bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988) — Spring 1988 // Printemps 1988, p. 40
My Grandfather’s House: Scences of
Childhood and Youth, by Charles Ritchie,
Macmillan of Canada, 1987, 164 pp.
Reading a Charles Ritchie book is a romp through another time and another place. My Grandfather’s House takes the reader on a passage through Ritchie’s imaginative childhood and youth, and leaves one wondering how could any one person know such an odd assortment of characters.
In a series of witty, amusing, and sometimes sad essays the author examines the lives of a number of people who made up his everyday life as a youth. “Why should the famous be the only ones to be remembered?” he writes in the Introduction. Although these people may not be famous, certainly none of them could be called ordinary. This man who had such a fascinating career in Canada’s diplomatic service had an equally fascinating upbringing.
To say that the people who surrounded the young Charles Ritchie were ’characters’ is an understatement. Each chapter introduces us to another offbeat individual who, in some way or other, impacts on young Charles’ life.
My Grandfather’s House begins with Ritchie’s regular visits to the Halifax home of his grandfather. Oh, how many of us wish that our grandfathers could have been as colourful as his! Or perhaps they were but our telling of their stories fails in comparison to the amusing events of turn-of-the century garrison Halifax.
Ritchie’s grandfather, in his words, was a Colonial. He belonged to the British Empire. He was British, but not English. Comfortable, but not ostentatious. He was, in fact, the archtypical relatively well-off Nova Scotian. Yet even in death at almost one hundred years of age his grandfather left a story to be told so many years later.
In Ritchie’s words, “My grandfather never reached his hundredth year: he died ten days short of it. It was his impatience that killed him. Rather than waiting for help, he seized the heavy copper coal scuttle in his sitting-room and, in trying to put coal into the grate, he staggered, hit his head against the marble mantelpiece, and never recovered consciousness… On the day of my grandfather’s death I was sent to the local cinema.” And so the amazing litany of stories begins in the life of this fascinating Canadian.
Poor Molly Clarke. Perhaps many of us have seen her type. A poor Irish immigrant girl who enters into ’service’. At nineteen Molly came to Halifax to be Ritchie’s governess. She was a natural story-teller, and in young Charles she found the perfect audience. His imagination flourished at her feet but she was gone in two years to a loveless marriage to a penniless lawyer. His pen.
However, nothing was simple in the life of Charles Ritchie. In 1912 his family moved to Vancouver, but with the outbreak of war his father joined the army and it was left for Mrs. Ritchie to pack the family up and move them back to Halifax. And Charles? Why not send him off to visit Molly who was living with her husband in Salmon Arm, British Columbia? We see the results of that loveless marriage and the penury in which Molly has found herself. As always, this chapter ends on an upbeat note. After Molly’s death following the Second World War he received a bequest of a pair of Georgian silver candlesticks with the motto of her Irish family, “Courage prevails”. That fitting epitaph for Molly is indicative of the chapters which follow. So many interesting characters have touched Charles Ritchie’s life and they come to life with his pen.
Each chapter brings a fresh store and another ’character’. There is Uncle Charles who died during the First World War. Irina the Russian emigre in the Paris of the thirties teaches an impressionable Ritchie French. Bimbash, his mother’s older brother Harry Stewart. His mad cousin Gerald, his college friend Billy Coster who threw away his wealth in drink. All of these people and more are brought to life again with affection and wit.
It has been a long time since this reviewer could sit down on a rainy Sunday afternoon and be transported so easily to another time and another place. I heartily recommend this ’good read’ to one and all.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1988) — Spring 1988 // Printemps 1988, p. 40. Read the rest of this issue →
