Mazo

by

Brigid Cami

IF YOU WERE ASKED TO NAME the most famous Canadian authors, who would come to mind? Margaret Atwood, surely. Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen. Mordecai Richler, L. M. Montgomery, Robertson Davies, . . . and probably a handful of others if you were given a moment to think about it. And yet, even if you were given a good hour to concentrate – to name every author you could – I suspect that there would be one name invariably missing from that list: Mazo de la Roche.

Figure 1. Mazo de la Roche. Photograph appears in her autobiography, Ringing the Changes, captioned as “Myself – London 1936.”
Figure 1. Mazo de la Roche. Photograph appears in her autobiography, Ringing the Changes, captioned as “Myself – London 1936.”

I came across Mazo de la Roche at the Toronto Reference Library’s annual Treasure Sale last fall. It was my first time attending the sale. I was surprised that I had to check my purse in order to enter the room, although I soon understood why – the books were old (read: expensive). I wandered around aimlessly flipping through things I knew I wouldn’t buy. Any time I saw something that interested me, the price tag quickly hardened my heart.

One of the books I came across was a worn-out maroon hardcover with faded gold lettering on the front reading “POSSESSION” and underneath it “MAZO DE LA ROCHE.” I flipped through to find that it was a first edition, published in Toronto in 1923. But the real selling point was the single-digit price written in pencil on the inside cover. Sold. 

Back at home I sat down with the handful of books I had scrounged up at the sale and started googling. The first surprise was that Mazo was a woman, a Canadian, and she spent most of her life in Toronto. But the bigger surprises were the following:

“[Her books] have been published in French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Dutch, Portuguese, Hungarian, German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Czech, Polish, and Finnish, as well as in Braille.”1

“In 1948 her . . . books rated second in popular demand for fiction in England. (Rated first: the works of Charles Dickens.)”2

“In France she became the most widely read author of any nationality.”3

“Miss de la Roche . . . sold some 18 million copies in a score of languages around the world.”4

Wow! And I had never heard a thing about her. Neither did I know anyone that had. So, who is she? How did she become so famous? And so utterly forgotten? 

Her Story

THE BLITZ SUMMARY of her life is as follows:

Mazo was born in Newmarket, Ontario in 1879. She was an only child.5 At some point during her infancy, she lived for a brief period of time at 113 John Street (now the Town Crier pub). 6 At the age of eight, Mazo’s first cousin on her mother’s side, Caroline Clement, came to live with the family in Newmarket due to financial troubles in her own household. The girls were nine months apart and got along right away.7 

In 1894 Mazo and the family moved to 157 Dunn Avenue in Parkdale.8 The household at this point consisted of mother, father, Mazo, Caroline, Mazo’s maternal grandparents, and an unspecified number of other relatives. Mazo and Caroline attended Parkdale Collegiate Institute (then called Jameson Collegiate). Mazo started writing as a child. She published her first story in 1902.9 Meanwhile, the family moved around a lot in the city, including to Wilton Street (near the St. Lawrence Market), the Victoria/Dundas West area, and 469 Jarvis Street.10 

In 1905 Mazo’s father purchased a hotel in Acton, Ontario and the family moved there. Meanwhile, Mazo had continued to publish stories in prestigious magazines. In 1911, the family bought a fruit farm near Bronte, Ontario. When Mazo’s father died in 1915, Mazo, her mother, and Caroline moved back to Toronto. Her mother died five years later, after which the household consisted only of Mazo and Caroline. 

In 1922, Mazo published her first book, Explorers of the Dawn, a collection of short stories. The book became an immediate bestseller in the United States.11 In a 1922 What They Read segment in Vogue, the book is described as “pure gold. Clever, amusing, yet never beyond the range of credibility, never sentimentally sweet, the book holds between its covers more mirth-provoking surprises than one can recount.”12

Around this time, Mazo and Caroline befriended a family in Clarkson, Mississauga and purchased a summer cottage there. In 1923, Mazo published her first novel, Possession.13 Shortly afterwards, Mazo and Caroline moved into the third story of 86 Yorkville Avenue.14

In 1926, she finished a book called Jalna. Jalna is about the Whiteoak family, who live in a big house in Ontario. It is commonly believed that the house itself is based off of an existing house in Clarkson, Mississauga called Benares, which was near Mazo and Caroline’s summer cottage.15  

Figure 2. Benares House in May 2023.
Figure 2. Benares House in May 2023.

Mazo sent the book to The Atlantic Monthly fiction competition. The Atlantic was arguably the most prestigious literary journal of the time, and the prize for the winning novel was $10,000 (roughly $170,000 today). Jalna won.

The rest, as they say, is history. Mazo expanded Jalna into a series which, by the time of her death, comprised sixteen books. She wrote plays about the Whiteoaks which were hits in London’s West End and on Broadway. Her fame grew to unimaginable proportions. 

Meanwhile, Mazo and Caroline moved to England for ten years. While there, they adopted two children – the circumstances of the adoption are still unknown.16 On returning to Toronto the family lived at 3590 Bayview Avenue in North York17 (now the headquarters of the Zoroastrian Society of Ontario), moved around some more, and finally settled in at 3 Ava Crescent in Forest Hill, Mazo’s last residence.18

Figure 3. Some of Mazo’s stomping grounds in Toronto, May 2023. From the top left: 113 John Street, 157 Dunn Avenue, Parkdale Collegiate, 86 Yorkville Avenue, 3 Ava Crescent.
Figure 3. Some of Mazo’s stomping grounds in Toronto, May 2023. From the top left: 113 John Street, 157 Dunn Avenue, Parkdale Collegiate, 86 Yorkville Avenue, 3 Ava Crescent.

But how famous was she really? The line I saw repeated everywhere said: “The Jalna series has sold more than eleven million copies in 193 English and 92 foreign editions.”19 Some articles cited higher numbers such as the previously quoted: “[The novels] sold some 18 million copies in a score of languages around the world.” How much is eleven million or eighteen million? To give us a benchmark, arguably the most famous Canadian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, had sold eight million copies in English as of 2019.20 Pair that with the fact that the world population was 3.1 billion the year that Mazo died, compared to over 8 billion now.21 That famous. 

And like The Handmaid’s Tale, it too was adapted into a TV series – most recently in 1994, when France 2 in collaboration with Radio-Canada released a sixteen million dollar miniseries about Jalna. It was “pre-dated by a 1972 TV series on CBC . . .  that aired as The Whiteoaks of Jalna, and a 1950’s version that aired on NBC.” It was of course also adapted into a Hollywood film.22

So, what happened? Why had I never heard of her? Our research has turned up three reasons:

Firstly, Toronto resented her.

DIGGING THROUGH OLD Globe and Mail and Toronto Star articles about Mazo, one sentiment recurs often. A 1961 article states: “As several critics have pointed out, Miss de la Roche’s Jalna books were often better appreciated in Europe than in Canada.”23 Why?

The Jalna series received an unprecedented amount of attention on the world stage. It was a real opportunity for Canadian literature to be taken seriously. But, as the claim goes, Mazo let Canadians down, because the Jalna series wasn’t truly Canadian. The following passage perfectly encapsulates the resentment:

“[In the Jalna series] Toronto is referred to vaguely as ‘a large city nearby.’ When questioned as to why she hadn’t mentioned Toronto by name, she said: ‘In the first place, I had just intended to write that one book about the Whiteoaks, and it hadn’t occurred to me to name any actual places . . . I might now, if I were doing it over again. Secondly, I suppose it’s because Toronto has never quite figured as a world-known cosmopolitan centre.’ To which the questioner replied: ‘It might have, if you had only named it in your books.’”24

This “non-Canadianness” is constantly brought up in articles about Mazo throughout her life. Torontonians seem to have resented the fact that one of the most famous books in the world, written on Yorkville Avenue – in their backyard – and set just outside of Toronto, didn’t make any mention of the city at all. An opportunity to put the city – and the country – on the world stage had been squandered. “She beat no national drums, used no Canadian symbols.”25

To drive the point home, the following is a 1938 book review published in The Globe and Mail about a seemingly more Canadian book – Growth of a Man – written by Mazo some years later:

“All of Miss de la Roche’s famous descriptive skill has gone into her new novel, which is entirely typical of Canada in its people, scenic backgrounds and social patterns. The stock criticism that she could not, or did not care to write of the normal and native born is hereby answered in a good story of finely comprehensive geographic sweep . . . the tale could not be more Canadian. The Toronto Exhibition and Cobalt both receive honorable mention. Canadian readers, who became restive under eleven years of the chronicles of the Whiteoaks of Jalna, may prepare for the joys of self-recognition.”26

Secondly – literature or soap opera?

WHEN MAZO FIRST WON The Atlantic Monthly award, her novel was considered “Literature” with a capital “L.” A 1952 article quoting Hugh Eayrs reads: “It was regarded as rather harder to get into the Atlantic than into the Kingdom of Heaven.” And the award was granted to “the most interesting novel of any kind, sort or description, by any writer, whether born in London or Indianapolis.”27 To give you an idea of the prestige of the Atlantic, when Jalna appeared in its pages in June 1927, the lead story in the issue was Hemingway’s “Fifty Grand.”28

And it wasn’t just the first book that was regarded so highly: “After the appearance of her eleventh book in the series, Mary Wakefield (1949), The Globe and Mail’s literary critic, William Arthur Deacon, commented ‘No novelist has ever continued a story for so long and maintained quality and interest at the same high level . . . she triumphed over the pitfalls of the sequel.’”29

In short, her novels were considered great.  

But as time went on, a different view started to emerge. In the introduction to his biography of Mazo, George Hendrick writes:

“Miss de la Roche invited the millions of housewives who formed a large part of her audience to participate in life at Jalna.  . . . Miss de la Roche (as did other writers concocting fiction primarily for housewives) . . . The housewives who were constantly writing to Miss de la Roche” and finally concludes with: “If her novels about the Whiteoaks or about her other fictional characters are compared with works of recognized, serious writers of her time – with Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, or William Faulkner – it is immediately clear that her works cannot be judged as ‘serious’.”30

A 1961 article after her death snarkily remarks: “In her home library are big book cases filled with her own books, beautifully bound in many colors, and printed in many languages. They teach nothing, offer only the pleasure of seeing characters in action – escapism if you like. Readers there will long be, among folk everywhere, who read just for pleasure.”31

In short, her critical standing fell as time went on. She went from being regarded as a great writer of literature, to a writer of soap operas for housewives. As the general opinion started to turn, Ronald Hambleton, her first biographer and her great defender, insisted that she was misunderstood:

“‘Why do you do it?’ people ask him. ‘Why do you bother?’ Mazo de la Roche’s books continue to sell in the thousands every year but Ron Hambleton doesn’t know anybody who reads her. In fact, he doesn’t know anybody who claims to know anybody who reads her. And yes he reads her, with great care and considerable love. He believes she was an important writer and that she is now misunderstood and underrated. She was not just a writer of lightweight escapist novels, not just a concocter of genteel fantasies. She was, he insists, a novelist of substance who said something important about Canada and the Canadian situation.”32

Thirdly, and finally – her privacy.

MAZO DE LA ROCHE WAS an extremely private person. “It was a paradox of her life that her most casual reader in Bucharest knew almost as much about her as her neighbors in Forest Hill. Her international fame grew while she arranged to make her private life even more secluded. ‘My hobby,’ she once said, ‘just happens to be privacy.’”33

Her devotion to privacy was evident throughout her life and it created an aura of mystery about her. But it wasn’t until her death in 1961, when Caroline Clement burned all of Mazo’s diaries (per her wishes) that her privacy started to be interpreted as secrecy. Articles started to pop up claiming that she had lived a hidden life behind the facade of her public persona. And number one on the list of these suspected hidden aspects of her life was that she and Caroline had been lesbians. (It’s worth noting that there’s simply no information to either prove or disprove this, not that it matters either way.) 

Once these theories of a sinister, hidden life started to pop up, her biographers pored over her books and the facts about her life to try to “discover” these so-called secrets. 

In his 1970 biography of Mazo, George Hendrick cites a passage in Jalna where two children are playing make-believe by pretending to be one of their relatives and his bride, who have just arrived home. Hendrick attempts to dissect the scene with questions such as “Was she [Mazo] conscious of the sexual overtones of her work? . . . More likely her attempt at comedy, though it approaches the edge of sick humour.”34

The search for the so-called “truth” continued for many years. A 1989 review of Joan Givner’s autobiography of Mazo contains quotes such as: “Brave indeed is the biographer who attempts a life of Mazo de la Roche. Ronald Hambleton tried it in 1966, five years after the novelist’s death, which should have given him a certain immunity. But de la Roche’s long-time companion, Caroline Clement, was still around, and she cuffed Hambleton about the ears for daring to search for truth.”

And: “De la Roche had an obsessive need for secrecy and was deliberately misleading about events in her life. She left instructions that her diaries were to be destroyed when she died, and they were. Her memoirs, Ringing the Changes, revealed only what she wanted to reveal.”

And finally: “Givner claims that for those who know how to read them, the Jalna novels contain encoded messages that provide clues to her inner life.”35

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. She was denied the honour of being remembered as one of Canada’s greatest authors because of claims that 1) her books weren’t really Canadian anyway, 2) they weren’t literature, but soap operas for housewives, and 3) she lived a sinister hidden life. 

Regardless of the series of events and impressions that lead to history forgetting her, now – almost one hundred years after Jalna won that Atlantic competition – point two is the only one that matters: is her work worth reading? Well, I have yet to read Jalna but I can tell you that I did race through my rescued copy of Possession. I found it to be a solid novel with an excellent ending which I’ve already added to my re-read list. During the research for this article I often saw it being called a “romance” which is just about the last genre I would assign it.

As we went from house to house to take the photos in this article, we poked around looking for a plaque or any other indication that she had lived at these places – we found nothing. A 1978 article in The Toronto Star stated: “As a result of a recent decision by the North York Historical Board, the building [86 Yorkville] may become Toronto’s landmark to honor the most famous woman in Canadian literature, Mazo do la Roche.”36 As of the writing of this article, the building is branded only with a “For Lease” sign. There is no museum, landmark, or plaque in the City of Toronto to indicate that Mazo de la Roche, once said to have had the “unchallenged reputation as the most internationally successful author Canada has yet produced,”37 spent most of her life here. 

Incidentally, while visiting Benares, we learned that not all of her diaries were burned after all. Two survived and were donated to Museums of Mississauga in 2005, by Bianca de la Roche, the wife of Mazo and Caroline’s adopted son, René. One covers the period from 1938 to 1945, and the other covers 1959. We were kindly given the transcripts of these diaries. Each entry contains a sentence or two, describing everyday life and everyday events, such as: “Good fun sleigh-riding with the children but strained myself;” “Took R. [René] to town & bought his school outfit. Wherever we went people were noticing him;” “Tea at the McDonnels. Our new neighbour Mrs. McLeod there. Typical Toronto.”38

Figure 4. Mazo’s remaining diaries. Images courtesy of Museums of Mississauga. 

Mazo de la Roche’s legacy has had some ups and downs since she became internationally famous in 1927. Regardless of the way history has treated her, she is undeniably an important part of Toronto’s – and Canada’s – past. And yet I only got to know about her by chance – by stumbling across that tattered eight dollar copy of Possession at a library book sale. 

Renowned Canadian writer Robertson Davies, in his obituary for Mazo said: “The creation of the Jalna books is the most protracted single feat of literary invention in the brief history of Canada’s literature.”39

Perhaps it’s time we started to remember her again.

Notes

  1. Mona Purser, “The Homemaker: Mazo De La Roche Marks Anniversary as Writer,” The Globe and Mail, October 7, 1952, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/homemaker/docview/1287290446/se-2.
  2. William French, “Creator of Jalna Series, most Successful Canadian Writer, Mazo De La Roche, Dies at Home,” The Globe and Mail, July 13, 1961, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/creator-jalna-series-most-successful-canadian/docview/1284670100/se-2.
  3. Donald Jones, “First Jalna book was written in a Yorkville Avenue flat,” Toronto Star, January 14, 1978, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/page-g9/docview/1411425642/se-2.
  4. “The Whiteoaks of Jalna,” Toronto Star, January 15, 1972, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/page-61/docview/1412792362/se-2.
  5. Heather Kirk, Mazo de la Roche: Rich and Famous Writer (Montreal: XYZ Publishing, 2006), 9.
  6. Ronald Hambleton, “The roots of the Whiteoaks – but where is Jalna?” Toronto Star, January 13, 1979, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/page-d3/docview/1373209622/se-2.
  7. Kirk, Mazo de la Roche, 27.
  8. Hambleton, “The roots of the Whiteoaks.”
  9. Kirk, Mazo de la Roche, 38.
  10. Hambleton, “The roots of the Whiteoaks.”
  11. Kirk, Mazo de la Roche, 163-9.
  12. “What they Read,” Vogue, vol. 59, no. 7, Apr 1, 1922, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazines/what-they-read/docview/879155440/se-2.
  13. Kirk, Mazo de la Roche, 163-9.
  14. Ibid., 98.
  15. Benares: Is it Jalna? (Location: Benares Historic House, City of Mississauga.) Visited 7 May 2023. 
  16. Kirk, Mazo de la Roche, 114-5.
  17. Susan Goldenberg, “The Home of Mazo de la Roche, 3950 Bayview Avenue,” March-May 2018 North York Historical Society Newsletter, https://nyhs.ca/the-home-of-mazo-de-la-roche-3950-bayview-avenue/
  18. Kirk, Mazo de la Roche, 137.
  19. Goldenberg, “The Home of Mazo de la Roche.”
  20. Colin Boyd, Jules Lewis, Andrew McIntosh, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, October 15, 2019, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-handmaids-tale. Accessed 06 May 2023.
  21. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022), World Population Prospects 2022, Online Edition.
  22. Joanne Ingrassia, “Jalna,” History of Canadian Broadcasting, June 2002, https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.broadcasting-history.ca%2Fprogramming%2Ftelevision%2Fjalna#federation=archive.wikiwix.com&tab=url. 
  23. Robert Fulford, “Robert Fulford on Books: Mazo de la Roche,” Toronto Daily Star, July 13, 1961, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/page-19/docview/1428816850/se-2.
  24. French, “Creator of Jalna Series.”
  25. Ibid.
  26. “A Canadian Pre-War Panorama: GROWTH OF A MAN. by Mazo De La Roche; Macmillian, $2.25,” The Globe and Mail, October 08, 1938, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/canadian-pre-war-panorama/docview/1351654189/se-2.
  27. Purser, “The Homemaker.”
  28. Joan Givner, Mazo de La Roche: The Hidden Life (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1989), 123.
  29. French, “Creator of Jalna Series.”
  30. George Hendrick, “Preface,” in Mazo de La Roche, (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970).  
  31. W. A. Deacon, “The Fly Leaf: Memories of Mazo De La Roche,” The Globe and Mail, July 22, 1961, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/fly-leaf/docview/1284671226/se-2.
  32. Robert Fulford, “A strange love: Mazo de la Roche,” Toronto Daily Star, April 23, 1966, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/page-68/docview/1431927446/se-2.
  33. French, “Creator of Jalna Series.”
  34. Hendrick, Mazo de La Roche, 63.
  35. William French, “Light on an Enigmatic Woman: MAZO DE LA ROCHE,” The Globe and Mail, May 06, 1989, https://ezproxy.torontopubliclibrary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/light-on-enigmatic-woman/docview/1316343696/se-2.
  36. Jones, “Yorkville Avenue flat.”
  37. French, “Creator of Jalna Series.”
  38. Stephanie Meeuwse, Collections Supervisor, Museums of Mississauga, Email communication, May 8-10, 2023.
  39. Robertson Davies, The Well-Tempered Critic (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981), 226 (reprinted from the Peterborough Examiner, July 13, 1961).