“The creation of the Jalna books is the most protracted single feat of literary invention in the brief history of Canada’s literature.”
No less an authority than the eminent Canadian novelist and the founding master of Massey College, Robertson Davies, offered that assessment of Mazo de la Roche in 1961.
The author, who summered in Clarkson for several years and certainly used the two-storey red brick home that is now the Benares Museum as a model for the house in the Jalna series, is no longer considered among the first rung of Canadian writers and barely seems to warrant a passing mention anymore.
That is a shame and a miscarriage of literary justice according to Heather Kirk, de la Roche’s latest biographer.
The 16-book series sold millions in a staggering 193 English-language editions and 92 foreign-language ones.
“People have been so scornful of the books and looked down on her for so long,” says Kirk. “It’s really stupid.”
De la Roche’s career took off after she won the $10,000 Atlantic Monthly literary contest in 1927 with Jalna. At a celebratory banquet in Toronto, the so-called father of Canadian poetry Sir Charles G.D. Roberts saluted her by saying she had, “proved beyond a doubt that there actually is something called Canadian literature.”
So why does de la Roche get so little respect these days?
“In part, because she was so successful,” speculates Kirk. “Her style was not what Canadian professors of literature thought was serious. She writes in a romantic style. The Canadian literati have just been snobbish,” said Kirk.
Having re-read much of the series that details the ups and downs of the aristocratic Whiteoaks clan in preparation for her biography, Kirk was convinced again of the general high quality of the work.
“These are not simplistic books,” she says. “It’s true that one or two of the books are quite awful but most of them are quite good, so good as to make her clearly a top-ranking Canadian writer.”
The third book that she published, Delight, was absolutely brutalized by Canadian critics on its publication but is now considered one of the best things she ever wrote.
While she had a bad case of “sequelitis,” the second-last book in the series Centenary at Jalna, published in 1958, is one of the best.
“She’s been hard done by,” says Kirk. “It’s time for a measured study of her writing. I hope it will be done soon by a full-time academic with lots of funding.”
The suggestion by previous biographer Joan Givner that de la Roche and her cousin and long-time companion Caroline Clement had a lesbian relationship has blinded consideration of the author for the last 20 years, argues Kirk.
One of the key pieces of evidence supporting that suspicion has always been de la Roche’s instruction – carried out by Clement – that her diaries be burned immediately upon her death.
Conspiracy theorists lick their lips at its mention.
Kirk says the truth is probably a lot more prosaic: de la Roche, always an extremely private person, likely wanted to protect her family. She clearly modelled many of the characters and incidents in Jalna after relatives and real events.
It is a shame that the Jalna series has been out of print so long. That wrong is now being corrected as XYZ Publishing of Montréal has issued the first two volumes in the series, has two more slated for next April and intends to publish all of them eventually.
Thank goodness Jalna is finally coming back on the market. Now readers can decide for themselves if de la Roche deserves to be condemned to the literary limbo she has been assigned so far by the self-appointed guardians of Canadian literary taste.