Susanna Moodie. Anne Cimon
based on a real person.
In the summer of 1830, Susanna, now twenty-seven years old, lived in London as a guest at the house of Thomas Pringle and his wife Margaret. Susanna had been “adopted” by Thomas Pringle, who edited a popular journal and had published her works. She referred to him often as “Papa” in letters to friends at that time.
As a young man, Pringle had emigrated to South Africa and edited a newspaper for many years until his controversial views against the institution of slavery cost him his livelihood. In 1827, he returned with his family to live in London where he became the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. Aware of Susanna’s compassionate nature and writing ability, Pringle asked her to transcribe, or ghost write, the story of Mary Prince. Prince was a forty-year-old woman born in Bermuda, who had been a slave in the British colony of Antigua and was now sheltered in his house.
Susanna sat on a chair in Thomas Pringle’s study and wrote down the horrifying experiences Mary Prince, who insisted she wanted to stand rather than sit, described in her singsong voice:
“I can show you my scars, Miss Strickland,” Mary offered.
Susanna’s throat clenched. Could she refuse? No. She wanted to see the evidence for herself.
“I’ll help you,” Susanna said, seeing Mary struggle with her blouse.
Susanna stood behind Mary and gingerly lifted the cotton blouse and undergarment.
“Mary, how could they?” Susanna exclaimed, as she stared at the rounded back with its crisscross of embossed black flesh, glistening in the bright light of the lamp on the desk.
“They did that to most of us,” Mary answered matter-of-factly.
Deeply shaken, Susanna sat back down on the chair and continued to record Marys story. Mary had been malnourished, had suffered beatings, and worse, had been raped by her owners, who were supposedly upstanding Britons. How could this be? Susanna now wanted to shape the story into an unforgettable document so that people would learn, as she had, of the evil that was slavery. The pamphlet was published anonymously in 1831, with an introduction by Thomas Pringle, as The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, as Related by Herself. It sold quickly and was reprinted three times. All the profits went to “Black Mary,” as she was affectionately called by the Pringles.
Susanna also accepted a commission to write the story of Ashton Warner, another former slave befriended by Thomas Pringle. Warner was twenty-four years old, and in such poor health that he died before the pamphlet was even printed.
Susanna’s social conscience was awakened by these dramatic encounters. She resolved that she would no longer be an accomplice to the criminality she had recorded. She poured her outrage into several poems that were published in journals and eventually in her first book, Enthusiasm and other Poems.
That same summer, Susanna met someone else at the Pringles, someone who would change her life forever.
Portrait of Susanna by Cheesman
. In her youth, Susanna’s grey eyes often expressed the sadness
she felt at the sudden death of her father, “a good and just man.”
…there is to me a charm in literary society which none other can give…
– Susanna Moodie, Letters of a Lifetime
Susanna’s poetry had many admirers in London, and in her own neighbourhood of Suffolk. In fact, she had found a patron in Andrew Ritchie, the pastor of the Congregationalist Church in the village of Wrentham, about two kilometres north of Reydon Hall. She had joined the small village church in April, a few months before leaving for London and the Pringles’ house.
Suffolk was a region of dissenters, especially local farmers and poorer families. They rebelled against what they perceived to be the moral laxity of the Anglican clergy, who seemed to prefer fox hunting to attending to their flock.
Susanna loved the chapel, one of the first “independent” chapels ever built. The setting was romantic with its beautiful lane of fine old trees and meeting yard full of lilac bushes and laburnum. Susanna had a favourite spot where she imagined she would be buried one day: under two pines through which the wind sighed a lullaby.
Mrs. Ritchie offered to teach Susanna how to paint, and they sat outside, choosing the prettiest flowers to sketch on paper. This skill Susanna used often to relax from the demands of writing and publishing.
On the night of her formal admission to the congregation, Susanna had been soaked to the skin by lashing rain as she travelled to Wrentham from Reydon. Her decision to join the Congregationalist Church had shocked her Church of England family to its roots. They had refused to accompany her, though that had not changed her mind.
Pastor Ritchie, her spiritual advisor and friend, came up to her in the vestry where she stood alone:
“Are you ready, dear?” he asked, offering his arm like a father ready to take his daughter up the aisle to give her away in marriage.
“Yes” she heard herself say with more conviction than she felt.
Susanna stood in a pew opposite the pulpit. The assembly was seated. She liked the rugged features of the farmers and their wives, mostly poor folks who gazed at her. She trembled from head to foot. Every eye was on her.
Susanna buried her face in her hands, and tears wet her fingers when Pastor Ritchie recommended her as a new member. But during the last beautiful prayer, her spirit revived. She rejoiced that the ordeal was past and she was now a member of a “free church.”
On the morning of August 12, 1830, Susanna sat at the dining table at Reydon Hall, grudgingly slipping flyers advertising her first book, Enthusiasm and Other Poems, into envelopes addressed to friends and acquaintances. She didn’t like to have to do this but that was the agreement she had made with a London publisher, Smith & Elder. She had to raise enough money by advance sales of her book to cover the cost of printing. Orders for fifty books had already been filled, but she needed to sell a lot more. Who can I possibly turn to next? Who would know a lot of people interested in poetry? Susanna asked herself.
In a flash, the name of Mary Russell Mitford, whom she had never met but corresponded with occasionally, came to her mind. Hadn’t the famous writer praised all the poems she had sent to her? Susanna now felt more cheerful and immediately reached for her pen and a fresh sheet of paper. After a few pleasantries, she swallowed hard and came to the point:
“Will you excuse the liberty I am taking, dear Miss Mitford, in enclosing the prospectus of a small volume of poetry which a friend of mine has undertaken to publish for me by private subscription? I should feel greatly obliged to you if you would circulate them among any of your wealthy friends who are unfashionable enough to be lovers of poetry…”
Whenever she could, Susanna liked to use humour to sweeten the way Miss Mitford responded positively. By year’s end, Susanna gratefully held her first volume entitled Enthusiasm and Other Poems, an elegant, plain leather-bound book embossed with gold. The forty-seven poems expressed her religious faith and her romantic love of nature. On May 28, 1831, Susanna happily read in the leading London magazine Athenaeum that Enthusiasm possessed “a tone of tender seriousness which marks a refined and reflective mind.”