Voices in Time Read online

  VOICES IN TIME

  Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,

  Die früh sich einst dem trüben Blick gezeigt.

  Goethe

  Dust jacket of the hardcover 1980 edition of Voices in Time. It is interesting that while the front is not a particularly imaginative design, the back, below a rather somber portrait of MacLennan, states that “Voices in Time is Hugh MacLennan’s greatest novel.”

  VOICES IN TIME

  HUGH MACLENNAN

  Introduction: Michael Gnarowski

  General Editor: Michael Gnarowski

  © McGill-Queen’s University Press 2011

  ISBN 978-0-7735-2494-1

  Legal deposit second quarter 2011

  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.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  MacLennan, Hugh, 1907–1990

  Voices in time / Hugh MacLennan; introduction, Michael Gnarowski ;

  general editor, Michael Gnarowski.

  ISBN 978-0-7735-2494-1

  I. Gnarowski, Michael, 1934– II. Title.

  PS8525.L54V64 2011 c813’.54 C2011-901165-4

  To Tota and Frances

  Penguin small format paperback edition, 1981. The larger,

  quality-size Penguin paperback has a tell-tale mushroom cloud above the heads of the protagonists.

  CONTENTS

  General Editor’s Note

  Chronology

  Select Bibliography

  Preface: On an Entirely Personal Note

  Introduction

  PART ONE

  John Wellfleet’s story

  PART TWO

  Timothy Wellfleet’s story as told by John Wellfleet

  PART THREE

  Conrad Dehmel’s story as told by John Wellfleet

  PART FOUR

  Conrad Dehmel’s story as told by himself

  PART FIVE

  Conrad Dehmel’s story as told by John Wellfleet

  PART SIX

  John Wellfleet’s story

  PART SEVEN

  Conrad Dehmel’s story as told by John Wellfleet

  PART EIGHT

  Conrad Dehmel’s story as told by himself

  PART NINE

  Timothy Wellfleet’s story as told by John Wellfleet

  PART TEN

  John Wellfleet’s story concluded by André Gervais

  GENERAL EDITOR’S NOTE

  The present text derives from the edition published in 1980 by Macmillan of Canada, a division of Gage Publishing Limited of Toronto, Canada. Spelling and German phrases have been left in their original form. Minor changes have been effected to correct typographical and/or spelling errors. The American edition was published in 1980 by St. Martin’s Press of New York. Penguin Books published an English edition in paperback format in 1981. New Press, which had become part of Stoddard Publishing, issued an inexpensive small format paperback in 1983.

  MacLennan’s biographer, Elspeth Cameron, has noted that he observed that “Critics will call the book ‘Orwellian,’ but I don’t think it owes anything to Orwell, who died before the H-bomb.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Various individuals have been kind and helpful over the years that this project has been ongoing. In particular I would like to acknowledge the support of John Osborne, dean of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University, and of Philip Cercone, director of McGill-Queen’s University Press. The latter endorsed the project from its inception and took on the difficult task of addressing the problems of copyright as they relate to MacLennan’s bequest of his literary estate in favour of McGill University. Richard Virr of that university’s library and its special collections helped with access to MacLennan’s papers, as did Brian Busby and Don Wiles with the Goethe epigraph. Joan McGilvray efficiently guided this and the other volumes in this mini series through the publishing process. Not last and not least, I owe much to the eagle eye of the Lady of the Kingdom of the Saguenay.

  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.

  1932–1935 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.

  1937–1939 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. 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.

  1936–1941 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 it 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 Governor 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.

  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 McGill 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 dysfunction and social alienation that become strong and prophetic elements in 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.

  New Press small format paperback edition, 1993, published after New Press had been absorbed by Stoddart Publishing, now defunct. The cover is interesting in that there is nothing apocalyptic about it; instead it is an urban scene painted by Marian Scott, who was a very close friend of MacLennan.

  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, “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)

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

  Three Canadian Writers, Provincial Educational Media Centre, (Richmond, B.C., 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)

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

  PREFACE

  On an Entirely Personal Note … sed bene congravit

  When the idea was broached, now almost ten years ago, to gather Hugh MacLennan’s fiction under one roof, the proposal was readily taken up by Philip Cercone of McGill-Queen’s University Press. The plan was to re-issue MacLennan’s novels in a manner suited to the importance of these works, providing them with substantive introductions together with supporting materials intended to give the contemporary reader a ready and informed entry into the chosen novel.

  The undertaking proved to be more difficult and involved than had been originally anticipated, so that the intention of launching what was to be called The MacLennan Centennial Series in 2007, the hundredth anniversary of the author’s birth, had to be amended. The main reason for the delay was the difficulty encountered in establishing indisputable ownership of rights to paperback publication. Various attempts were made to resolve this issue, and these proved, at least for the time being, unsuccessful. The plan to bring the entire works of MacLennan the novelist back under the umbrella of the university at which he had spent a great portion of his life has had to be temporarily set back.

  For myself, the opportunity to work on this project is a truly privileged occasion. It is a small contribution to celebrate a longstanding and warm if somewhat distant friendship with a man who was an inspiring teacher and a quiet mentor. The path to this friendship came via English 100c, the composition class taught by the poet Louis Dudek, himself newly arrived in 1951 (as was MacLennan) in the English Department of McGill University. My good fortune was to be assigned by the dean’s office to his section of English 100c, where
I was so taken with Dudek’s teaching – open minded, inviting of ideas, discursive – that the next year I sought out his course in Canadian Literature which, by fortunate happenstance, he was sharing with MacLennan. The latter proved equally inspiring, leading a class of not- particularly knowledgeable undergraduates into terrain that he had carefully sown with examples of Canadian prose writing. What strikes me now as I look at my old class notes is the eclecticism of his choices. From Joshua Slocum’s account of his sailing adventures (as a true “bluenose” he was justly proud of the sea faring skills of his fellow Nova Scotians) to Bruce Hutchison’s The Incredible Country, from Ringuet’s Trentes Arpents to Gwethalyn Graham’s Earth and High Heaven (which MacLennan considered a milestone work in Canadian literature for addressing the problem of anti-Semitism in Canada), from Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s Sam Slick to Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute. We (I) received a grounding in the makings of Canadian literature. Not only were we expected to read our assigned texts but we wrote essays on them and were expected to deliver them orally in class, stuttering and stumbling over our words while MacLennan, having retreated to the back of the room, listened with what I thought was an intimidating seriousness.

  MacLennan’s class was scheduled in the late afternoon, and I noticed that after class he would walk westwards on the north side of Sherbrooke Street, headed in the same direction I usually took. One evening, I simply fell in step with him, and we began to walk together after class, a habit that would carry over into the next year. We walked as far as the corner of Sherbrooke and Guy Streets. MacLennan would turn north at Guy to walk a short distance to Summerhill Avenue, while I would catch the #65 street car to take me home up Côte des Neiges. We walked and we talked about all sorts of things, everything from the day’s events to what had been discussed in the classroom that afternoon. He was interested in my background and wanted to know how I had grown up and had been schooled, particularly what I had learned about literature in what had been a narrowly disciplined Catholic boarding school. He had been raised a Presbyterian and Calvinism as a grim conditioner of the human soul arose in casual conversation as it did in the classroom. He was caught, one suspects, between the determinism of his faith, on the one hand, and contemporary science, which fascinated him. I imagine that for him, having grown up in Halifax, Shanghai (where I hailed from) was really the far and fascinating East. From all the many talks, away from the quiet, still air of delightful studies and in the brisk air of winterly Sherbrooke Street, I recall his quiet humour. He was wryly amused that the first monument erected in the British Empire to honour Admiral Nelson and his victory over the French fleet at Trafalgar was la colonne Nelson raised in Montreal, a French city, and, he also wondered, was it true that there had been a statue to King George in Place d’Armes which the American Army of the Revolution had pulled down and decapitated, the head being found later in a well and, as rumour had it, hidden in a local museum? And when I, having quoted Cicero, complained to him, a classicist, about having to do mandatory Latin for one’s degree, he was quietly amused and noted “sed bene congravit.”