MARGARET ANNE WILKINSON was born in 1870 on a farm near Halifax, a city on the south-east coast of Canada. Margaret, dubbed Meg, was the seventh child of Emma and Herbert Wilkinson.
“Lucky number seven,” said Herbert. “And born in ’70. This calls for a cigar.”
Exhausted from the strain of childbirth, Emma kept her thoughts to herself. She had a long habit of keeping silent, for her thinking was not always pleasing to others. Her thought on this occasion was … let me have the luck of this being my last baby.
But it was not. Three years later, at age forty-one, she gave birth to another girl, Alice.
“Now, my dear,” said Herbert, “you have two girls to help with the housework.”
“That’s enough,” said Emma. “No more, Herbert. No more.”
All very well for our Queen Victoria to have so many children, Emma had thought to herself, time and again, as she washed soiled diapers in buckets of cold water, bent over in her smoky, dark, log cabin on a lonely farm in the wilds of Canada. Our queen has a palace and servants.
Emma undid the top buttons of her flannel nightgown and expertly guided her new baby’s head so that her mouth found the nipple oozing the first drops of nourishment. Ah, Emma sighed quietly as she relaxed against the goose-down pillows. This is the easy part. She smiled at Herbert as he turned to leave her with the midwife from Halifax. A smile from Emma was a rare thing.
“Good wife.” Herbert nodded jauntily. “Good mother. My little Emma.”
“He’s a right gentleman,” said the midwife after he closed the thin plank door.
“Yes,” said Emma. “Always has been. He’s the fifth son of the squire of Squirrel Hall. Back in Yorkshire, that is, in the old country.”
“Squirrel Hall,” the midwife laughed. “That’s a good one!”
“It was very grand.”
“Aye.” And spare me the details, thought midwife McLarty. I’ve heard it all before. The grand life left behind. “My old country is Ireland. I’d a starved to death if I’d stayed there. Guess prospects weren’t too good for a fifth son, either. But you’ve got yourself a fine looking farm here, Mrs. Wilkinson. And a fine family, I must say. I’ve delivered some shockers, believe me. Especially to women your age. The dead ones are a relief. It’s the ones born witless, or without limbs, or with cleft palate. You wouldn’t believe …”
“I believe you,” said Emma. She closed her eyes as though too tired for further talk. And would you believe me if I told you I was a scullery maid at Squirrel Hall? That I saw more at age twelve than you think you know now? But I won’t tell you, for I’ve learned that once you uncover yourself, people don’t forget what they have seen and may use it against you. And you, my good midwife, have seen quite enough of me. Quite enough. She opened her eyes to shift baby Alice to the other breast.
“I’ll be going now, Mrs. Wilkinson, seeing as you’re managing well enough on your own.”
“Thank you, Mrs. McLarty.”
Three-year-old Meg then burst into the room, having escaped from her bed in her nightgown. She was tripping upon it as she forced her way around the skirts of Mrs. McLarty.
“Mommy. Mommy. Is this tomorrow?” Meg asked excitedly.
“Now that’s what I call a sunny disposition!” Mrs. McLarty laughed. “Top o’ the mornin’ to you little Missy.”
“Hello,” said Meg, curtsying slightly as she had been taught to do, then she turned to her mother. “Is that the baby you promised me tomorrow?”
“Yes, my little Meg, this is your sister, Alice.”
Alice struggled to open her eyes then cried at all she saw.
Is this tomorrow?
“It’s an interesting question,” said Herbert to Emma. “She should not be discouraged from asking it. She’s a questioner and an optimist by nature. Like me when I was young.” He smiled at Emma. “I knew you would marry me eventually. And come to Canada with me.”
“Such a bright face you put on everything, Herbert. And still do.” But you would have had your way with me, without benefit of marriage, had I let you, thought Emma. It is a great lesson to impart to our daughters.
Emma recalled Herbert trailing after her when he came home from boarding school. She was then fourteen and he seventeen. He was not at all like the handsome and mysterious Mr. Rochester, hero of her heroine, Jane Eyre, star of the runaway best seller Jane Eyre, the book that was passed or nicked, from upstairs to down, in every cultured household of the time. Squirrel Hall had been exceptionally cultured, thanks to Mistress Wilkinson, who kept the best library in the county. She was a great fan of Charles Dickens’ novels and had entertained the man himself to a grand dinner at Squirrel Hall when Dickens was in the vicinity doing research for the boarding school background of his novel Nicholas Nickleby. That the novel turned out to reflect badly on local schools did not endear Mrs. Wilkinson to some of her neighbours.
But all that had occurred before Emma came to work at the Hall. Mrs.Wilkinson endured as a prominent hostess and defender of Dickens and other writers whom she called “forward thinking.” She read Jane Eyre as soon as it came out but found the story of a modest young governess marrying the master of the house not very likely. She knew from her own household of a husband and five sons that a governess was more likely to be taken advantage of and then sent away on spurious grounds. But the need for governesses for her sons was long past when Mrs. Wilkinson loaned her copy of Jane Eyre to her head housekeeper, who soon passed it on to young Emma who read and re-read it.
During a re-reading at the servants’ table in off hours, Emma suddenly had the feeling of being watched. She looked up and there in the doorway was young Master Herbert looking most intently at her. She was too fearful of what he might do, to speak.
“You like to read?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I’ll get you any book you want.”
Emma accepted with much trepidation the loan of books, since it was approved by Mrs. Wilkinson, but she would not converse with Master Herbert about the books or remain for more than a moment alone in his company. She knew about servant girls who were dismissed because they had got with child, or even become too familiar with a master. Mrs. Wilkinson treated her staff with respect and generosity. She had been involved in the abolition of slavery movement when she was young. She was a supporter of public education and she tried to raise her sons with a high regard for women. But when one of her sons got a servant “in trouble,” it was the servant who was dismissed, albeit with payment. The baby was delivered to an orphanage and the fifteen-year-old girl was said to have ended up on the streets of London. Emma was determined not to end up in that faraway den of iniquity. She planned to marry at the mature age of seventeen or eighteen a sober, hard-working blacksmith, or the like, whose house she would keep in good order, and hopefully have a nice little family.
Thus Emma was terrified when Master Herbert waylaid her, alone, on the path back to her home in the village. It was in just such places that the ruination of a girl could occur. She stood paralyzed as Herbert lifted her hand to his lips. “You’re the prettiest little thing in all the world.”
She looked up at a window and saw Mrs. Wilkinson looking down upon them. She turned and fled to her home. She pretended illness, not daring to return to Squirrel Hall. A week later, Mrs. Wilkinson drove up in a carriage. She asked to speak with Emma privately.
“Our son, Master Herbert,” she said, clasping her gloved hands tightly together, “wishes you to accept his apologies for frightening you. He made it very clear to us that you are not at fault. He has gone to look for a job in London and prays that you will return to your job at Squirrel Hall.” Mrs. Wilkinson coughed, not used to the heavy cloud of coal smoke lingering in the small room. “As do the squire and I. Will you come now, Miss Emma?”
Emma drove back to Squirrel Hall in the carriage with Mrs. Wilkinson.
Herbert came home at Christmas and behaved with perfect decorum, though it did not hide the fact that he was still smitten with Emma, still trailed after her, still coveted her, with her carrot-coloured ringlets, sea-green eyes, healthy face and figure. Mrs. Wilkinson looked worried. The squire was disgusted.
“The lad has never had any common sense.” The squire’s raised voice could be heard from behind closed doors. “He’s too much like you, my dear wife. Full of books, ideas, questions. His head in the clouds. How can he still be so damn moonstruck! All very well for a woman to be such a … what did you call it?”
“Romantic?”
“It doesn’t do for a man. A man has to get on with things. Why can’t he be more like me?”
“George, I fear he is too much like you. A very determined young man who chooses just the woman his parents warn him against.”
The squire laughed heartily. “But you were such another kettle of fish, my dear! Emma is a mouse, meek and silent as a mouse.”
“I should think so, around you!” Mrs. Wilkinson’s laugh was heard, followed by a pause for another sip of port. “I have spoken with her. She’s a bright little thing. Understands what she reads. Though it’s hard to understand her. She has the accent of her class, of course. Maybe we should encourage Herbert to converse with her. Allow more familiarity. Yes! Let us try that, George. Absence has served only to make the heart grow fonder.”
Emma never forgot the offence she felt at hearing that conversation. It spurred her into a new direction. She had been promoted from scullery maid because she showed that she was diligent at any task set to her. Now she would learn to speak like a governess. Why not? And if Master Herbert spoke to her, she would answer. Yes she would. And if that got her dismissed from the household, she would find another position. If Master Herbert dismissed her … so be it.
But Herbert was charmed, impressed, intrigued by her. She made him feel looked up to, admired, worldly, as though he had the attributes of a man like his father, though in fact he had no property or authority. Herbert went back to London, worked away at his dull, low-level clerking job. The fifth son of a not extremely wealthy squire of the hunt, the squire of Squirrel Hall, young Herbert was not a great marriage prospect. Interesting women like his mother did not surround him. He needed to make his own way in life. He devised a plan. Next Christmas he went home with a proposal for his parents and for Emma.
“I’m going to marry Emma,” he said in a meeting with his parents, “She has given her consent. A small ceremony in the chapel. No expense. But I could do with a little help in the cost of getting across the ocean and acquiring some land in the Canadas.”
“Are you serious, lad?”
“I am, sir.”
The yule log in the large fireplace crackled and spat in the silence. The squire stood up and held out his hand to Herbert. “I congratulate you, my son. It sounds like a practical venture.”
“Thank you, sir. And mother?”
“So far away, in such a dangerous land …” she protested but then stepped forward to embrace him.
“Thank you, mother.” He patted her back then drew away. “I would like to present my betrothed.” Herbert went to the doorway and brought Emma in, holding her hand firmly.
She curtsied slightly then said, “I will look after him, to the best of my ability, ma’am. And sir.”
Emma revelled, to this day, in the look of surprise on the face of her in-laws, that she should so speak up and in such a good accent.
Herbert had done well in the new country. He bought a hundred acres of land just a half day’s journey outside the city of Halifax. A barn and a log cabin were already built near the creek that ran through it, though only half the land was cleared of woods. Over the years, Herbert established an apple orchard and put his six sons to work looking after the cows and pigs, the horses and plowing, the planting and reaping. He even managed to clear another ten acres, using some of the trees to add onto the log house a bedroom, bigger kitchen, and enlarged sleeping loft.
He called the farm Wolf Woods because he was fascinated by the sound of wolves howling at night in his woods. At first he worried that they might come close and do harm to his livestock, Emma’s chickens, or even his children. He kept a gun over the doorway. But he never saw the wolves or their tracks outside of the woods. He liked to write home about the wolves in his woods, knowing what good table conversation it would provide for his parents and their friends.
Unlike his father, he had no desire or time to become squire of the hunt. He became interested in the politics of his new country, spent more and more time in Halifax, and got himself elected to the provincial legislature of Nova Scotia in 1876.
“This is the great epoch of my life,” he said to Emma, his thumbs in his waistcoat. “Next to marrying you, of course. A man’s life can become of real importance in a young country like this, helping with its development. We can change the course of history!”
Herbert was becoming quite an orator. He liked to practise in his own household with wife and eight children gathered round the long table.
“It’s a pity your parents didn’t live to see this,” said Emma, seated at the other end of the table spoon-feeding baby Alice. “They would be proud of you.”
I doubt it, thought Emma. I’ve grown from a mouse into a tired old workhorse. Worn out with childbearing and doing all the jobs of a full staff at Squirrel Hall. Washing, ironing, sewing, mending, gardening, preserving, cleaning, endless cooking and baking. Endless! Followed by endless washing up. I’m too tired to read a book, even if I had the time. And you have no idea how much I hate the very walls of this house. Made of undisguised tree trunks! It couldn’t be more primitive. And never a friend to talk to within. Hedgeless fields without. Wild wolves howling in the night. How I miss the red brick houses, row upon row, in my Yorkshire village. Cobbled streets with people I know, coming and going. The smell of a coal fire. My poor old parents and my sisters. I’ll never see them again. Nor the grandeur of Squirrel Hall. Oh dear. Oh dear.
“Momma’s weeping!” Meg got off her place at the end of the bench and tugged at her mother’s sleeve.
“Finish your meal,” said Emma sternly, pushing Meg away. “You are talking nonsense. Keep your place at the table, or you shall have none.” Emma stood up, carrying Alice. “I must see to the apple crumble.”
Alice began to cry.
“My poor little one. My poor little one.” Emma nuzzled her cheek into Alice’s, transferring her tears and her self pity.