IN MEMORIAM

[The Pelham Pnyx, 1940]

By Margaret Tuck

The hand that has penned many of the finer contributions to Canadian Literature was stilled on March 10^th, 1940, when Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald, renowned authoress and poetess, passed away at her home in Fenwick, in her 83^rd year.

Miss Wetherald was born at Rockwood, Ontario, on April 26, 1857, one of a family of eleven children, of Irish and English parentage. Mr Wetherald was the founder of Rockwood Academy. The family moved to Fenwick after Mr. Wetherald resigned his position as superintendent of Havergal College, Philadelphia, to become an ordained minister of the Society of Friends. Their home came to be known as “The Tall Evergreens”, because of the spruces and firs around it. It was under her father’s tutelage that Miss Wetherald received much of her early education. Later she attended the Friends’ Boarding School at Union Springs, N.Y. and Pickering College, Ontario.

During her school days she excelled in English but she has confessed that she was a hopeless problem in Mathematics and spoke French with a marked British accent. Ethelwyn Wetherald began to write verse in her early teens and at the age of seventeen received her first cheque to the open astonishment of her schoolmates who thought it absurd that anyone should receive money for writing a string of verses. She has written for a number of magazines and other publications during her long career. Readers of the  old Globe will remember her articles, written under the nom de plume of Bel Thistlethwaite. These contributions in 1887-88 led to her appointment in 1889 as woman’s editor of that paper. In 1890, John Cameron resigned his position as editor of the Globe and became the editor of the magazine “Wives and Daughters,” which was published in London, Ontario. Miss Wetherald became his assistant and it was during these years in London that she started writing lyrics and sonnets. In 1895 she finished her first book of poetry, “The House  of the Trees” and other poems. Since then she has written, “Tangled in the Stars,” “The Radiant Road,” and “The Last Robin, Lyrics and Sonnets.” Earl Grey, Governor General of Canada at the time, found the poems in this latter collection so appealing that he ordered  twenty-five more copies for friends. In 1911, Canada’s silver-tongued orator, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, quoted a poem from this book entitled “Orders” in the House of Commons. Miss Wetherald also has the distinction of being the first Canadian writer to have a poem appear in a Canadian school reader. It was her beautiful descriptive poem “Red-Winged Blackbird,” that won her this honour. “Tree top morning,” which appeared in 1921 was wholly comprised of verses for young people to whom she was very devoted. Her letters to the Patty Perkins column in our local paper, the Welland Tribune, under the pen-name of Octo, will be treasured by its members. Among her  acquaintances were numbered such outstanding literary figures as Wilfred Campbell, Marjorie Pickthall, Francis Bellamy. During the  last fifteen years of her life, Miss Wetherald seldom. left home, but she retained her keen interest in Literature and she was a gracious hostess to the hundreds of people who visited her. In 1931 a volume of three hundred and fifty poems which Miss Wetherald wished to be preserved together with her interesting reminiscences was arranged by John Garvin. A copy of this book was presented to our school by Miss Wetherald in February, 1933, and is treasured by staff and students. In closing I should like to quote what I consider to be one of the most beautiful poems of this collection.

AT WAKING

When I shall go to sleep and wake again
At dawning in another world than this,
What will atone to me for all I miss?
The light melodious footsteps of the rain,
The press of leaves against my window-pane,
The sunset wistfulness and morning bliss,
The moon’s enchantment, and the twilight kiss
Of winds that wander with me through the lane.
Will not my soul remember evermore
The earthly winter’s hunger for the spring,
The wet sweet cheek of April and the rush
Of roses through the summer’s open door,
The feelings that the scented woodlands bring
At evening with the singing of the thrush?