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Mazo de la Roche (1879-1961) |
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Canadian author, who is best known for her Jalna series. Mazo de la Roche's first book in the series was published in 1927 – in total the saga consists of 16 volumes, which cover 100 years of the wealthy Whiteoak family history. It was partly based on de la Roche's own family and the family of her first cousin Caroline Clement. "If you drink wine and dance about a fire like pagans, what will your grandchildren do when they set out to have a good time? They'll probably get drunk on gin and dance naked. Manners and morals are never at a standstill. Either they rise or they decline. Like Empires." (in The Building of Jalna, 1944 ) Mazo Roche (she later added the 'de la' to her name) was born in
Newmarket, in rural Ontario, the setting for most of her fiction. She
was the only child of William Roche, a salesman, and Alberta (Lundy)
Roche. During her marriage, Alberta, a chronic invalid, moved constantly. William, who
drifted from job to job, was rarely with his wife. He died of cirrhosis of the liver in July 1915. From 1885 to 1991 the family lived in Toronto, and then moved to Galt and Orillia, and returned to Toronto in 1895. Until 1900, they lived at 157 Dunn Avenue and from 1900 to 1911 they resided in a house on Jarvis Street. De la Roche described the building in Ringing the Changes (1957): "It stood in what was at that time one of the most spacious and fashionable streets in Toronto. I do not remember when it began to degenerate but its downhill trend has been steady. In my youth it represented solid dignity and presceful permanence." De la Roche's lifelong companion was her cousin, Caroline Clement,
born in 1878. In her
childhood, de la Roche spent summer holidays on Strawberry Island,
where she played Robinson Crusoe and Friday with Caroline. She also
began to develop with her cousin a fantasy world
of rural aristocracy. At the age of
nine, she wrote her first story. From 1900 Caroline lived with de la
Roche and her parents in various locations in southern Ontario. H. (Rache) Lovat Dickson, de la Roche's close friend and editor later said, that the Whiteoaks were "idealized conceptions of ancestors whom she only just knew but had heard about, but if she hadn't had the sort of family background that she had, then she couldn't have written the sort of books that the Whiteoaks books are." On graduation from high school, de la Roche studied at the Ontario College of Art and English at the University of Toronto. From 1911 to 1915 the Roche family lived at Foxleigh Farm, Cudmore Road and Highway 2, near Bronte, Ontario. In 1902 de la Roche published her first story in Munsey's Magazine,
but it was not until recovering from a nervous breakdown, that she
devoted herself to writing. Caroline Clement, who worked as a civil
servant, was the bread winner of the household. De la Roche's father
died in 1915 and mother in 1920; they never witnessed their daughter's
first successes as a writer, when Explorers of the Dawn (1922) turned out to be a bestseller in the U.S. De la Roche early works, such as Possession (1923) and Delight
(1926), were romantic novels. The latter, about the trials and
tribulations of a young, charming woman in a small Ontario town,
received favourable criticism. At the age of 48, de la Roche published Jalna (1927), which won Atlantic Monthly's
$10,000 Book Award. When the prestigious literary magazine
introduced de la Roche, she was described as a "young Canadian." On the front page she
posed with her old, blind, black Scottish terrier
Bunty. News of the award made her famous
overnight. Toronto held a banquet in de la Roche's honour. Before released in serialized form, Jalna was edited and condensed. Changes were significant: Chapter 14 was omitted, descriptions of the environment and character's motivations and actions were shortened. De la Roche had another nervous breakdown in 1928. Carolina helped de la Roche to finish Whiteoaks of Jalna (1929). Set in the 1920s, the story introduces the Whiteoaks family a
year or so before the 100th birthday of its matriarch, an arrogant,
crancy woman, Adeline. By the last chapter, nearly all conflicts are
resolved. Originally Jalna was
intended to stand alone, but the critical acclaim inspired the author
to produce at a steady rate sequels and prequels. Jalna series blends English and American narrative traditions. Critical enthusiasm
started to wane after the publication of the first two books. Many of
de la Roche's fans compared the series to John Galsworthy's Forsyte novels. By de la Roche's death she was mostly considered a writer of melodramatic potboilers. Dennis Duffy argued in Gardens, Covenants, Exiles: Loyalism in the Literature of Upper Canada/Ontario (1982), that the Whiteoaks "are unflaggingly loyal, committed wholly to the advancement of British imperial aims." (The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche by Wendy Roy, 2019, p. 260) The series also caught the attention of film producers at the RKO Radio Pictures. John Cromwell's excursion into to the world of the Whiteoaks from 1935, starring Kay Johnson (Alayne Archer Whiteoak), C. Aubrey Smith (Uncle Nicholas Whiteoak), David Manners (Eden Whiteoak), and Ian Hunter (Renny Whiteoak), was characterized in Variety as "a nice production of a not very good adaptation." Prior becoming famous, de la Roche lived in her early 30s at the
Sovereign House. Built between 1825 and 1846, it was saved from
demolition by the Bronte Historical Society and the Town of Oakville,
and moved to Town parkland in 1988. This house de la Roche incorporated
in Possession, her first novel. With Caroline Clement, she
acquired in the early twenties a small summer cottage at Clarkson, near
Oakville, and became friends with the family of the young poet Dorothy
Livesay. Between the years 1930 and 1940, she spent longer and shorter periods in England, where she occupied for some years Vale House, Windsor. To take a break from Jalna, she wrote an illustrated story about her Scottish terrier, Portrait of a Dog (1930). In 1939, before the outbreak of World War II, de la Roche returned to Toronto. In the 1920s, when Jalna series was launched, the family saga was a
well-established formula. But few authors have focused on the same
characters for 30 years, like de la Roche did. The Whiteoak family
include Adeline Whiteoak, her grandson Renny, his half-brother Eden,
who nearly bankrupts the family, and Eden's wife Alayne, an American
woman who loves Renny. And there are a number of spouses, ex-spouses,
spouses-to-be, and some adulterous relationships. Archer, Alayne's son,
summarizes the theme: "The
family has been the structure of all our lives. We don't think about
it. It's like the air we breathe. It is sacred to us." De la Roche has
said that she sometimes identified herself with Finch, Renny's
musically talented half-brother, and Adeline. The family history begins in the 1850s when a British soldier, Philip Whiteoak and his wife Adeline build a family residence in Clarkson, Ontario, and give it the Indian name Jalna; it was the city where the couple had met. During the story Adeline becomes a 100 year old matriarch, who sees generations come and go. Renny, the master of Jalna, is not always particularly likeable. Although Renny himself shows scant tolerance of artistic pursuits, one of his half-brothers is a poet, one becomes a concert pianist, and one a monk and then later an actor. De la Roche lived with Caroline Clement a fairly reclusive life.
Caroline was the leader, she made the decisions and run their
household. Their relationship was not discussed widely in the press. In
1931 they adopted two English children, a boy and a girl. The children
were raised primarily by servants and attended private schools. Growth of a Man (1938) was based on the life of another cousin, the Vancouver lumber magnate H.R. (Reggie) MacMillan. During her lifetime, de la
Roche published about 35 books. She wrote travel books, children's stories, drama, and the autobiography Ringing the Changes,
in which she often takes liberties with facts and alters them: Heather Kirk writes in the 'Introduction' of
2015 edition: "Just because Ringing the Changes contains
elements of fiction does not mean that it is full of untruths. On the
contrary, the book is an excellent source of information if examined
carefully and compared with other reliable sources." "In truth I feel
that I scarcely know how to write an autobiography," de la Roche said
in the book. "The first person singular has always been repellent to
me. The autobiographies of other writers have not often interested me.
Of the few which I have read, some appear as little more than a
chronicle of the important people the author has known." While in England de la Roche met a number of British authors, including the novelist Sir Hugh Walpole and the Irish novelist, literary critic, and biographer Ethel Colburn Mayne. The Canadian actor Raymond Massey suggested her to write a play based on the first volume of the series; instead she chose the second, Whiteoaks, which was produced on stage in 1936. To de la Roche's disappointment, Massey turned down the offer to act in the play. In a radio interview in 1955 de la Roche said that privacy is
necessary for her to find the creative impulse. When not writing, de la
Roche traveled extensively. She journeyed to
the United States and western Canada and made nearly twenty sea
voyages, from the Caribbean to North Africa to Europe. From the late
1950s de la Roche suffered from a variety of illnessess, including
Parkinson's Disease. Rheumatoid arthritis confidend her to bed for long
periods of time, but she kept on writing. Her last trip to England she
made in 1958. Mazo de la Roche died
in Toronto on July 12, 1961. She was buried in St. George's churchyard,
Jackson's Point, Ontario. Caroline burned de la Roche's diaries after her death. By the end of her life, eleven million copies
of the Jalna books had been sold in English and more than a dozen other
languages. And as it was often case with international bestseller
authors, her books circulated both in authorized and pirated editions
in the East European countries. The only other Canadian female writer
of her time, whose
success was comparable to that of de la Roche, was Lucy Maud Montgomery. Differing from de la Roche, she wrote for children; Jalna novels were for adults only. De la Roche's early one-act plays, Low Life (1925) and Come True (1927) were produced at Hart House Theatre in Toronto. Whiteoaks ran in London over 800 performances, and was also produced on
Broadway at the Hudson Theatre. In the original cast, Ethel Barrymore
played Grandma Adeline, the central character of the play. Nancy Price,
an actress, painter, and author, had the role of Adeline in the BBC TV
production Whiteoaks (1951). Before acting in films, Nancy Price had a successful career in theater; she had also been in the stage version of Whiteoaks in the London Little Theatre. A thirteen-hour-long CBS television series,
The Whiteoaks of Jalna, adapted by Timothy Findley, Claude Harz,
and Grahame Woods, was aired in 1972. The cast included Kate Reid, Paul
Harding, and Amelia Hall. In addition to these productions, a French
television production, starring Danielle Darrieux as Adeline, was aired
in 1994. The series cost $16 to make. De la Roche's melodrama about the intrigues, loyalties, and sexual irregularities of an upper-class family anticipated the modern soap-opera. Today her work is admired for its strong, optimistic characters and sense of place. With the Jalna saga de la Roche created a rich fantasy world which has ensured its place in the Hall of Fame of popular fiction. In 1976, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada recognized Mazo de la Roche as a national historic person. Most of de la Roche's papers are stored in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. For further reading: Mazo de la Roche of Jalna by R. Hambleton (1966); Mazo de la Roche by G. Hendrick (1970); The Social Relevance of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche by Jack Kapica (M.A. Thesis, 1972); Mazo de la Roche: The Hidden Life by J. Givner (1989); 'De la Roche, Mazo,' in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, edited by Aruna Vasudevan (1994); '"Don’t Let Me Do It!": Mazo de la Roche and Her Publishers' by Ruth Panofsky, International Journal of Canadian Studies 11 (1995); 'De la Roche, Mazo,' in World Authors 1900-1950, Vol. 1, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); Thirty-Two Short Views of Mazo De La Roche by Daniel L. Bratton (1996); Caroline Clement: The Hidden Life of Mazo de la Roche’s Collaborator' by Heather Kirk, Canadian Literature 184 (Spring 2005); Mazo de la Roche: Rich and Famous Writer by Heather Kirk (2006); Who Were the Whiteoaks and Where Was Jalna?: An Investigation into the Sources of the Jalna Novels by Heather Kirk (2007); 'Introduction¨by Heather Kirk, in Ringing the Changes: An Autobiography by Mazo de la Roche (2015); The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche by Wendy Roy (2019); 'Mazo de la Roche,' in Notable American Women Writers, Volume 1, editors Laura Nicosia, James F. Nicosia (2020) - Other family sagas: Niskavuori saga by Hella Wuolijoki, Winston Graham's Poldark series, R.F. Delderfield's saga about the Swann family, Catherine Cookson's Mary Ann Shaughnessy series, the Mallen family series Selected works:
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