Mazo de la Roche, part 1

Author Mazo de la Roche was a famous Canadian lesbian. At least, I always assumed she was. Other lesbians told me so, so it must be true.

In 1927, de la Roche's manuscript was picked out of the 1,100 received by the Atlantic Monthly as "the most interesting novel of any kind." She pocketed 10,000 smackers and her novel, "Jalna," became a bit of bestseller. My 1945 version gives a history of 41 printings in four separate imprints.

De la Roche went on to write oodles of sequels about the "Whiteoak family and Jalna, their Canadian estate, which plays a many-sided role in this turbulent drama of character. In the life of the aged Adeline, Jalna represents the romantic past and the vigorous present to which she avidly clings. In Renny's life it is both the land and the family strength that he sacrifices his love to preserve." And et cetera, it sez here on the jacket. We're talkin' "quarrels and passions and [an] indomitable zest for life."

Ho hum. Regular Oples readers will know that sprawling family sagas are not my forte, especially those praised to the skies by Important Arbiters of Taste. I suffer from a childhood-based ailment which causes me to rebuff books that are labeled "good for me" by authority figures; I have thus, for example, never read "Anne of Green Gables," "Little House on the Prairie," nor "Little Women" (though it would seem all had lezzie moments of which parents were unaware and that I might have appreciated).

I am not, however, the only reader to have avoided "Jalna" (though since the weekend I've made it to -- gad -- page 37. Trivia tidbit: Publisher Pocket Books of Canada was headquartered just a few blocks from me, at 6306 Park Ave. in Montreal, for at least part of the Second World War). But back to "Jalna": "Not many people read the novels of Canada's Mazo de la Roche any more," wrote Globe and Mail books guy James Adams in his weekend column.

"Sixty or 70 years ago, however, the 16 or 17 Jalna books made her an international star, and gave the former Maisie Roche of Newmarket, Ont., a life of 'English country houses and Ontario mansions.' De la Roche died in 1961, an unmarried woman who once quipped, 'Privacy is my hobby.' Before her death, she asked Caroline Clement, her cousin -- and, eventually, legally adopted sister and lifelong companion -- to destroy all her diaries, perhaps because, some have presumed, they would have revealed the true nature of her relationship with Clement (who died in 1972) and the circumstances of their adoption, in 1931, of a boy and girl they named, respectively, Rene and Esme.

"It turns out, however, that not all the diaries were consigned to the fireplace. Recently, the Museums of Mississauga took possession of de la Roche's one-volume diary for the years 1939-46, a gift from her daughter-in-law Bianca, who inherited it from her husband, Rene de la Roche, upon his death in 1981. There are rumours of another undestroyed diary, from the late 1950s, that also could come to the Museums of Mississauga.

"Why Mississauga, a city of 600,000-plus just west of Toronto? Well, as Annemarie Hagan, the manager of Mississauga's two museums, explains, de la Roche and Clement bought property in Clarkson, now part of Mississauga, in the early 1920s, and erected a home called Trail Cottage. It was there that de la Roche completed her first Jalna novel....

"So what's in the salvaged diary? Lots of naughty bits? Alas, no. 'They're very domestic,' reports Hagan."

So, what constitutes unassailable proof of lesbian-ness?


Go to Mazo 2.