Littlealso provides a separate family chronology and detailed cast of characters. Theextensive footnotes accompanying the letters also add considerably to the volumeand the window they provide onto the life and concerns of a rising middle-classfamily in the Canadas in the mid-nineteenth century.To compare Littles The Child Letters and Stanleys A Victorian Lady’s Albumis perhaps somewhat unfair. They are intended for two different audiences: TheChild Letters is an obviously scholarly production; A Victorian Lady’s Album ismore of a coffee-table book. Both, however, are part of that renewed interest in thelives and times of ordinary folk. Although the subjects are divided by geography,194 Histoire sociale / Social Historytime, age, gender, and occupation, both volumes not only provide the reader withan interesting read, but are also in themselves an invaluable source for futureresearch.E. J. ErringtonRoyal Military College of CanadaDavid G. Burley  A Particular Condition in Life: Self-Employment and SocialMobility in Mid-Victorian Brantford, Ontario. Montreal and Kingston:McGill-Queens University Press, 1994. Pp. xii, 309.This is a study of the bourgeoisie (the word is used twice on the dust jacket, thoughcautiously in the text) or the entrepreneurial class in Brantford from 1830 to 1881.Many of the studies from which it takes its origin concentrate so strongly and sosympathetically (it appears) on the formation of the working class that they do notreadily yield the proper intellectual structures to deal with the working classseconomic superiors. The problem is: what criteria best describe those who are leftover in society once the working class has been extracted? (p. 8). The code-wordself-employment, as used in David G. Burleys study, defines an essentially coher-ent group, though with some uncomfortably ragged edges, as it includes a numberof day labourers who worked for themselves while excluding lawyers.Within these limits Burley follows the fortunes of some 1,100 individuals usingsources such as the census, the R. G. Dun & Co. records, assessment rolls, wills,and Brantfords rich heritage of nineteenth-century local history, including the five-volume biographical dictionary The Canadian Album (Brantford, 18911896). WhileBrantfords population grew from a few hundred over the half century of study tomore than 10,500, and its economic base changed from servicing the local farmcommunity to metal fabricating, flour milling, and the manufacture of carriages andfarm machinery, the self-employed increased markedly in relative numbers butdeclined as a percentage of the whole population. If Brantford, Ontario, was inany way representative of broader social and economic developments, then in the1860s and 1870s business became a more restricted and elitist activity, and classrelations and class structure became more clearly defined (p. 6). Success inbusiness was becoming more difficult as improvements to transportation destroyedthe isolation that had once protected small, locally oriented businesses; success,even in small-town Brantford, was becoming more and more a matter of nationalsuccess. Increasingly, too, the potential risers found their way blocked by an en-trenched older generation who, if we may judge by their representatives, attributedtheir own success to character while ignoring the advantages they had gained fromsetting deep roots in the community before their competitors arrived.The quantitative method as used in these pages is essentially welcoming andfriendly, although a few among the many graphs throw out spirited challenges tothe mathematically ill-prepared. So far as one can glimpse the self-employed aspeople, they seem predominantly a pinched and joyless lot  or is this solely

J. I. Little — The Child Letters: Public and Private Life in a Canadian Merchant-Politician’s Family, 1841–1845

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J. I. Little — The Child Letters: Public and Private Life in a Canadian Merchant-Politician’s Family, 1841–1845

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)