THE WATCH THAT ENDS THE NIGHT
THE WATCH THAT ENDS THE NIGHT
HUGH MACLENNAN
Introduction : David McKnight
General Editor : Michael Gnarowski
©McGill-Queen’s University Press 2009
ISBN 978-0-7735-2496-5
Legal deposit third quarter 2009
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council
for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support
of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.
The characters and events in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual
persons or events is coincidental. If the name of any actual person has been given
to any character, it was unintentional and accidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
MacLennan, Hugh, 1907–1990
The watch that ends the night / Hugh MacLennan.
First published: Toronto: Macmillan, 1958.
ISBN 978-0-7735-2496-5
I. Title.
PS8525.L54W3 2009 C813'.54 C2009-901383-5
Tibi, ubicumque sis aut qualiscumque, gratiae et hic liber
Dust jacket of Scribner’s edition (1959), mainly typographical with what appears to be an artist’s impression sketch of Montreal’s Place d’Armes skyline with Notre Dame in the centre.
CONTENTS
General Editor’s Note Michael Gnarowski
Chronology
Select Bibliography
Introduction David McKnight
The Watch That Ends the Night
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
A somewhat more enigmatic design for the dust jacket of Heinemann’s edition (1959). The back cover quotes parts of a laudatory review in the New York Times with the heading “A Cause for Rejoicing.”
GENERAL EDITOR’S NOTE
The present text derives from the original edition published simultaneously by Charles Scribner’s Sons of New York and The Macmillan Company of Canada in 1959. First submitted by MacLennan’s agent to Houghton, Miffin and Company, it was rejected but was then taken on enthusiastically by Scribner’s, whom MacLennan described as “much the best firm for fiction in the U.S.A.” The British edition was brought out by William Heinemann Ltd. in London and had two printings in 1959. There were paperback editions in the New American Library of Canada and Pan Books in 1961 and 1963. A paperback edition was publsihed in 1975 by The Macmillan Co. of Canada as number 32 in the Laurentian Library Series.
MacLennan had considered “Sunrise at Evening” and “Requiem” as possible titles before settling on “The Watch that Ends the Night.”
The cover of the Laurentian Library paperback edition (1975) with a partial sketch of a Quebec manoir in the background.
CHRONOLOGY
1907 John Hugh MacLennan born on 20 March in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, son and second child of Katherine MacQuarrie and Samuel MacLennan, a medical doctor employed by the coal mining industry.
1915 The MacLennan household moves from Cape Breton Island to Halifax where Dr. MacLennan sets up his practice after having been invalided out of service in the First World War.
1917 MacLennan lives through the catastrophe of the Halifax Explosion, which will become the subject of his first published novel, Barometer Rising (1941).
1924 MacLennan graduates from Halifax County Academy with a University Entrance Scholarship and the Yeoman Prize in Latin and Greek. Enrols in Dalhousie University to study Classics, at which he excels.
1928 Having distinguished himself academically and in sports, MacLennan graduates from Dalhousie University, disappointed at not having won the (expected and hoped for) Rhodes Scholarship for Nova Scotia but is then chosen Rhodes Scholar for Canada-at-Large. Sails for England and Oxford in September of that year.
1928–32 Once settled in at Oriel College, MacLennan finds his studies in Classics rigorous and demanding. He has little social life other than sports (rugby and tennis, at which he was a champion player at the University); writes frequent letters to his family, and takes advantage of his vacations to travel modestly on the Continent in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany, where he encounters strong right wing nationalism and the rising tides of fascism and communism. Earns his ba in Classics from Oxford in 1932 and wins a Fellowship at Princeton to continue his studies for a Ph.D.
1932 Sailing home from Oxford, meets an American woman, Dorothy Duncan (1903–1957), a writer (Bluenose: A Portrait of Nova Scotia, 1942) as well as a graphic artist, and marries her four years later.
1932–1935 Unable to find suitable employment, MacLennan, offered a modest fellowship at Princeton, decides to study there for his Ph.D in classical history. While at the University he tries his hand at writing fiction, leading to two early novels, both of which remain unpublished. In 1935 receives his doctorate and his dissertation, Oxyrhynchus: An Economic and Social Study, is published by Princeton University Press. He moves to Montreal and takes up a position as schoolmaster at Lower Canada College.
1936 Hugh MacLennan and Dorothy Duncan are married on 22 June in Wilmette, Illinois, returning via Boston and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to settle in Montreal.
1937–1939 MacLennan struggles unsuccessfully to arrange for the publication of his two novels in manuscript, “A Man Should Rejoice” which is rejected by Random House and “So All Their Praises” which is rejected by Longmans Green, both in New York. He reportedly reads Ringuet’s Trente Arpents, which had appeared in 1938 and without which, MacLennan later confesses, Two Solitudes could not have been written. Predicts that war will begin in September of 1939.
1936–1941 Continues at Lower Canada College and begins to develop a career at writing for magazines. He is prompted by his wife to turn his fiction to Canadian themes. She, having written a guide book, Here’s to Canada! (1941), is embarked on her book Bluenose (1942) and is credited with MacLennan’s choosing the Halifax explosion of 1917 as the focus of his novel Barometer Rising, which launches his career as a novelist.
1941 Barometer Rising is published and is well-received. MacLennan continues to teach at Lower Canada College but feels financially constrained and endeavours to supplement his income by writing for magazines.
1943 MacLennan is awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which provides some financial relief and frees him somewhat to work on his next novel, Two Solitudes, which he had apparently begun the previous year. MacLennan’s declared project is to write a novel of Canadian life in the years 1917–40. Announcement of the fellowship generates a series of letters from American publishers (J.B. Lippincott; Doubleday, Doran; Houghton, Miffin) expressing interest in publishing his next novel.
1944 MacLennan begins correspondence with Willem L. Graff, professor of German, as he tries to pin down the exact wording and location of the “two solitudes” reference in the work of the German poet Rainer-Maria Rilke. In July he dispatches a copy of the 582 page typescript of Two Solitudes to Blanche Gregory, his literary agent in New York, and the publisher Duell, Sloan and Pearce. A third copy will go to Collins in Toronto, who will publish in Canada.
1945 Two Solitudes is published (publication date is mid-January although copies had been made available in December of 1944). The book is well-r
eceived with congratulatory letters from friends and literary associates and excellent reviews and good sales. The success of Two Solitudes and its financial returns enable MacLennan to resign from Lower Canada College, a position that he had never enjoyed. He wins the Governor General’s Award for fiction.
1948 MacLennan publishes The Precipice, which, while it wins the Governor General’s Award for fiction is not a commercial or critical success.
1949 Cross Country, a collection of ten previously published essays/articles, half of which had appeared in Maclean’s magazine, is published. The collection wins the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction.
1951 With his wife’s health beginning to fail and medical bills becoming a burden (there had even been a suggestion the previous year that he accept financial help from the Canadian Writer’s Foundation), MacLennan accepts a part-time position in the English Department of McGill University, entering the academic profession in which he will remain until his retirement. Each Man’s Son is published in May in spite of paper shortages.
1954 Thirty and Three, MacLennan’s second collection of essays, is published and wins the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction.
1957 Dorothy Duncan, MacLennan’s wife for twenty-one years, dies after a prolonged struggle with chronic illness.
1959 MacLennan marries Frances Aline Walker, known as Tota, who had been a family friend for some years. The Watch that Ends the Night is published and wins MacLennan’s fifth and last Governor General’s Award.
1960 Scotchman’s Return and Other Essays is published.
1964 MacLennan takes a sabbatical leave from the University and goes to live in Grenoble, France, where he continues writing his next novel and works hard at mastering spoken French.
1966 The Molson Prize, a rich cash award in the second year of its existence, names MacLennan as the recipient of this honour.
1967 Return of the Sphinx is published; MacLennan is inducted as a Companion of the Order of Canada.
1968 Alarmed at the general malaise in society and the militancy of the young – student riots in Paris; a mob marching to demand a “McGill français”; the burning of the computer centre at Sir George Williams University in Montreal – MacLennan retreats into himself to incubate the themes of personal dysfunctiion and social alienation that become strong and prophetic elements in his last novel, Voices in Time.
1980 Voices in Time, blurbed as MacLennan’s finest novel, is also his last.
1990 MacLennan dies on 9 November at his country home in North Hatley in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.
Note: MacLennan won many awards and distinctions in his time. He was made a Chevalier of the National Order of Quebec, elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada, and had honorary degrees conferred on him by several Canadian Universities.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS BY HUGH MACLENNAN
Barometer Rising (New York/Toronto, 1941)
Two Solitudes (New York/Toronto, 1945)
The Precipice (New York/Toronto, 1948)
Cross Country (Toronto, 1949)
Each Man’s Son (Boston/Toronto, 1951)
Thirty and Three (Toronto, 1954)
The Watch that Ends the Night (New York/Toronto, 1959)
Scotchman’s Return and Other Essays (Toronto, 1960)
Seven Rivers of Canada (New York/Toronto, 1961)
(With the camera of John De Visser)
Return of the Sphinx (New York/Toronto, 1967)
The Colour of Canada (Toronto/Boston, 1967)
The Other Side of Hugh MacLennan: Selected Essays Old and New. Edited by Elspeth Cameron. (Toronto, 1978)
Voices in Time (Toronto, 1980)
Hugh MacLennan’s Best. Edited By Douglas Gibson (Toronto, 1991)
BOOKS ABOUT OR RELATING TO HUGH MACLENNAN
Dorothy Duncan, Bluenose: A Portrait of Nova Scotia (New York/London, 1942)
Robert Cockburn, The Novels of Hugh MacLennan (Montreal, 1969)
George Woodcock, Hugh McLennan (Toronto, 1969)
Paul Goetsch, Hugh MacLennan (Toronto, 1973)
Elspeth Cameron, “Hugh MacLennan:An Annotated Bibliography” in The Annotated Bibliography of Canada’s Major Authors, Vol. 1. Edited by Robert Lecker and Jack David (Downsview, 1979)
Elspeth Cameron, Hugh MacLennan: A Writer’s Life (Toronto, 1981)
Helen Hoy, Hugh MacLennan and His Works (Toronto, 1990)
Mari Peepre-Bordessa, Hugh MacLennan’s National Trilogy:Mapping a Canadian Identity 1940–1950 (Helsinki?, 1990)
Frank M. Tierney, ed., Hugh MacLennan (Ottawa, 1994)
Christl Verduyn, ed., Dear Marian, Dear Hugh: The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence (Ottawa, 1995)
Anne Coleman, I’ll Tell You a Secret: A Memory of Seven Summers (Toronto, 2004)
INTRODUCTION
First published in April 1959, The Watch That Ends the Night (hereafter The Watch) is regarded as Hugh MacLennan’s finest artistic achievement. Written over a period of seven years, the novel was slow to develop and take shape, serving as a test of MacLennan’s skills as a novelist and a challenge to his faith and endurance as a man. In Each Man’s Son, the novel that preceded The Watch, MacLennan had drawn heavily upon his past – incidents, characters, and place – to create his fictional account of life in an impoverished coal mining village in pre-First World War Cape Breton Island. He adopted a similar strategy in The Watch, drawing upon his life experience to transfigure personal tragedy into his master work.
Set in Montreal, the novel begins in 1951. MacLennan leads the reader back in time to the first three decades of the twentieth century through a series of flashbacks. The story is told through the voice of the first person narrator, George Stewart, who is enmeshed in a tragic love triangle with the novel’s two other principal characters, Catherine Carey and Jerome Martell. As the story of their lives unfolds, they are shown to be entwined in a web of desire and betrayal that mirrors the idealism and eventual defeat of the mass social and political movements of the 1930s. It was this aspect of the novel that inspired MacLennan to view this novel as a requiem for his wife, Dorothy Duncan, and, through his exploration of the character Jerome Martell and the failures associated with the Spanish Civil War, an elegy for his generation. The story of MacLennan’s decision to tell this particular story reveals as much about the author’s character and career as the the novel itself.
At the time The Watch was published, MacLennan was considered one of the most successful professional writers in Canada. He had published four major novels during the 1940s – an average of one every two and a half years. His early canonic works, Barometer Rising (1941) and Two Solitudes (1945), had established him as the new national voice in Canadian fiction. Four years later, following on the success of Two Solitudes, MacLennan published The Precipice (1948), followed by his fourth novel, Each Man’s Son (1951). Although he revelled in his success, his growing fame came at a price: maintaining his public stature pushed him toward the trap of writing didactic novels as part of a larger national quest to reveal Canada’s hidden history, character, and identity for the sake of a Canadian audience unaware of their past rather than creating independent works of fiction. The more formulaic aspect of his fiction had not gone unnoticed by book reviewers and critics and MacLennan was keenly aware of the dilemma.
After the publication of Two Solitudes and its financial success, MacLennan resigned from his teaching post at Lower Canada College, where he had taught for ten years, to pursue writing on a full time basis. His growing fame led to many free-lance publishing opportunities and enabled him to express his views on a wide variety of subjects both in print and on the radio. The sale of his journalistic work had the added benefit of supplementing his income, which from 1945 to 1951 was based solely on his writing. By the end of the 1950s MacLennan had published over two hundred articles and was widely regarded as one of Canada’s leading essayists and political commentators. In recognition of his skills as an essayist, in 1955 he received the Gove
rnor General’s Award for non-fiction for his collection of essays A Scotchman’s Return.
MacLennan was, however, first and foremost a novelist. He embarked on his literary career while he was a graduate student at Princeton University – when he was not working on his dissertation,1 he was drafting and redrafting his first novel, “So All Their Praises” (1933), written and completed while he was at Princeton. Although the novel had been accepted for publication by the independent publisher Robert Ballou and Company, the publisher filed for bankruptcy before the novel appeared.2 Though discouraged at not finding a publisher for his first novel, MacLennan then began a new work, “A Man Should Rejoice” (1937), which he continued to rework after arriving in Montreal in October 1935 to teach Classics at Lower Canada College until 1945. In these apprentice works MacLennan drew heavily on his sojourns in Europe and the United States, creating aesthetic solutions that focused on the nature of art, history, and politics and the exploration of individual characters subject to historical forces that have an unforeseen impact upon their past and eventual fate.
By the end of the 1940s, building upon his critical successes, MacLennan experienced a creative surge marked by the publication of his third novel, The Precipice (1948), in which he drew upon his Princeton experience. Throughout his life, and particularly during the 1930s and 1940s, MacLennan became increasingly hostile toward the Americanization of Canada, with its many consequences for Canadian moral values and economic and political independence. In The Precipice, he juxtaposes earnest Presbyterian small town Canadian life with the seductive and ruinous appeal of the American dream. The novel was poorly received by critics in both Canada and the United States and the bad reviews resulted in low sales. For MacLennan it was both an artistic and an economic disappointment.
In spite of the poor reception of The Precipice, three years later MacLennan, undeterred, published his fourth novel, Each Man’s Son (1951). In part an autobiographical work, MacLennan drew upon his early experience growing up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where his father, Dr. Samuel MacLennan, was the sole family physician in an impoverished coal mining town on Cape Breton Island. The action takes place just prior to the outbreak of the First World War. In part, the novel was an attempt to purge his Calvinist past and reevaluate his complex relationship with his father through the complicated character of Dr. Daniel Ainslie. MacLennan’s self-examination would continue, but the results of his introspective journey would not become public until 1959, when The Watch was published.
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