(Courtesy Dalhousie University Archives, Thomas Raddall Papers)
Thomas Raddall receiving the insignia of an Officer of the Order of Canada from Governor General Michenerat Ottawa in October, 1971.
With his award-winning history of Halifax completed Tom began to concentrate his energies on a novel that had long been in his mind — a very different book than any he had written before — The Nymph and the Lamp.
Although he calls the strange, lonely island “Marina,” the locale really is Sable Island. Based on some of his unforgettable personal experiences, a powerful, haunting romance unfolds. Thomas Raddall considers The Nymph and the Lamp the best of his novels.
Whenever he finished a book Tom felt drained and exhausted, but he could never rest for long. When a new idea refused to present itself immediately, his conscience nagged. Despite all the recognition he had received and the comfort of achieving financial success, he felt guilty unless he was writing.
In the spring of 1951, when he was suffering from such a writer’s block, he had a log cabin built for himself at Moose Harbour, on the west side of Liverpool Bay. It was near enough to his home that he could work during the day, but away from the telephone and from autograph hunters who had begun to plague him. He loved the little cabin and its peaceful surroundings, but that summer the words came slowly and painfully. December of 1952 crept up before he was satisfied with Tidefall — which at one stage he said despairingly might have to be titled “Tomfall.”
It was not until 1958 that Tom could afford to travel overseas, with Edith, for a much-needed holiday. He left her briefly in England and went on a lone pilgrimage, to Amiens, to the grave of his father.
Now I stood there myself, almost forty years after the battle. The maple saplings planted soon after 1918 had grown to fine trees. There was a soft green turf underfoot, and on each grave a few sprigs of a modest little creeping plant with pink flowers called London Pride, nothing else. When I came to Dad’s grave I fell on my knees and closed my eyes, not praying but simply thinking deeply of the stern soldier, warm at heart, whom I had seen last when I was twelve years old…
It was time to leave, and I knew I was leaving for ever. At the entrance to the little cemetery I turned about and faced the graves, drawing myself up instinctively and saluting them all, with my eyes full of tears, thinking how young and brave these men had been, and how lonely they are now, forgotten, thousands of miles from home, in a world that considers 1918 as remote as the Crusades.
It was the first time I had wept since I was a child.
Back in Canada Tom was soon hard at work again. In the following ten years he published three novels — The Rover, The Governor’s Lady, Hangman’s Beach — and a collection of short stories entitled Footsteps on Old Floors. Then, in 1970, during a radio interview, he dismayed his devoted listeners by making an unexpected announcement. Footsteps on Old Floors would be his final book.
Tom gave his reason. He said that many good and great writers had continued to create in old age after they had “suffered a waning of their powers.” He had resolved, long before, that he was going to quit while his work was still in good repute.
Thomas Head Raddall had reached and surpassed all the goals he had set for himself. He no longer had financial worries. His son, Tom, had graduated from University and was now comfortably established as a dentist in his home town of Liverpool. Frances was happily married to a doctor and lived in New Brunswick.
Thomas Raddall was tired. All his life he had practised unrelenting self-discipline. He had worked incredibly long hours. For years his habit, at the beginning of each November, had been to seal himself off in his sound-proof studio. From then on he lived only in his imaginary world with the characters of his own creation. Often he didn’t know what day of the week it was. He had no idea what was going on in the outside world or even in his own household. When he emerged for long walks in the afternoons, he was still oblivious to the world about him.
Of course he had not always stayed in his studio. Altogether he had spent years of his life in research. Tom was meticulous about every detail in his work. Before he wrote His Majesty’s Yankees (retold for young people in Son of the Hawk), he went to Beauséjour, so he could feel the cold and know what it was like to tramp about the damp marshes. He visited archives to study architecture, and learn the importance of the kitchen to the family in early Nova Scotia. By reading many old letters, he mastered the dialect of his people and came to understand how they thought, and how they socialized. He borrowed books on costumes from libraries so he knew exactly how his characters should be dressed. He drew maps and plans and diagrams of guns and battlefields. So carefully did he research, his historical accuracy has never been questioned.
Whenever Tom had completed one of his books, he was emotionally and physically drained. More than once he had been on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so he took time off to relax and do the things he liked best. He spent long weeks in the woods alone or with close friends, and then came home to take his wife and children on picnics to nearby white sand beaches, or to a favourite spot in the bush where he could dig for arrowheads and other Indian artifacts. And he and Edith spent hours together on the golf course.
Now that he was nearing seventy he changed the pattern of his life. He wanted time to look back, to live in retrospect, to write his memoirs without the pressure of a deadline. Besides the frustrations and sometimes agonizing periods when he had struggled with his work, he had other wonderfully satisfying things to remember.
How strange it had been when he had received his first honorary doctorate from Dalhousie University! For awhile whenever anyone addressed him as “Doctor” he had had an absurd impulse to look around for someone with a little black bag. Now he was accustomed to the title. The boy who had been forced to leave school in Grade Ten held degrees from four Universities.
Some honours he had refused. In 1968 he was asked to accept the position of Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, but he declined. Privately he and his wife had laughed about the invitation. There was nothing that Tom would have loathed more than having to dress up in formal attire and preside at ceremonial affairs.
Yet he had gladly accepted nearly all the highest honours his country could bestow upon an author. Three times he had been chosen for the annual Governor-General’s Award for Literature. He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and had received both the Lorne Pierce Medal and the Gold Medal of the University of Alberta for Distinguished Service to Canadian Literature. He was entitled to wear the insignia of an Officer of the Order of Canada. His books had been published and read in countries all over the world.
(Courtesy Dalhousie University Archives, Thomas Raddall Papers)
Thomas Raddall receiving the insignia of an Officer of the Order of Canada from Governor General Michenerat Ottawa in October, 1971.