The Life of Margaret Laurence Read online

  PUBLISHED BY VINTAGE CANADA

  Copyright © 1997 by James King

  All rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright

  Conventions. Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of

  Random House of Canada, in 1998. First published in hardcover

  by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, Toronto, in 1997. Distributed

  by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  King, James, 1942–

  The life of Margaret Laurence

  eISBN: 978-0-307-36721-1

  1. Laurence, Margaret, 1926–1987 — Biography.

  2. Novelists, Canadian (English) — 20th century — Biography.*

  I. Title.

  PS8523.A86Z7 1998 C813’.54 C98-931246-1

  PR9199.3.L33Z7 1998

  v3.1

  For the friends of Margaret Laurence,

  especially Mary Adachi, Gordon Elliott,

  Joan Johnston, Alan Maclean, Jack McClelland,

  Mona Meredith and Malcolm Ross

  and for my wife, Christine Dalton,

  who urged me to write this book

  “Now I am rampant with memory.… Each day, so worthless really, has a rarity for me lately. I could put it in a vase and admire it, like the first dandelions, and we would forget their weediness and marvel that they were there at all.”

  The Stone Angel

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  PART ONE: PEGGY

  1. Blood Child (1926–1930)

  2. Snapshots (1930–1935)

  3. Horses of the Night (1935–1939)

  4. A Prairie Flower (1939–1944)

  5. Halls of Sion (1944–1947)

  6. Uncertain Flowering (1947–1950)

  7. Water for a Dry Land (1950–1952)

  8. Crossing Jordan (1952–1957)

  9. Part Fear, Part Eagerness (1957–1961)

  PART TWO: MARGARET

  10. Terrible Complexities (1961–1962)

  11. The Necessary Condition of Life (1962–1963)

  12. Happy, Unhappy or In-Between? (1964–1965)

  13. Jests of God (1966)

  14. The Multiplicity of Everything (1967–1968)

  15. Fire-Dweller (1969)

  PART THREE: MARGARET LAURENCE

  16. The Uncharted Sea (1969–1972)

  17. Ambiguity Everywhere (1972–1974)

  18. Christian Radical (1974–1976)

  19. Lost Histories (1977–1985)

  20. The Diviner (1986–1987)

  Books by Margaret Laurence

  Appendix

  Sources

  Endnotes

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Except where noted, these photographs are courtesy of Jocelyn and David Laurence.

  1.1 John Simpson.

  1.2 Mountain Avenue, Neepawa. 1906.

  1.3 “The Brick House,” 312 First Avenue, Neepawa.

  1.4 Wemyss house, 483 Second Avenue, Neepawa.

  1.5 “The Little House,” 265 Vivian Street, Neepawa.

  1.6 Verna Simpson Wemyss.

  1.7 Peggy Wemyss and Mona Spratt, both aged two, Neepawa. 1928.

  1.8 Peggy Wemyss, age four, Neepawa. 1930.

  2.1 Margaret Simpson Wemyss, age sixteen.

  2.2 Robert and Peggy Wemyss.

  2.3 Bob Wemyss.

  3.1 Peggy Wemyss, about the age of fourteen. Picture is labelled: “Me with Dizzy—the Duke of Dezulay—Spaniel who was not long lived—run-over. Me about 14.”

  3.2 Lorne “Bud” Bailey. c. 1935–36.

  4.1 Peggy Wemyss and Derek Armstrong. Picture is labelled: “Derek & JMW—Jan. 1944. Me 17 1/2 in love with RAF man.”

  4.2 Louise Alguire, Mona Spratt and Peggy Wemyss. July 1944.

  5.1 Adele Wiseman. 1978. Photograph by David Laurence.

  6.1 Jack Laurence. c. 1942.

  6.2 Elsie Fry Laurence.

  6.3 Margaret Laurence on her wedding day.

  7.1 Hargeisa. Photograph by C.J. Martin.

  8.1 The Laurence bungalow at Tema. 1955.

  8.2 Peggy and Jocelyn, Ghana. c. 1955.

  8.3 Peggy and Jocelyn, Ghana. c. 1955.

  8.4 Peggy with David, Ghana. c. 1955.

  8.5 A party at the Tema complex, Ghana. c. 1956.

  8.6 Peggy with Jocelyn and David, Tema. 1956.

  8.7 Margaret Laurence. c. 1956–57.

  9.1 Peggy with Jocelyn and friend, Victoria. 1954.

  9.2 Peggy arranging Jocelyn’s hair, Vancouver. c. 1959.

  9.3 3556 West 21st Avenue, Vancouver. Rebecca Gagan.

  9.4 Jack McClelland. Photograph by D. Darrell. The Toronto Star.

  9.5 Margaret Laurence. c. 1959.

  9.6 Margaret Laurence. c. 1959.

  9.7 Jack, Jocelyn and David. c. 1959.

  10.1 George Lamming. 1951. The Hulton Getty Picture Collection.

  12.1 Elm Cottage.

  12.2 Margaret Laurence walking on Beacon Hill in Penn, with Ringo, the family dog.

  12.3 Margaret Laurence. Picture is labelled: “M—England—1964—photo used on A Jest of God 1966—I look like the Dragon Lady—I really love this pic—it doesn’t look at all like me, but it looks good. By London photographer Andrew Whittuck.”

  12.4 Margaret Laurence in Penn. c. 1964.

  13.1 Margaret Laurence. Photograph by Alfred A. Knopf. 1966.

  13.2 Margaret Laurence in the garden at Penn. c. 1966.

  14.1 Al Purdy. Photograph by E. Roworth. The Toronto Star.

  14.2 Margaret Atwood. Photograph by R. Bull. The Toronto Star.

  15.1 Margaret Laurence. Photograph by William French. 1984.

  17.1 8 Regent Street, Lakefield.

  17.2 The study at 8 Regent Street, Lakefield.

  17.3 Margaret Laurence in her telephone alcove, Lakefield. Photograph by Doug Boult.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS IS NOT an “official” or “authorized” biography, but I am deeply grateful to Jocelyn and David Laurence for the unqualified support they have given me in writing this book. My arrangement with the Laurences has been simple and straightforward: in exchange for the ability to see and use the unpublished material by their mother of which they hold copyright—particularly her letters to close friends, the unpublished journal and the other unpublished writings—they asked to read my typescript in order to correct any errors of fact. This arrangement has been adhered to strictly. In fact, the Laurences gave me information which supplanted factual errors on my part, but, at the same time, they provided me with further information which has been incorporated into this book. Jack Laurence spoke to me with great candour.

  I am grateful to the friends of Margaret Laurence who opened their doors, their memories and, quite often, their hearts to me: Sheila Andrzejewski, Alexander and Delores Baron, Jan de Bruyn, Ian Cameron, Sandy Cameron, Stevie Cameron, Zella Clark, A.O.C and Jean Murray Cole, Gordon Elliott, Charlotte Engel, Alice Dahlquist Hackett, Penny Jamieson, Peter A. Jordan, Judith Jones, Nadine Jones, Louise Kubik, Alan and Robin Maclean, Wes McAmmond, Jack McClelland, Mona Meredith, Catherine Milne, Catherine Munro, Ruth Parent, the late Olive Pennie, Ken Roberts, Florence and Mordecai Richler, Bill and Anne Ross, Malcolm Ross, Fred and June Schulhof, Dmitry Stone, René and Eva Temple, Leona Thwaites, Michelle Tisseyre, Robert Weaver, Pat Wemyss, Marjory Whitelaw, Alice Williams, and Lois and Roy Wilson. Margaret Laurence’s friends in the writing community have been equally generous: Margaret Atwood, Don Bailey, Douglas Fetherling, Timothy Findley, Robert Fulford, G
raeme Gibson, Dennis Lee, Alice Munro, Al Purdy, Jane Rule, Miriam Waddington and Budge Wilson. I am grateful to the following for facilitating my research: Bill Gusen, Austin Clarke, Elsa Daniels, Jonathan Lovat Dickson, Greg Gatenby, Ted Kotcheff, Peter D. Laurie, Fred Ofosu, John R. Schram, Shelley Sorin and Tamara Stone.

  The following individuals have provided me with important research material: Paul Banfield and Pamela Thayer, Queen’s University Archives; Dietrich Bertz, Research Collections, The University of Victoria; George Brandak, The University of British Columbia Library; Gene Bridwell, Simon Fraser University Library; Sarah Cooper, Assistant to Margaret Atwood; A. Denkabe, University of Ghana; Anne Goddard and Michael Stewart, National Archives, Ottawa; Edna Hajnal, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto; John Handford, Macmillan Archive; Kent Haworth, York University Archives; Dorothy Henderson, Margaret Laurence House, Neepawa; Chris Hives, The University of British Columbia Library; François Ricard, the Gabrielle Roy trustees; Josephine Sapper, Ghana News Agency; Margaret M. Sherry, Princeton University Library; Linda Simpson, Director of Records, The University of Winnipeg; Barbara Smith-Laborde, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre; Apollonia Lang Steele, Special Collections, The University of Calgary; G. Thomas Tanselle, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; Bruce Whiteman, McGill University Library; Douglas G. Worling, St. Andrew’s College.

  My debts to Margaret Laurence scholars are listed in the footnotes and endnotes. I should like to give special thanks, however, to Greta Coger, John Lennox, Fiona Sparrow, and Nora Stovel. I have learned much from my graduate students: Grazyna Antoszek, Jennifer DeAlwis, Rebecca Gagan, Valentina Gal, Karey Lucas-Hughes and Susan Woods. I should like to give special thanks to Charlotte Stewart and Carl Spadoni, Research Collections, McMaster University Library, and to my two research assistants, Brenda Gunn and Jane Clarke.

  This book has benefited enormously from the penetrating but kind guidance of my publisher, Louise Dennys. I am also much indebted to Diane Martin for editing this book with extraordinary precision and tact. Mary Adachi’s sensitive and diligent eye went far beyond the bounds of copy-editing.

  PREFACE

  DURING THANKSGIVING weekend 1986, Margaret Laurence telephoned her friend Lois Wilson, the Moderator of the United Church of Canada, to announce that she was dying and to plan her funeral. A short time later, she sent Lois the following memorandum:

  SUGGESTIONS FOR M.L.’S FUNERAL AND BURIAL I would like the following incorporated into the service: 1. Readings: Old Testament: Ecclesiastes 3: 1–12 (“To everything there is a season”); New Testament: Corinthians 1: Ch. 13 (“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels”); 2. The Lord’s Prayer; 3. Hymns: (a) No. 12 “All people that on earth do dwell”, (b) No. 129: “Unto the hills”, (c) “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah.”

  During their final visit together, Margaret was, Lois observed, “grieving, jubilating and raging. She loved life passionately. ‘Life is for rejoicing—for dancing,’ she said. With tears streaming down her face, out of a mixture of physical weakness and intense emotion, she cried out to me, ‘And I’ve danced. I’ve danced.’ ”

  Two months later on January 9, 1987—four days after her death at the age of sixty—an emotionally charged “service of worship” in memory of Margaret Laurence was held at a packed Bloor St. United Church in Toronto. (A private funeral was held the day before at Lakefield United Church.) As Lois Wilson put it, Margaret had planned the “place, the form, the hymns, the thrust” of a ceremony which emphasized “grief, memory and hope.” Few who were in attendance at Lakefield or Toronto realized that Margaret Laurence had chosen to take her own life in the face of terminal cancer. She chose to die alone. Her recognition of herself as a loner had marked her life since early childhood, yet much of her life had been a battle against solitude.

  She was one of the most famous and beloved of Canadians. Still, during the last decade of her life, she had also been reviled, someone accused of being a pornographer. A deeply sensitive and private person, she had been terribly hurt by these accusations since she knew herself to be a truly righteous person, a writer dedicated to exploring human nature in all its various complexities. Since Margaret Laurence had been subject to intense public scrutiny of all kinds, most Canadians felt they had a reasonably good idea of her. The simple fact is that she was an extremely secretive person. We never really knew her.

  Margaret Laurence planned the contents and form of her memorial service, as if she realized that this was indeed the last time she would be able to use her gifts as a writer to impose form on the chaos of life and, in this instance, death. Just before she discovered she was dying from cancer, Margaret completed the first draft of her final book, Dance on the Earth: A Memoir (published in 1989, two years after her death), where she carefully crafted what she would reveal about herself. The result is much more apologia than autobiography. In it, she tells of some of the circumstances that formed her, but it is self-consciously fictional in that she relates her life history very much in the manner of a novelist telling her readers exactly what she wants them to know—and no more. The result is deliberately evasive. Nevertheless, Margaret’s strong beliefs on a number of vital social issues (nuclear war, abortion, mothers and children) are clearly defined.

  Dance on the Earth remains a shadowy book, one in which the complexities of the autobiographer’s existence are scarcely hinted at. Readers who, before they read it, may have been puzzled by the circumstances of the famous writer’s life, remained so. Knowing the limitations that she had imposed, Margaret began on her sixtieth birthday another substantial (as yet unpublished) journal in which she addressed some of the issues not answered in Dance:

  I have not published an adult novel since 1974, & although I have since published a book of essays & 3 books for children, the worried ones either are not aware of this fact or point out that the last book was published in 1980. What has happened to Margaret Laurence?

  Margaret’s reflections were interrupted by the discovery of cancer, her illness and death. In large part, this book deals with her own unanswered question and, of course, with many of my own: for example, who was the real Margaret Laurence and how did she become the most renowned writer in Canadian literary history?

  My interest in Margaret Laurence—whom I never met—began with my awareness that there was a considerable gap between her public presentation of herself as a pleasant, ordinary, middle-aged woman and the extraordinary gallery of strong, self-willed women she created in her fiction. What was the link between Margaret Laurence and her heroines? For example, was Margaret Laurence at all like Hagar, the most formidable and yet most loved woman in all of Canadian fiction?

  The more I investigated her life the more I became fascinated—and haunted—by a woman who changed dramatically through the course of her life: from the willowy beauty of Neepawa, to the young, wifely Peggy, to the determined writer, Margaret, and, finally, to the stout dowager of Lakefield, Margaret Laurence, the celebrity.

  I discovered a woman of many complexities, of considerable elusiveness. There was the young writer who was convinced that readers would hate The Stone Angel: “No seductions. No rapes. No murders.… It is the work of a lunatic, I think. It has hardly anything to recommend it to the general public.” There was the ground-breaking writer who led the way for other women—even though she was deeply troubled by the conflict between being female and a writer, between being a wife and a writer, and between being a mother and a writer. There was the older woman, who having sacrificed so much to become a writer, reluctantly accepted the fact after she completed The Diviners that she had nothing more to say. In a very real sense, Margaret Laurence refused to strike out, to produce inferior books. She tried to make the words come but to little avail. Painful though it was to wind up as a non-writing writer, she accepted her new status with both deep regret and considerable grace.

  Margaret Laurence, who knew full well that she would someday be the subject of a biographer such as m
yself, once observed to the novelist Marian Engel: “I would rather have people read my work than be entertained by me in person or pore over the details of my life, which has actually been pretty sedate, but when I come to think of it, it has always seemed very very dramatic to me.” To another close friend, Gordon Elliott, she once observed: “One’s writing is not meant to be bound up with one’s life, but only jerks believe this.” The inner world of Margaret Laurence was intense and filled with drama, and her writings are intimately interconnected with her life. More than that, hers is the very human story of a woman’s struggle to find—and define—herself in a male-centred world.

  For me, researching and writing this extraordinary life became a journey filled with surprises. I assumed I would discover a powerful and strong person reminiscent of the enormous strength and vitality that is readily visible in Margaret’s heroines. I did find that person. I assumed I would gain even further insight into her legendary generosity. I did. I assumed Margaret’s grit and determination were strong elements in her character. I now know this to be true. What I was perhaps not prepared to discover—and look at—was the extent of Margaret’s anguish and suffering, of her incredible insecurities, of the many ways in which she punished herself, of the loneliness and isolation in which she dwelt nearly all her life.

  Margaret Laurence was a person of many secrets. Like most of us, she could be unreasonable, cruel and vindictive, but she carefully hid her dark side, in large part because she felt compelled to live up to the expectations of her many devoted admirers. After all, a person who becomes lionized sometimes feels compelled to fall in line with the resulting burdens of adulation. Margaret Laurence was in reality a much more gutsy, sensuous and self-willed person than her public image allowed. Indeed, she was very much like Hagar and Morag. The adversities she herself faced went into the making of all her heroines, each of whom is a mixture of great strengths and great weaknesses—a reflection of the powerful, vibrant and tormented woman who wrote the Manawaka novels.