The Precipice Read online

  THE PRECIPICE

  HUGH MACLENNAN

  Introduction: Elspeth Cameron

  General Editor: Michael Gnarowski

  McGILL-QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

  © McGill-Queen's University Press 2013

  ISBN 978-0-7735-4267-9 (paper)

  ISBN 978-0-7735-8971-1 (ePDF)

  ISBN 978-0-7735-8972-8 (ePUB)

  Legal deposit fourth quarter 2013

  Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

  Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free

  (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

  McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

  The characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance, by name or action, to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  MacLennan, Hugh, 1907–1990, author

  The precipice / Hugh MacLennan ; introduction: Elspeth Cameron ; general editor: Michael Gnarowski.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-0-7735-4267-9 (pbk.).–ISBN 978-0-7735-8971-1 (ePDF).–ISBN 978-0-7735-8972-8 (ePUB)

  I. Cameron, Elspeth, 1943–, writer of introduction

  II. Gnarowski, Michael, 1934–, editor III. Title.

  PS8525.L54P7 2013 C813'.54 C2013-906803-1

  C2013-906804-X

  For Dorothy

  Front of dust-jacket of first Canadian edition with a collage-like effect juxtaposing images of an urban skyline and more modest rural dwellings and a country church

  CONTENTS

  General Editor's Note Michael Gnarowski

  Chronology

  Select Bibliography

  Introduction Elspeth Cameron

  THE PRECIPICE

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five

  Cover image of the Popular Library paperback edition of The Precipice. Although a paperback version may have been issued as early as 1948, this particular edition is clearly from a much later date since it identifies MacLennan as the author of Return of the Sphinx, which appeared in 1967.

  GENERAL EDITOR'S NOTE

  The text of The Precipice presented here was derived by means of an optical character recognition scan of the first Canadian edition published by Wm. Collins Sons & Co., Ltd. of Toronto, Canada in 1948. Minor changes have been effected to correct typographical errors and/or spelling errors. Canadian spelling is used for this edition.

  CHRONOLOGY

  1907 John Hugh MacLennan born on 20 March in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, son and second child of Katherine MacQuarrie and Samuel MacLennan, a medical doctor employed by the coal mining industry.

  1915 The MacLennan household moves from Cape Breton Island to Halifax where Dr. MacLennan sets up his practice after having been invalided out of service in the First World War.

  1917 MacLennan lives through the catastrophe of the Halifax Explosion, which will become the subject of his first published novel, Barometer Rising (1941).

  1924 MacLennan graduates from Halifax County Academy with a University Entrance Scholarship and the Yeoman Prize in Latin and Greek. Enrols in Dalhousie University to study Classics, at which he excels.

  1928 Having distinguished himself academically and in sports, MacLennan graduates from Dalhousie University, disappointed at not having won the (expected and hoped for) Rhodes Scholarship for Nova Scotia but is then chosen Rhodes Scholar for Canada-at-Large. Sails for England and Oxford in September of that year.

  1928–32 Once settled in at Oriel College, MacLennan finds his studies in Classics rigorous and demanding. He has little social life other than sports (rugby and tennis, at which he was a champion player at the University); writes frequent letters to his family, and takes advantage of his vacations to travel modestly on the Continent in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany, where he encounters strong right wing nationalism and the rising tides of fascism and communism. Earns his BA in Classics from Oxford in 1932 and wins a Fellowship at Princeton to continue his studies for a Ph.D.

  1932 Sailing home from Oxford, meets an American woman, Dorothy Duncan (1903–1957), a writer (Bluenose: A Portrait of Nova Scotia, 1942) as well as a graphic artist, and marries her four years later.

  1932–35 Unable to find suitable employment, MacLennan, offered a modest fellowship at Princeton, decides to study there for his Ph.D in classical history. While at the University he tries his hand at writing fiction, leading to two early novels, both of which remain unpublished. In 1935 receives his doctorate and his dissertation, Oxyrhynchus: An Economic and Social Study, is published by Princeton University Press. He moves to Montreal and takes up a position as schoolmaster at Lower Canada College.

  1936 Hugh MacLennan and Dorothy Duncan are married on 22 June in Wilmette, Illinois, returning via Boston and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to settle in Montreal.

  1937–39 MacLennan struggles unsuccessfully to arrange for the publication of his two novels in manuscript, “A Man Should Rejoice” which is rejected by Random House and “So All Their Praises” which is rejected by Longmans Green, both in New York. The first novel, dated 1933, was accepted by New York publisher Robert O. Ballou, but went bankrupt before the novel could be published. He reportedly reads Ringuet's Trente Arpents, which had appeared in 1938 and without which, MacLennan later confesses, Two Solitudes could not have been written. Predicts that war will begin in September of 1939.

  1936–41 Continues at Lower Canada College and begins to develop a career at writing for magazines. He is prompted by his wife to turn his fiction to Canadian themes. She, having written a guide book, Here's to Canada! (1941), is embarked on her book Bluenose (1942) and is credited with MacLennan's choosing the Halifax explosion of 1917 as the focus of his novel Barometer Rising, which launches his career as a novelist.

  1941 Barometer Rising is published and is well-received. MacLennan continues to teach at Lower Canada College but feels financially constrained and endeavours to supplement his income by writing for magazines.

  1943 MacLennan is awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which provides some financial relief and frees him somewhat to work on his next novel, Two Solitudes, which he had apparently begun the previous year. MacLennan's declared project is to write a novel of Canadian life in the years 1917–40. Announcement of the fellowship generates a series of letters from American publishers (J.B. Lippincott; Doubleday, Doran; Houghton, Mifflin) expressing interest in publishing his next novel.

  1944 MacLennan begins correspondence with Willem L. Graff, professor of German, as he tries to pin down the exact wording and location of the “two solitudes” reference in the work of the German poet Rainer-Maria Rilke. In July he dispatches a copy of the 582 page typescript of Two Solitudes to Blanche Gregory, his literary agent in New York, and the publisher Duell, Sloan and Pearce. A third copy will go to Collins in Toronto, who will publish in Canada.

  1945 Two Solitudes is published (publication date is mid-January although copies had been made available in December of 1944). The book is well-received with congratulatory letters from friends and literary associates and excellent reviews and good sales. The success of Two Solitudes and its financial returns enable MacLennan to resign from Lower Canada College, a position that he had never enjoyed. He wins the Governor General's Award for fiction.

  1948 MacLennan publishes The Precipice, which, while it wins the Govern
or General's Award for fiction is not a commercial or critical success.

  1949 Cross Country, a collection of ten previously published essays/articles, half of which had appeared in Maclean's magazine, is published. The collection wins the Governor General's Award for non-fiction.

  1951 With his wife's health beginning to fail and medical bills becoming a burden (there had even been a suggestion the previous year that he accept financial help from the Canadian Writer's Foundation), MacLennan accepts a part-time position in the English Department of McGill University, entering the academic profession in which he will remain until his retirement. Each Man's Son is published in May in spite of paper shortages. MacLennan teaches two courses at McGill, one on Canadian fiction and the other on English prose.

  He keeps abreast of contemporary writing, admiring the work of W.O. Mitchell, whose Who Has Seen the Wind is on his assigned reading list. Similarly Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited is recommended to his English prose class.

  1954 Thirty and Three, MacLennan's second collection of essays, is published and wins the Governor General's Award for non-fiction.

  1957 Dorothy Duncan, MacLennan's wife for twenty-one years, dies after a prolonged struggle with chronic illness.

  1959 MacLennan marries Frances Aline Walker, known as Tota, who had been a family friend for some years. The Watch that Ends the Night is published and wins MacLennan's fifth and last Governor General's Award.

  1960 Scotchman's Return and Other Essays is published.

  1964 MacLennan takes a sabbatical leave from the University and goes to live in Grenoble, France, where he continues writing his next novel and works hard at mastering spoken French.

  1966 The Molson Prize, a rich cash award in the second year of its existence, names MacLennan as the recipient of this honour.

  1967 Return of the Sphinx is published; MacLennan is inducted as a Companion of the Order of Canada.

  1968 Alarmed at the general malaise in society and the militancy of the young – student riots in Paris; a mob marching to demand a “McGill français”; the burning of the computer centre at Sir George Williams University in Montreal – MacLennan retreats into himself to incubate the themes of personal dysfunctiion and social alienation that become strong and prophetic elements in his last novel, Voices in Time.

  1980 Voices in Time, blurbed as MacLennan's finest novel, is also his last.

  1990 MacLennan dies on 9 November at his country home in North Hatley in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.

  Note: MacLennan won many awards and distinctions in his time. He was made a Chevalier of the National Order of Quebec, elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada, and had honorary degrees conferred on him by several Canadian Universities.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  BOOKS BY HUGH MACLENNAN

  Barometer Rising (New York/Toronto, 1941)

  Two Solitudes (New York/Toronto, 1945)

  The Precipice (New York/Toronto, 1948)

  Cross-Country (Toronto, 1949)

  Each Man's Son (Boston/Toronto, 1951)

  Thirty and Three (Toronto, 1954)

  The Watch that Ends the Night (New York/Toronto, 1959)

  Scotchman's Return and Other Essays (Toronto, 1960)

  Seven Rivers of Canada (New York/Toronto, 1961) (With the camera of John De Visser)

  Return of the Sphinx (New York/Toronto, 1967)

  The Colour of Canada (Toronto/Boston, 1967)

  The Other Side of Hugh MacLennan: Selected Essays Old and New. Edited by Elspeth Cameron. (Toronto, 1978)

  Voices in Time (Toronto, 1980)

  Hugh MacLennan's Best. Edited By Douglas Gibson (Toronto, 1991)

  BOOKS ABOUT OR RELATING TO HUGH MACLENNAN

  Dorothy Duncan, Bluenose: A Portrait of Nova Scotia (New York/London, 1942)

  Robert Cockburn, The Novels of Hugh MacLennan (Montreal, 1969)

  George Woodcock, Hugh McLennan (Toronto, 1969)

  Paul Goetsch, Hugh MacLennan (Toronto, 1973)

  Elspeth Cameron, “Ordeal by Fire: The Genesis of MacLennan's The Precipice,” Canadian Literature, Vol. 82 (Autumn 1979): 35–46.

  Elspeth Cameron, “Hugh MacLennan: An Annotated Bibliography” in The Annotated Bibliography of Canada's Major Authors, Vol. 1. Edited by Robert Lecker and Jack David (Downsview, 1979)

  Elspeth Cameron, Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life (Toronto, 1981)

  T.D. MacLulich, “MacLennan's Anatomy of Failure,” Journal of Canadian Studies Vol. 14, no. 4 (Winter 1979–80): 54–65.

  Elspeth Cameron, ed., Hugh MacLennan: 1982. Proceedings of the MacLennan Conference at University College (Toronto, 1982)

  Three Canadian Writers, Provincial Education Media Centre (Richmond, BC, 1983)

  Helen Hoy, Hugh MacLennan and His Works (Toronto, 1990)

  Mari Peepre-Bordessa, Hugh MacLennan's National Trilogy: Mapping a Canadian Identity 1940–1950 (Helsinki?, 1990)

  Frank M. Tierney, ed., Hugh MacLennan (Ottawa, 1994)

  Christl Verduyn, ed., Dear Marian, Dear Hugh: The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence (Ottawa, 1995)

  Robert D. Chambers, Hugh MacLennan and Religion: The Precipice Revisited,” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 14, no. 4 (Winter 1979–80): 46–53.

  Barbara Pell, Faith and Fiction: A Theological Critique of the Narrative Strategies of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan, (Waterloo, 1998)

  Anne Coleman, I'll Tell You a Secret: A Memory of Seven Summers (Toronto, 2004)

  INTRODUCTION

  When Hugh MacLennan turned forty in March 1947, he took stock of his career. His first two published novels Barometer Rising (1941) and Two Solitudes (1945) had been exceptionally successful, catapulting him to the position of the foremost Canadian novelist. Two Solitudes especially had enjoyed huge sales,1 a place on The New York Times bestseller list, and other such lists, for a year, and Canada's top literary prize, the Governor General's Award. Translations were soon underway in numerous languages.2 This accession to fortune and fame made it possible to realize his hope that he could resign his wearisome position teaching boys at Lower Canada College and write full time.4

  Yet MacLennan was bitter. Within six months of Two Solitudes’ publication, he was protesting the unfairness of Canadian tax laws regarding writers. He was also complaining about the way publishing contracts were set up. “[M]y years of working in the Canadian market – and indeed in partially creating its present dimensions – are profiting almost everyone concerned [but] myself,” he griped to his publisher.”4 The $12,000 he had earned after taxes would support him and his wife Dorothy Duncan for three years, he calculated. He wanted more. His protests won him his first separate Canadian contract with Collins to ensure Canadian sales for his next novel.

  He had already begun that novel. He had carefully assessed what type of novel it might be. Shorter, for a start, and firmly built on a moral base, unlike the “decadent” fiction – many by “homo-sexuals” (sic)5 such as Marcel Proust, André Gide, Christopher Isherwood, and, to some extent, Evelyn Waugh. He set the bar high. He rejected regional fiction for its narrowness. He felt caged by the notion of interpreting Canada to Canadians, the source of much of his acclaim. From the outset, he had been a reluctant nationalist. He was now determined instead to interpret Canada to the world at large. He aspired to become nothing less than a genius. His definition of genius is idiosyncratic: “nothing but a peculiar combination of willpower, tenacity, and the ability to make one's subconscious work for one.”6 Willpower and tenacity MacLennan certainly had. Yet making the subconscious work seems like an oxymoron. If the subconscious lies below consciousness, how can one make it work? Then, what of talent? Intuition? Luck?

  MacLennan thought his best path lay through “the American branch cycle” of English fiction.7 In his 1946 essay “Canada Between Covers,”8 he identified the sociological novel, as exemplified in Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, and especially Sinclair Lewis's Babbit and Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, as his models f
or The Precipice. These writers were either his contemporaries or a decade or so older. He did not assess the younger writers emerging at the time.

  The idea for Two Solitudes had come from MacLennan's dream of two men shouting at one another: one in French, one in English, neither understanding the other.9 It seems not to have occurred to him that this might have contributed to his engagement with the work and its unquestionable success. Barometer Rising had developed from a suggestion from his wife, Dorothy Duncan, that he write about Canada. His two early, unpublished novels had not been set in Canada, and they were rejected by many publishers.10 Dorothy deduced their failures were because MacLennan had set them in locations he did not know well. This was to prove a problem for The Precipice as well, since MacLennan had not spent much time in any of the novel's settings.11

  As he was writing his novel, Dorothy – whose heart was seriously damaged by childhood rheumatic fever – declined in health. He confided to his American publisher in March 1947 that the reason his novel was not yet finished was because, “I have had to be nurse, cook and housekeeper” to Dorothy.12 In those days before medicare MacLennan had to pay her expensive health costs.13 No longer employed at Lower Canada College, he took advantage of offers to lecture and write articles (though he was convinced, wrongly, that he was not good at either) to raise more money than Two Solitudes had brought in.

  As with his first published novel, MacLennan relied on others, not on himself, for the ideas in this novel. His Nova Scotian friend Blair Fraser (1909–1968) had suggested that he turn his attention to “darkest Ontario.”14 By this, Fraser meant the puritanical outlook in the province's small towns that was so different from the earthy, life-loving Nova Scotian attitude.15 MacLennan had every reason to take Fraser's advice seriously, because Fraser was on his way to becoming the leading English Canadian political journalist. When MacLennan moved to Montreal in the fall of 1935, Fraser had been writing for the English daily newspapers there for half a dozen years. They could have met in any number of ways, and once they did, the two Scottish Nova Scotians became close friends, debating many political and social ideas. By the time MacLennan was writing The Precipice, Fraser had become the Ottawa editor of the national publication Maclean's magazine. Fraser considered that “darkest Ontario” puritanism was different from American puritanism. This was a subject MacLennan explored at length in his essay “Discovering Who We Are” (1946),16 published in Maclean's while Fraser was editor. MacLennan subsequently spent a week or so in the Ontario lakeshore towns of Cobourg, Belleville, and Port Hope chatting with the locals and getting a feel for the landscape. In Port Hope he noted a sanitary fixtures company whose products had been deteriorating after it was taken over by an American company. It would become a model for Grenville's Ceramic Company, a branch plant of the American Sani-Quip in The Precipice.