Mazo de la Roche is an enigma to anyone wishing to learn about her life. Information that she gave altered the facts: she changed her date and place of birth, changed her surname, and rewrote her family’s history. Her first biographers faced much detective work to establish the details of her life. Yet her fiction writing was different. The 16 Jalna books deal with many people and cover more than a century of time. Written over 33 years and not in chronological order, they are faithful to the larger historical record and inwardly consistent. A family tree, updated in every volume, shows that Mazo adhered to a strict time frame. One must conclude that she created historical fiction and fictional history. She herself said, “I have put myself into my books.” Perhaps that is ultimately where one can find her.

Born in Newmarket, Ontario, in 1879, Mazo was the daughter of William and Alberta Roche. Her mother’s ill health and her father’s many jobs – in stores, in a hotel, and, lastly, on a farm – resulted in frequent family moves. Mazo drew on these experiences for her later writing. A high-strung and expressive child attuned to tragedies and changes around her, she developed a complex fantasy world that she called “The Play.” This interested and sustained her throughout her life as she created imaginary scenes and characters, often with her younger cousin and lifelong companion, Caroline Clement. It too was a rich source for her writing.

Mazo’s education combined formal schooling with extensive reading at home and music and art classes. In 1902, she published her first magazine story and continued writing as much as she could after that. When in 1927 her Jalna won the American magazine Atlantic Monthly’s prize of $10,000, she became immediately famous. The prestigious prize gave her the financial freedom to pursue writing full-time and to move to Europe. There she lived, mainly in England, until 1939. Then, with war coming, she returned to North America with her two adopted children. She spent the rest of her life mostly in Toronto, where she died at age 82. She was buried at St. George’s Church, at Sutton, Ontario, on the shore of Lake Simcoe, a place she knew and loved from summer holidays.

By the time Variable Winds at Jalna (1954) was published, more than 1.6 million copies of the Jalna series had been sold to Americans. “Mazo de la Roche’s achievement as a novelist,” exclaimed Edward Weeks, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, “makes me think of Trollope and Galsworthy.” In Europe where her books were translated into 15 languages, the European readership corresponded directly by the hundreds with the author through her publisher. They wanted to share with her emotionally how they identified with and were enthralled by their beloved Whiteoak clan of Jalna. [Dustjacket photo, courtesy Little, Brown and Company]

The Jalna series, her best-known work, chronicles the lives of the Whiteoak family. Jalna, their family house, was named for the station in India where the first Whiteoak served before settling with his wife in a community of retired British officers on Canada’s Lake Ontario shore. The novels are full of lively, but not always likeable, characters and gripping, yet sometimes fantastic, plots. They present passionate people against a backdrop of intense loyalty to family and abiding love of home. They depict nature as well as people and reveal Mazo’s sensitivity to animals, to changes of the seasons, and to the beauty of Ontario scenery. Her descriptions of Britain similarly show her strong relationship to her surroundings.

De la Roche wrote other books, short stories, and plays. One of these, Growth of a Man (1938), was about one of her cousins, British Columbia’s lumber magnate, H.R. MacMillan. A stage version of her Whiteoak tales enjoyed a long run in London and won favour with, among others, George Bernard Shaw.

Her writing elicited various reactions. Some critics dismissed her novels as unrealistic romances; certain local ones objected to characters too British in style to be believable Ontarians. Yet scholars also noted her as one of Canada’s few writers of worth between the two world wars and following. Her work has been included in anthologies and in university literature courses. The Canadian poetess and fellow author, Dorothy Livesay, has called her “our most productive, most imaginative novelist.”
 

In her later years, Mazo de la Roche could look back on a career that included 16 novels – all domestic romances – in the Jalna series. When she submitted Finch’s Fortune, the third novel of the series, to Ellery Sedgwick, editor of Atlantic Monthly, he wrote to her on September 19, 1930, from his Boston office: “There can be no doubt that you have written another first-rate novel.... Each episode is treated masterfully.... Nothing you have ever done is better.... The whole book is full of living beings.” Her novels were translated into dozens of languages, and adapted for stage, screen and television. She was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal by the Royal Society of Canada in 1938. [Photo, courtesy Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library]

The public’s response worldwide has been consistently more positive. By the time of Mazo’s death in 1961, her Jalna series in English and in many other languages had sold 12 million copies. The novels have been adapted for theatre, radio, television, and a 1935 RKO movie called Jalna, directed by John Cromwell. Allied secret agents used a Jalna book as the basis for a code during World War II. A 1960 poll found Mazo, along with A. J. Cronin, the favourite of French school children. They, now older, are among those watching the current French television version of Jalna. It seems assured that not only present but future generations as well will continue to meet the Whiteoaks of Jalna. And there they may find Mazo too.

Virginia Careless