or, Secret Marrying and Secret Sorrowing
Rosanna Leprohon
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973
200 pages
or, Secret Marrying and Secret Sorrowing
Rosanna Leprohon
Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989
334 pages
Six summers ago, I made slow progress through Armand Durand; ou, La promesse accomplie, the French translation of Rosanna Leprohon's 1868 novel Armand Durand; or, A Promise Fulfilled. It made some sense to take on the challenge. As I noted at the time, the author's novels had been far more popular in French than in the original English. Consider The Manor House of De Villerai, which first appeared in 1859 and 1860 issues of the Montreal Family Herald. Le manoir de Villerai, E.L. de Bellefeulle's translation, was published as a book in 1861, then enjoyed four more editions, the last being in 1925. It wasn't until 2014, a full 154 years after the end of its run in the Family Herald, that The Manor House of De Villerai finally appeared in book form. Credit goes to academic publisher Broadview Press.
In the late 'eighties I began collecting Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts titles. Antionette De Mirecourt, sixth in the series, was purchased upon publication, taking advantage of the ten percent discount offered by my employer, a library wholesaler. I preferred the bland, jacketless hardcovers editions because they seemed more substantial. Must add that the paperback editions weren't particularly attractive.
This year being one dedicated to women writers (see my New Year's resolution), I decided, at long last, to read what had been Rosanna Leprohon's most popular novel amongst anglophone readers.
But which copy?
I've owned the first New Canadian Library edition for some time. Where did I buy it? When did I buy it? Somehow, its purchase is nowhere near as memorable as the CEECT edition. Might this have something to do with the ten percent discount?
The decision was easy. Madame Leprohon's title is Antoinette De Mirecourt, not Antoinette de Mirecorte, as the NCL edition would have you believe. What's more, the heroine's name is misspelled throughout the text. I would later discover that a significant spoiler appears on the front cover.
I still don't know what to make of the author portrait on the back cover.
The novel begins in November 1763, nine months after the Treaty of Paris, with Antoinette De Mirecourt's arrival in Montreal from her widowed father's Valmont seigneury. On the edge of seventeen, she has been invited by her cousin Lucille D'Aulay to pass the winter at her elegant rue Nôtre-Dame home. Cousine Lucille is older, though by how much is never disclosed. Her husband would appear to be older still, perhaps much older. A contemplative man, he spends his days holed up in his library reading philosophical works. Lucille's tastes run more toward romantic novels and sentimental verse.
Theirs was an arranged marriage.
Young Antoinette has always been intrigued, so "with her childish inexperience, rich, poetic imagination, and warm, impulsive heart," wastes no time in asking Lucille whether she was in love with her husband when they wed:
"Oh dear, no! My parents, though kind and indulgent in other respects, showed me no consideration in this. They simply told me Mr. D'Aulnay was the husband they had chosen for me, and that I was to be married to him in five weeks. I cried for the first week almost without intermission. Then, mamma having promised me I should select my own trousseau and that it should be as rich and costly as I could desire, a different turn was given to my feelings, and I became so very busy with milliners and shopping, that I had not time for another thought of regret, till my wedding day arrived. Well, I was happy in my lot, for Mr. D'Aulnay has ever been both indulgent and generous; but, my darling child, the experiment was fearfully hazardous, – one which might have resulted in life-long misery to both parties."
A tall and splendidly-proportioned: figure – eyes, hair and features of faultless beauty, joined to rare powers of conversation, and a voice whose tones he could modulate to the richest music, were rare gifts to be all united in one happy mortal.
Though Antoinette had been raised on a seigneury, she all but overcome by the decor, perfume, gauzy dresses, and music of the contra dance of a Montreal soirée. I get it. This was Montreal when I was her age:
Major Sternfield, "handsome as an Apollo," not only pursues Antoinette but succeeds in capturing her heart before the first letters from her father and governess reach the rue Nôtre-Dame address. The former contains a mild bloomer:
The first, which was from her father, was kind and affectionate; spoke of the void her absence made in the household; told her to enjoy herself to her heart's utmost desire; and ended by warning her to watch well over her affections, and bestow them on none of the gay strangers who might visit at her cousin's house, for assuredly he would never under any circumstances countenance any of them as her suitors.
A third letter arrives shortly thereafter. Written by Monsieur De Mirecourt, it serves as notice to Antoinette that she will be marrying neighbour Louis Beauchesne, her childhood playmate. What follows is uncomfortable. Louis himself has delivered the letter. Antoinette, an only child, has great affection for her neighbour, but as a brother. Louis, who has siblings, knows that his love for her is very different than the one he feels for his sisters. What remains hidden in the encounter is this: Antoinette accepted Sternfield's ring.
Lucille has been living vicariously through her cousin. Whether under the influence of romantic prose and poetry or the regrets of her own arranged marriage, she has pushed Antoinette into the major's embrace. This secret engagement is known only to the betrothed, and of course Lucille D'Aulney.
Antoinette De Mirecourt and Aubrey Sternfield are married at the D'Aulay residence during a particularly stormy winter evening. The master is in his library, entirely oblivious to anything happening elsewhere in this house. Regimental chaplain Doctor Ormsby is the officiant. Lucille is troubled by his appearance and manner. All is so different from her Catholic faith, but she's keen on seeing it through.
After the ceremony, Antoinette makes an uncharacteristic stand, insisting that her new husband that will keep their union secret until it is blessed by her own church. Sternfield readily agrees. As we shall see, the major has his reasons. The evening becomes even more dramatic with the unexpected arrival of Antoinette's father. He is, of course, ignorant as to what has transpired, and so is too late in laying down the law using another mild bloomer:
"I forbid you child, to, have any intercourse, beyond that of distant courtesy, with the men I have mentioned; and if you have entangled yourself in any disgraceful flirtation or attachment, break it off at once, under penalty of being disowned and disinherited."
Unstated is that the "gay strangers" with whom Antoinette is not to partake in "intercourse" are the English. This is perfectly understandable. The Battle of the Plains of Abraham had taken place just four years earlier. The capitulation of Montreal was a year after that.
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| A View of Montreal in Canada, Taken from Isle St. Helena in 1762 Thomas Davies, 1762 |
It was the first really good sleighing of the season, for the few slight falls of snow that had hitherto heralded winter’s approach, descending on the muddy roads and sidewalks, had lost at once their whiteness and purity, and becoming incorporated with the liquid mud, formed that detestable, combination with which we Canadians are so familiar in the spring and fall, and which we recognize by the name of “slush.”And here I'd assumed that "slush," like "smog," was a twentieth-century term.
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| Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon (née Mullins) 12 January 1829, Montreal, Lower Canada 20 September 1879, Montreal, Quebec |
Rosanna Leprohon has much in common with her darker, even more successful New Brunswick contemporary May Agnes Fleming, whose Wedded for a Week; or, The Unseen Bridegroom I read earlier this spring. They may not have been sisters under the skin exactly, but they were cousins. Both were adept at writing complex plots involving romance, marriage, duplicity, nefariousness, and death. If you've enjoyed the company of one you'll like spending time with the other. And so, I've ordered a copy of Broadview's The Manor House of De Villerai.
God bless our academic publishers.
"God bless my soul. Miss De Mirecourt!" he ejaculated, involuntarily starting back.
Trivia (not really): The first sentence has it that the novel takes place "in year 176–, some short time after the royal standard of England had replaced the fleur-de-lys of France." As editor John C. Stockdale notes in the CEECT edition, this can only be 1763: "The year is confirmed by the fact that Madame D'Aulnay's St. Catherine's Eve party was held on a "Thursday" night; in 1763 St. Catherine's Day was Friday, 25 November.
Fun fact: Janet Friskney's New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years, 1952-1978 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2007) tells us that The Manor House of De Villerai was once considered for inclusion in the New Canadian Library.
Object and Access: Antionette De Mirecourt was first published in 1864 by John Lovell & Sons. A second printing followed the very same year. Such is the sorry state of Canadian literature that a first edition can be purchased online for a mere $255.
Interestingly, the Lovell edition was the last until 1973 when both McCelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library and the University of Toronto Press's Reprint Library of Canadian Prose and Poetry returned the novel to print.
The CEECT edition is still available through McGill-Queen's University Press. Penguin Random House is selling an ebook of the last New Canadian Library edition, complete with copyright-free stock photo of an American Revolutionary War reenactor.
