The Brideship Wife

by Leslie Howard

  In the scene that takes place in the London Tavern, Charlotte is eager to understand why women are being encouraged to emigrate. I have paraphrased some of the real speeches given that day to show the prevailing concerns of the time. Prostitution, racial intermarriage, the need for English families to bolster Britain’s claim to the land, and Dickens’s concern for the lives of impoverished women are all brought forward. What I did not mention was the other prevailing worry of the day, homosexuality. While I did not introduce this into the narrative as I was quite certain it would not have been spoken of in polite society, the clergy’s desire to stamp out what they considered to be immoral sexual activity was a behind-the-scenes driver for the resettlement scheme.

  During the meeting, Charlotte ruminates on whether those who immigrate to the colony will have better futures. In spite of her doubts, history has proven that many of the brides not only led more fulfilling and financially sound lives but they also left lasting legacies, which I soon discovered.

  Most days when I’m in Vancouver, I take my chocolate Labrador, August, out for a walk and pass Hastings Mill Park, home of the oldest building in the city. I have passed this building countless times and only discovered the connection to the brideships while writing this piece. One of the brideship women, Emma Alexander, née Tummage, had been a domestic servant before emigrating from England on the Tynemouth to Victoria. She married and moved to Vancouver. Her husband, Richard Alexander, was made manager of the Hastings Mill store and built her a fine house nearby. Over the years, Emma and Richard acquired land throughout the city and eventually became two of Vancouver’s most prominent citizens. One of the only structures to survive the Vancouver fire of 1886, the Hastings Mill store was barged to its current site in 1931 from nearby Burrard Inlet and made into a museum.

  Emma Lazenby, one of the emigrant women in the novel, was a real person, but in fact she travelled on another brideship, the Robert Lowe. Emma had seen much misery in England due to the hardships of Lancashire cotton mills and the English Poor Laws—an unsuccessful social assistance program—that led to high rates of alcoholism in northern England, which led her to become a Methodist and an advocate for temperance. In Victoria, she married David Spencer, a Welshman who shared her views. Emma worked hard to establish a shelter for destitute women while raising thirteen children. Her husband established Spencer’s Department Store, became wealthy, and built a mansion for them near Governor Douglas’s residence.

  Another emigrant woman, twenty-year-old Jane Anne Saunders, got a job as a domestic soon after the Tynemouth arrived and quickly earned a reputation as a hard worker. She married a failed gold miner, Samuel Nesbitt. Together, they established a very successful bakery and eventually built Erin Hall, an elegant manor house overlooking the ocean.

  Margaret Faussett started her life in Victoria as a governess but soon married a teacher, John Jessop. She also became a teacher and, with her husband, she championed a new public education system that would be nonsectarian. Their proposal for the first Public School Act was accepted by the government. As a result, and contrary to the education system in England, British Columbian schools are free and open to all.

  * * *

  These were just some of the stories that I discovered in my research, and while little is known about many of the women, I feel optimistic that, by and large, the women had much better lives than they could have had in England.

  I didn’t intend that my novel be an exact portrayal of true incidents, but rather that those events inspire and inform the narrative. Other than the meeting in the London Tavern, all that takes place in part one is fiction, but part two is a blend of fact and fiction. I made the Tynemouth much grander than she was in real life in order to incorporate the drama that unfolds among the first-class passengers. Still, readers might be surprised to learn that the actual voyage was much more hellish than Charlotte’s, with two mutinies by the seamen, one of which resulted in a fight between passengers and crew where Captain Hellyer was injured. There were a few big storms, with the worst said to have been hurricane force, causing the ship to very nearly sink.

  My depiction of the colonies in part three is mostly true to time and place, and some scenes are based on stories that were widely reported at the time. There was a wild reception for the emigrant women upon arrival in Victoria, and a man named Mr. Pioneer really did propose to one of the brideship women by thrusting a handful of money towards her for a splendid gown and wedding. Apparently theirs was a long and happy union. The story of the two doctors who shot each other in a drunken dispute is also said to be true. Having found diary excerpts written by Dr. Walter Cheadle of his trip through the region, I was able to re-create some of the gold miners’ slang in the scene with the two dandies in the gambling den. And the actual Barkerville fire was rumoured to have been started by a gold miner who was trying to steal a kiss from a girl in a saloon and accidentally knocked down a stove pipe in the process.

  Governor James Douglas and his wife, Amelia, were real people as well. James was born to a Scottish father and a mother of Barbadian Creole ancestry. Amelia was Métis with a French-Irish father and a Cree mother. Some historians have suggested that James’s vision was to create a racially harmonious society in the colony that was inclusive of black and Indigenous peoples. However, the settlers who arrived from every corner of the world brought with them their own entrenched biases and racism. While Mrs. Douglas was reported to be rather shy, keeping a low social profile likely because of derogatory comments, many Indigenous wives of Hudson’s Bay Company men were not only wealthy but also prominent and active in both the fur trade and society and thus occupied positions of power.

  As a writer who loves history, I like nothing better than to create a story that weaves fact with fiction, especially when those stories are about my home province. As a woman I deeply relate to the brideship women and their struggle to find independence and a life of their own choosing. The sixty Tynemouth brideship women left their homeland and all that was known and familiar to them to set off for a strange land in hopes of a better future. For years, women’s important stories have been ignored or glossed over in favour of those of men, but the emigrant women were brave and resilient people who deserve their place in history. It has been an honour to help place this story front and centre in the lexicon of women’s collective histories. Thank you, dear reader, for joining me on this journey.

  Leslie Howard

  The

  BRIDESHIP

  WIFE

  Leslie Howard

  A Reading Group Guide

  A Conversation with Leslie Howard

  This is your debut novel. How long has this story been with you, and what is your writing process like? Did the story change and take shape as you went along?

  My writing process resembles that of building a house: first the foundation is poured, then the framing is completed, and finally all the finishing work is done. I tend to write in layers; My first draft sets out the basic plot and a broad brushstroke of characters, the second draft focuses on dialogue and setting, and the third on refining the plot and adjusting the chapter order. As this is my debut novel, the process of developing each of these drafts was lengthy. From my first one-page sketch of the premise to publication has been about five years.

  During the editing process, the story ebbed and flowed as characters’ conversations took the plot in new directions and I developed central themes more fully. As much as I loved some dramatic scenes, I accepted that they had to be left on the cutting-room floor once they no longer fit with the story arc. The novel didn’t change so much as it matured through the process of teasing out plot threads and digging deeper into the characters’ motivations and backstories.

  The Brideship Wife is based on a little-known chapter of British and Canadian history—the brideships. Where did you first learn about the Tynemouth and the Columbia Emigration Society? Did you know instantly you wanted to write a novel about this moment in time?

  While
waiting for a ferry that would take me from Vancouver to Victoria, British Columbia, I picked up a book in the gift shop called Voyages of Hope: The Saga of the Bride-Ships by Peter Johnson. I was captivated by the true story, and the seeds were planted for this novel.

  Born and raised in British Columbia, I had always been interested in its history and was therefore surprised that I had never heard of this fascinating and important story. In contrast, much had been written about les filles du roi, the women who were brought over from France as wives for the Quebec settlers.

  Charlotte is forced to leave England because of a scandal, but this event becomes the catalyst for her physical and her emotional journey. In many ways, this is her coming-of-age story. How did Charlotte’s character come to you?

  I was very drawn to the plight of the impoverished gentlewomen of the time. They were not employable, as they had no training, and no one would hire them anyway. Marriage was their only option, and so finding a husband was the single most important consideration in their lives.

  I wanted to show Charlotte as a product of Victorian times, a young woman who tries to live up to the expectations of her family and society, but who, through a series of experiences, grows into an independent woman with early feminist views.

  Which character did you identify with most, and why?

  Surprisingly, John Crossman, in the way that he seizes on an idea and becomes passionate about it… like writing a novel about the brideships.

  Throughout the novel, you explore the limited opportunities offered to women at this time and the freedom of choice. Why was it important to you to highlight these themes? Do you think these issues are still relevant today?

  I believe the New World offered women the opportunity to break from the strict social confines of Victorian England and allowed them to develop and exercise their free will. In doing so, they not only benefited themselves, but also set a foundation for equality that women still fight for today. The movement of the women from the old world to the new was an inciting incident in the development of the rights of women in Canada.

  You write about life in England and Canada in such vivid detail. How did growing up in British Columbia influence your writing? And how did you bring Victorian England to life?

  My father was a politician who spent a lot of time driving the back roads of the province to talk to voters. As a child, I often accompanied him on those trips and came to learn a great deal about the people and the land that I love.

  People joke that Victoria, British Columbia, is more English than England, and the British heritage of the province is very strong. Back in 1862, there really was a society devoted to proper tea drinking as described in the novel. When I was growing up, many of my friends’ parents were British immigrants who kept the culture and traditions of their homeland strong in their adopted home.

  I have always been a great fan of the historical fiction writer Georgette Heyer, whose novels are set in Regency-period England. She had a tremendous ability to bring to life the social discourse of the time, and I drew upon her writing for inspiration.

  You did an extensive amount of research. While Charlotte is fictional, many of the characters and incidents in the novel are real, including Charles Dickens. What scenes in the novel might readers be most surprised to know are lifted right from history’s pages?

  Much of the scene in the London Tavern, where the plan to launch the brideships was discussed, is based on fact. The Lord Mayor of London spoke to the issue, as did the bishop of Honolulu, and my dialogue closely represents what they said. A letter from the Reverend Lundin Brown from Lillooet was read out, prompting someone to ask what should be done with the upper-class old maids, eliciting the response I wrote in the novel. The emigration scheme was indeed the brainchild of Charles Dickens and his friend the heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts.

  The voyage of the Tynemouth was a hellish journey, especially for the sixty emigrant women, and the ship almost went down in a massive storm. One woman died from a suspected case of food poisoning, prompting Captain Hellyer to dump the fresh food he brought on board at the Falkland Islands. Both notices for the Tynemouth’s departure and arrival are word for word taken from the historical announcements.

  I moved the Barkerville fire from 1868 to 1863 to serve my story. It levelled most of the town in just two and a half hours, but many of the buildings were rebuilt in six short weeks. Florence Wilson, one of the original brideship women, purchased the Theatre Royal and, with her Cariboo Amateur Dramatic Association, staged many celebrated performances as described in my novel.

  Charlotte is a great reader, and she references many works of fiction that were new and popular in her time and are classics to us modern readers today, including Little Dorrit and Pride and Prejudice. Did these books influence your writing? What other books or films inspired you?

  The common thread in much of Dickens’s work centres on challenging the social ills of the day, and his writing influenced the themes I developed in my book. In Little Dorrit he satirizes the lack of a social safety net for impoverished people and the class system, two topics the characters in my book discuss. Dickens’s desire to address real-life problems led him to develop and support the brideship program.

  Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set in the Regency era, is a brilliant treatise on marriage as the most important decision in any young woman’s life, one that would determine her entire future. As in my novel, the protagonist feels pressure to marry for wealth all the while wishing to marry for love.

  Whenever I travel, I purchase nonfiction books produced by local writers that feature people or events of that place. While in Bermuda, I picked up The History of Mary Prince, an autobiography of a local woman who was enslaved and suffered horrendously. But when Mary’s master travelled to England with her, she escaped. There, Mary learned to read and wrote her autobiography, which was the first story of a black woman’s life to be published in England. She inspired my character Henry Roy.

  I got the idea for Harriet’s laudanum addiction from the Aubrey–Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian, in which the ship’s physician, Stephen Maturin, becomes addicted through self-medication.

  Questions for Book Clubs

  When the novel opens, Charlotte is pressured to marry George. While she doesn’t love him, she resigns herself to her fate. What does this say about the options available to women at this time?

  Charlotte often bemoans her corset in the novel. What does the corset literally and figuratively represent?

  When George attacks Charlotte, he threatens her into silence, saying, “Whose version do you think people will believe?” Later on, Harriet tells Charlotte that it doesn’t matter what actually happened between her and George. What’s really being left unsaid here about truth and reputation? Do some of these views still persist today?

  Charlotte is rather naive at the beginning of the book. Beyond George’s assault, what events show her that not everything is always as it appears?

  Charlotte and Harriet have different ideas of what marriage should be. How is Harriet a product of her environment and her upbringing? How does she exert power within her constraints?

  Harriet is said to have made a brilliant match with Charles, but her marriage crumbles when she can’t produce an heir. Contrast her experience with the one encountered by Sarah, who is ostracized for being a pregnant widow. How does this reflect the expectations and standards for women at this time?

  How is Charlotte’s character arc a coming-of-age story? How is Harriet’s a cautionary tale?

  Brideships like the Tynemouth promised women the chance to have a better life in the colonies than they had in England. In what ways was this true? In what ways were women still disenfranchised?

  Compare and contrast Charlotte’s prospects with those of the other emigrant women. How do class, money, and social status limit each woman’s opportunities? What different freedoms do they enjoy?

  Consider the different marriages we see in the novel:
Charlotte’s parents, Harriet and Charles, Sir Richard and Lady Persephone, and the matches Sarah and Charlotte go on to make. In what ways are these couplings the same, and in what ways are they different? What does each partner get from the other?

  How do the three decks on board the Tynemouth illustrate the strictures of Victorian society? How do these start to break down over the course of the journey?

  Charlotte begins to learn about the injustices around her through the people she interacts with, especially John, Sarah, and Dr. Carson. What do each of them teach her?

  British imperialism is a key theme in the novel. What role do women play in Britain’s plans to expand its empire? Who ultimately benefits from colonization? Who suffers the most? How does the novel present inequality as synonymous with colonialism?

  Charlotte is an avid reader. What do books offer her? How do they expand her worldview?

  Charlotte mentions Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In what ways does The Brideship Wife echo the themes of that novel? In what ways does it depart?

  Despite her growing feelings for him, Charlotte turns down John’s marriage proposal. What does British Columbia offer her that he can’t?

  Consider the gift of the emerald necklace, which Miss Wiggins says symbolizes rebirth. What does it come to symbolize when Charlotte loses it? What does the loss mean for her journey toward self-realization?

  At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Charlotte has no dowry, but this proves to be untrue. How does the dowry take on new and different meanings throughout the story? How do Harriet’s final actions subvert the patriarchal norms of the dowry?

  Miss Wiggins doesn’t marry because of the birthmark on her face, and after the fire, Charlotte has a scar on her cheek. What do these marks represent for each of them? What does this mirroring suggest?