(Courtesy Dalhousie University Archives, Thomas Raddall Papers)
J.A. Parker (left) and Thomas Raddall (right) at peace in the wilderness at Eagle Lake, Nova Scotia, in October, 1931.
On a frosty night in November 1934 Edith was safely delivered of a fine healthy baby boy. He was named Thomas Head Raddall III.
It was a happy occasion, but the baby had arrived too late to become an integral part of Tom’s life. By this time he was leading not just a double life, but three distinctly separate lives.
There were the long hours at the office, when, dressed in a business suit, he worked methodically with the accounts of the Mersey Company. There were the long evenings, after he got home, when he worked far into the night writing his stories, living with his imaginary people, forgetful of the real world. And there were also long, wonderful weekends and holidays which he spent in the woods, forgetful of everything except the world of nature.
Not much time was left for his family.
During the summer of 1932, when Tom was sailing with the Awenishe and writing his second book, The Markland Saga, his two best friends, Austin Parker and Brenton Smith, were busy building a big log cabin at Eagle Lake “… for hunting, fishing, and just plain getting-away-from-it-all.” That cabin was to be Tom’s retreat, his safety-valve for many years to come.
(Courtesy Dalhousie University Archives, Thomas Raddall Papers)
J.A. Parker (left) and Thomas Raddall (right) at peace in the wilderness at Eagle Lake, Nova Scotia, in October, 1931.
The three had chosen a good place for a hideaway. That part of the forest was known as “Injun Devil Country/’ and was avoided by everyone, except one or two Indian trappers. Tom described it:
At the south end of Eagle Lake was a swampy wild meadow called “the haunted bog,” a natural place for moose calling like all such openings in the forest. Many years before us, a party of young hunters had bivouacked on a small wooded island in this swamp, intending to call moose in the morning. During the night, and again in the dim light of a misty dawn, they heard weird and frightful screams from something invisible rushing through the air about them. They cleared out in a hurry when full daylight came … They knew nothing whatever of Windigo, the evil spirit of the Ojibwas, which rushed through the air, making dreadful cries, but was never seen, or Ska-de-ga-mut-k’ of Micmac legend, which does the same thing and is always a presage of death or disaster.
Fortunately Tom was not superstitious, and indeed he said that he and his friends never heard or saw anything frightful. He had even called for bull moose, by moonlight, on the haunted bog and heard nothing worse than his own voice bellowing through a birch-bark horn.
Because Tom came to know the Nova Scotia wilderness so intimately, he was able to write about it with fluid ease. It didn’t matter whether he was describing it for a modern romance like The Wings of Night, or for historical novels like His Majesty’s Yankees. The heart of the wilderness and its wildlife remained the same. When David Strang (His Majesty’s Yankees) went moose hunting for the first time with Indian guides, Tom knew that the boy, who had lived so many generations before, must have experienced exactly the same emotions that he himself had felt on a similar occasion.
There is no silence like the death quiet of our Nova Scotia woods on a frosty fall morning. Southward where the brook trickled over a ledge in a neck of the woods we could hear its water, a good mile. Somewhere in the mist a chickadee wakened, then another, and another, and their small bird voices pierced the silence like sharp little knives. A pair of meat jays came to us, flitting like small gray ghosts from branch to branch, inspecting us with bright, inquisitive eyes….
Again silence, but not for long. There was a tremendous splash from the mist over the brook. My heart thumped the breath out of me. It amazed me to realize how quietly the moose, that great, ungainly creature, can move when he so chooses. The big bull had crossed two hundred yards of wild meadow without a squelch, without a whisper of grass stalks, until the brook crossed his path, too deep to wade and too wide to jump… Now the mist seemed to roll like a wave of the sea, and out of the wave loomed a mighty figure, black and shapeless….
But even with the short interludes spent in his beloved wilderness, Tom was finding his workload unbearable. Above all, he wanted time to write.
The Markland Saga had been published — 300 copies — but that was the last of the series. The Colonel had not paid one cent for all Tom’s work as an author, and by this time Tom was enjoying some real literary success elsewhere.
A friend had given him a bundle of back numbers of a prestigious British publication, Blackwood’s Magazine. Stories in these copies were of a literary quality and were written by authors living in almost every part of the English-speaking world except Canada. Tom was puzzled. Why weren’t there any Canadian stories?
Overburdened with work at the office and deeply involved in the Markland Saga, he couldn’t take time out to write another short story. Then he remembered Tit for Tat. He found the story of “Scabby Lou” in the back of a drawer where he had tossed it, several years before, after its rejection from Maclean’s. He read it again. It was a good story. He put it into an envelope and mailed it overseas. Back came a letter of acceptance and a cheque for $90.00. And they wanted more!
After that Tom no longer wrote trash for the “pulps.” Again he remembered his father’s words, “… strive to make a name for yourself.”
He became his own severest critic. He wrote and rewrote every sentence of every story. Soon he had reason to believe he could indeed make a name for himself—if only he had time! Already he had received praise in high places.
Noticing his stories in Blackwood’s Magazine, Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan praised them warmly. The latter’s friendship continued after he became Lord Tweedsmuir and Governor-General of Canada. In 1939 he said of Mr. Raddall’s writing: “I confess to a special liking for a story which has something of a plot and which issues in a dramatic climax, a type which has had many distinguished exponents from Sir Walter Scott through [Robert Louis] Stevenson and [Guy de] Maupassant to [Rudyard] Kipling and [Joseph] Conrad. To this school Mr. Raddall belongs, and he is worthy of a great succession. He has the rare gift of swift, spare, clean-limbed narrative. And he has great stories to tell.”
Encouraged and inspired by such praise, Tom began to hate and resent his dull routine work at the Mersey Paper Company. Often he was so tired he had no time or energy left for his writing. One night he wrote in his diary:
… After a bad night the day in the office is a long agony and I find myself making stupid mistakes … Sometimes I think I must give up writing, or give up working for the paper company, or go mad.
He had to take a chance — a bold, unprecedented choice. One day he walked into the Mersey Paper Company and tendered his resignation. He had determined to make his living solely by his pen.
Up to that time no Canadian author of fiction had been able to earn even a subsistence income. Two of the best known Canadian writers, Charles G.D. Roberts and Marshall Saunders, had become indigent in their old age, dependent on the charity of others. Thomas Raddall would never let that happen to him or to his family. He had enough saved so that he was quite sure that they could manage somehow for three years. That was the time he allowed to prove himself.
And Edith — that good and loyal woman — agreed. There were two babies in the family now. Tommy had a little sister, Frances, born in 1936, and the children had become the most important part of their mother’s world. She would make many sacrifices for them in the years to come.
Tom was not a demonstrative person but he appreciated his wife’s efforts. Later he wrote to a friend:
My wife was wonderful. “Pinching and scraping” is not only a trite phrase but a term utterly inadequate for what she accomplished, not only then but in the first few years after 1938, when I threw up my job and launched forth as a professional writer.
The Colonel tried to keep Tom in his employ. He suggested that Tom should just take a year’s leave of absence from his job, certain at the end of that time he would be very grateful to return.
But Tom refused.
“I discovered, long ago on Sable Island, that I couldn’t learn to swim with one hand clinging to the side of a boat.”
He wrote in his diary:
Ambition is an uncomfortable disease. Perhaps I shall regret my lightly resigned job before three years are out, but I know I shall never regret this attempt to establish myself as a writer.
Tom had to have complete solitude, away from the distractions of children’s chatter, telephone conversations, and the visits of neighbours, so a sound-proof study was built at the rear of his house. But he couldn’t bear to be boxed in. Five windows gave him views he enjoyed “…a pond where frogs sang in spring, and a tall wood of spruce trees where many birds nested in summer.”
On one wall of his study he hung a large painting of an old Indian with a pair of oxen. The man represented Scabby Lou. Tom had become owner of the picture in a curious way, and it was the best reminder in the world to help him keep faith in his ability as a writer, no matter what editors or critics might say.
The painting was a gift from his old ‘adversary,’ Napier Moore, the editor of Maclean’s magazine. Without asking permission, an author’s agent in London had taken the liberty of sending tear-sheets of two of Thomas Raddall’s short stories published in Blackwood’s to Maclean’s. One of the stories was Tit for Tat. The Maclean’s editor bought both stories. He had forgotten all about his contemptuous rejection of the “Scabby Lou” story. The agent sent Tom a cheque, first taking a 10% commission for himself.
Tom was outraged. He didn’t want any story of his published in Maclean’s at any price, and he wrote the editor to this effect. Mr. Moore was shocked and very upset. He pleaded with Tom to change his mind. He said he had bought the stories in good faith from the London agent, and he had already commissioned a well-known artist to illustrate Tit for Tat.
In the end Tom relented and the story was printed. As a gesture of gratitude and good will from Maclean’s, he was given the painting. After all, Thomas Raddall had now been recognized by top critics as a master of the craft of the short story.
