Reconstructing the <i>Palladium of British America</i>: How the Rebellion of 1837 and Charles Fothergill Helped to Establish Susanna Moodie as a Writer in Canada

I. Toward a Literary ConnectionThe study of authorship, literary culture, and publishing conditions in Upper Canada is illuminated by the brief convergence of two English-born writers, Susanna Moodie (I803-I885) and Charles Fothergill (I782-I840), from late December 1837 until the summer of 1839.The convergence, which is to be found on the pages of Fothergill's newspaper, The PallaEdium ofBritish America and Upper Canada Mercantile Advertiser, tells us several things about the profession of writing, the challenge of finding suitable outlets for one's work, and the kinds of public communication available in that time.In the process we encounter the story of Fothergill's deepening struggles and his final failure in Upper Canada even as we gain a clearer view of John and Susanna Moodie, a displaced British literary couple diligently pursuing whatever opportunities for publication they could find from their home in the remlote "bush."A Suffolk-born woman who had written extensively for London magazines and annuals in her twenties, Susanna Moodie had emigrated to Upper Canada in I832 with her husband and one-year Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 40/I on zo December I837, just two weeks after the outbreak, at a time when feelings about the Rebellion were running very high.Anxieties about the whereabouts of the perpetrators, uncertainties about continuing local threats, and the renewed fear of American invasion abounded.WVhen M\~oodie's "An Address to the Freemen of Canada" appeared in that first Padlladiumn issue, it found a ready audience in Toronto and Upper Canada, especially among those who were proud of their British birth.The story of Susanna Moodie's emergence as a prominent writer in Canada is told in her autobiographical recollection, Roughing It in the Bush (I892).3The general accuracy of her account can be verified and has seldom been questioned.However, a close examination of available documents reveals a more complex set of circumstances and actions than she describes there.Most notably, she neglected to include the crucial initiatory role played by the Palladium and, in particular, its owner and "co-editor."The elderly Fothergill, a man of middle-class Yorkshire and Quaker roots, had been in Canada since 18I6 and had made a considerable reputation for himself as a naturalist, writer, editor, politician, public figure, and community builder.4The enthusiastic and empathetic interest he took in Moodie's poetry, especially her patriotic verse, paved the way for her profitable and extended connection with John Lovell and his Montreal-based magazine, The Literary Garland.sIt is likely that Fothergill, who was struggling with very serious financial difficulties during the year and a half of his editorship, did not pay her for her contributions.For that reason, or perhaps simply because of lapse of memory, she neglected to mention the part he played in her literary emergence."These two personal narratives converge in the pages of the Padlla~dium and together provide valuable clues to the operations of 3See the chapter entitled "The Outbreak" in Roughing It in the Bush, ed.Carl Balistadt (Ottawa: Carieton UP, 1988), 430-r2.4 Paul Romney describes Fothergill in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB) VII: 3I7, as followrs: "naturalist,

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