July / August 2002 Vol. 34, no. 4

Patriotic Songs by Agnes Strickland and Susanna Strickland

Michael Peterman, Trent University

The acquisition of Patriotic Songs by the National Library of Canada adds a significant piece to the puzzle of the early writings of Susanna Moodie, née Strickland (1803-1885). As a research team seeking to document the life and letters of Moodie, Elizabeth Hopkins, Carl Ballstadt and I looked for this title for years in various Canadian, American and British libraries. We regarded Patriotic Songs as a missing but important link in the story of her pre-Canadian writing career, but it was nowhere to be found. We were sure of its existence and knew something of its contents because of several reviews that we located in English periodicals and newspapers. We did not, however, know what the book looked like; neither did we know the full extent of its inclusions, let alone its length or date of publication.

What a surprise and delight it was, then, to learn of the book’s acquisition! It was purchased by the National Library’s rare book curator from an Ottawa-area antiquarian book dealer through the generous support of the Friends of the National Library of Canada. The Canadian book dealer had purchased it from a British colleague.

What I first heard about the acquisition did not awaken my full attention. A friend informed me that the National Library had acquired what she described simply as "a songbook" by Susanna Moodie. I was of course curious, but not excited. I thought it likely to be another of her scrapbooks, several of which I had examined over the years. However, when I saw the actual volume in the Special Collections Reading Room, my complacency vanished. Here it was  --  the long lost book, very much as it had been described in the October 22, 1831, issue of the Suffolk Chronicle (Ipswich, England), wearing "its vest of gold and green." ¹

Its full title is Patriotic Songs Written by Agnes and Susanna Strickland; and Composed by J. Green. It proudly proclaimed that it was dedicated by permission to "the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, William IV." Green, who published music at 33 Soho Square in London between 1820 and 1848, composed all of the songs. Sixty-four pages in length, the volume is unpaginated and undated. However, the dates of the various reviews suggest that it was published early in 1831, or perhaps late in 1830.

Susanna Strickland was an aspiring English writer in the late 1820s. She was, however, acutely conscious of, and measured herself against, the talents and literary experience of her two older sisters. Eliza, who was nine years her elder, had taken up editorial work in London while Agnes, who was seven years older, had by 1829 two well-received books of poetry to her credit and a considerable public prominence. For her part, the ambitious Susanna was writing poetry and stories for gift-book annuals and various magazines, and, like several of her sisters, including Catharine Parr (later Traill), she was publishing books for the burgeoning children’s market in London. She had the publication of a collection of her own verse in mind, but that was still but a fond speculation at this point. ²

Collaboration with Agnes was a goal that had great appeal to Susanna. In a letter dated January 14, 1829, she described a project initiated by a friend, Robert Childs of Bungay, Suffolk, that would see the two  --  Susanna and Agnes  --  write a series of psalms and hymns to be set to music for an "Horae Religiones." Something of Susanna’s vulnerability and uncertainty is evident in her accompanying comment, "I did not like to undertake this important engagement by myself and Agnes and I are to enter into partnership together and I feel both flattered and pleased by it for her opinion of my capacity must have increased greatly of late for her to wish our names to appear together" (Susanna Moodie: Letters of a Lifetime, 29). Nothing seems to have come of this project, but Susanna’s hope for a sisterly partnership did not languish for long.

Just as religious and devotional poetry appealed to Susanna and Agnes as poets, so too did the writing of patriotic verse. After the dark days of the Georges, England was alive with a new wave of patriotic hope and energy in the late 1820s. Poets vied with each other in newspapers and magazines to capture and express that spirit. Susanna reported in a letter of April 15, 1830, that a song of hers (which she does not identify by name) had been brought out by Edward Taylor to "great applause." (Letters of a Lifetime, 47). Another of her songs, "God Preserve the King," was published separately by J. Green of Soho. Green may have been the publisher of the Taylor song as well.

Patriotic Songs itself is comprised of eight poems set to music. Three are by Susanna and four by Agnes; the eighth is a second arrangement for one of Agnes’s songs. Each of the first seven songs is set to music for piano and a single voice. Each is separately bound as a unit of eight unnumbered pages that includes an elaborate title page, the text of the poem, Green’s musical arrangement, and several (usually three) blank pages. The distinct units make it clear that each song could be sold separately.

Susanna’s contributions were "Britannia’s Wreath," "The Land of Our Birth" and "The Banner of England," while Agnes provided "Queen of the Sea," "Old England," "The Life Boat" and "To All English Ladies." The latter was chosen by Green for two musical arrangements, the first for one voice and the second for three. Given Green’s separate publication of "God Preserve the King," it would appear that he had on hand a number of patriotic poems from the sisters, not all of which he included in Patriotic Songs. Moreover, in the British Library’s Music Division there is a copy of another "Patriotic Song" by Agnes Strickland, also published by Green. Its title is "The Merry Queen of England," and its subject the young Queen Victoria. It is thus of a later date than Patriotic Songs but evidence that Green continued his connection with Agnes in the years after 1832, when Susanna emigrated to Canada.

That passion for patriotic poetry would continue to serve Susanna Moodie well after she settled with her husband in Upper Canada. Of the several nationalistic songs she placed in magazines before she emigrated (for example, "London: A National Song," "God Preserve the King" and "England’s Glory"), only one of the three poems from Patriotic Songs, "Britannia’s Wreath," found its way into periodical publication, at least so far as I have been able to trace. ³ In Canada, however, Moodie was, like many proud, English-born residents, much aroused by the anti-English and republican rhetoric declaimed before and during the Rebellions of 1837. Isolated on her backwoods farm north of Peterborough, she turned to nationalistic poetry as an outlet, both to express her love of her native country and her hostility to the idea of radical republican thought. In that spirit, she sent a variant version of "The Banner of England," now appropriately subtitled "A Loyal Song," to Charles Fothergill’s new Toronto newspaper, The Palladium of British America. It appeared there in the January 24, 1838, issue under the somewhat erroneous caption, "Written expressly for the Palladium." ⁴

The third of her Patriotic Songs, "The Land of Our Birth," also appeared in the Palladium in the autumn of 1838 under a new title "There’s Not a Spot in This Wide-Peopled Earth," which was the poem’s first line. Both Palladium poems were reprinted numerous times by various Upper and Lower Canadian newspapers whose editors were as eager as Charles Fothergill to share Moodie’s eloquent and impassioned patriotic sentiments with their readers. Although she did compose a number of new poems in the backwoods to appeal to English feeling during these troubled years, she did not hesitate to draw on her portfolio of nationalistic verse written in England, months before the thought of emigration to Canada occurred to her. The sentiments of 1830 were still strong in her, while the rationale was, to her mind, far more serious and immediate.

The effects of these poems were far-reaching. Moodie’s patriotic verse, first published in Upper Canada by Fothergill’s newspaper, brought her greater public and political recognition. Her Palladium poems caught the attention of an audience that included Montreal publisher John Lovell and Upper Canada’s Lieutenant-Governor Sir George Arthur. While Lovell reprinted many of Moodie’s poems in his newspaper, the Montreal Transcript, and then sought her out as a contributor to his new magazine, the Literary Garland, Arthur was so moved by her talent and loyalty that he personally intervened in approving appointments for her husband, first to a militia unit in 1838 and then as sheriff of Hastings County in 1839.

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Notes

¹ We know of three reviews of Patriotic Songs. In addition to the Suffolk Chronicle review, there were notices in Lady’s Magazine, New Series IV (September 1831), p. 155, and La Belle Assemblée, Vol. XIV (August 1831), p. 82. It is noteworthy that Eliza Strickland had by this time assumed an editorial position with Lady’s Magazine and that Susanna wrote often for Thomas Harral’s La Belle Assemblée.

² Enthusiasm, and Other Poems would be published (by subscription) by Smith, Elder in London in 1831.

³ "London" appeared in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, 5 (March 1832), "God Preserve the King" in Athenaeum, 134 (May 22, 1830), and "England’s Glory" in Lady’s Magazine, Improved Series 3 (January 1831). "Britannia’s Wreath" appeared in Lady’s Magazine, IS 4 (August 1831).

⁴ The elderly Fothergill (1782-1840) was, like Susanna, a deeply patriotic Englishman. He published at least 10 Susanna Moodie poems (and several by her husband) during the Palladium’s year and a half of existence (December 1837-1839). Only about one third of the Palladium’s issues have survived. The National Library holds three such rare issues.