perceived to be the moral laxity of the Anglican clergy, who seemed to prefer fox hunting to attending to their flock.
Susanna loved the chapel, one of the first “independent” chapels ever built. The setting was romantic with its beautiful lane of fine old trees and meeting yard full of lilac bushes and laburnum. Susanna had a favourite spot where she imagined she would be buried one day: under two pines through which the wind sighed a lullaby.
Mrs. Ritchie offered to teach Susanna how to paint, and they sat outside, choosing the prettiest flowers to sketch on paper. This skill Susanna used often to relax from the demands of writing and publishing.
On the night of her formal admission to the congregation, Susanna had been soaked to the skin by lashing rain as she travelled to Wrentham from Reydon. Her decision to join the Congregationalist Church had shocked her Church of England family to its roots. They had refused to accompany her, though that had not changed her mind.
Pastor Ritchie, her spiritual advisor and friend, came up to her in the vestry where she stood alone:
“Are you ready, dear?” he asked, offering his arm like a father ready to take his daughter up the aisle to give her away in marriage.
“Yes” she heard herself say with more conviction than she felt.
Susanna stood in a pew opposite the pulpit. The assembly was seated. She liked the rugged features of the farmers and their wives, mostly poor folks who gazed at her. She trembled from head to foot. Every eye was on her.
Susanna buried her face in her hands, and tears wet her fingers when Pastor Ritchie recommended her as a new member. But during the last beautiful prayer, her spirit revived. She rejoiced that the ordeal was past and she was now a member of a “free church.”
On the morning of August 12, 1830, Susanna sat at the dining table at Reydon Hall, grudgingly slipping flyers advertising her first book, Enthusiasm and Other Poems, into envelopes addressed to friends and acquaintances. She didn’t like to have to do this but that was the agreement she had made with a London publisher, Smith & Elder. She had to raise enough money by advance sales of her book to cover the cost of printing. Orders for fifty books had already been filled, but she needed to sell a lot more. Who can I possibly turn to next? Who would know a lot of people interested in poetry? Susanna asked herself.
In a flash, the name of Mary Russell Mitford, whom she had never met but corresponded with occasionally, came to her mind. Hadn’t the famous writer praised all the poems she had sent to her? Susanna now felt more cheerful and immediately reached for her pen and a fresh sheet of paper. After a few pleasantries, she swallowed hard and came to the point:
“Will you excuse the liberty I am taking, dear Miss Mitford, in enclosing the prospectus of a small volume of poetry which a friend of mine has undertaken to publish for me by private subscription? I should feel greatly obliged to you if you would circulate them among any of your wealthy friends who are unfashionable enough to be lovers of poetry…”
Whenever she could, Susanna liked to use humour to sweeten the way Miss Mitford responded positively. By year’s end, Susanna gratefully held her first volume entitled Enthusiasm and Other Poems, an elegant, plain leather-bound book embossed with gold. The forty-seven poems expressed her religious faith and her romantic love of nature. On May 28, 1831, Susanna happily read in the leading London magazine Athenaeum that Enthusiasm possessed “a tone of tender seriousness which marks a refined and reflective mind.”
John Dunbar Moodie was a prized guest at the Pringles’ London home in the summer of 1830. “What brings you back to us from South Africa?” Thomas Pringle inquired as they shared a drink in his study. His eyes were shining with pleasure at seeing his friend, after eleven years apart.
“I need a wife to help me on the farm,” John had shot out, his honesty always bracing. Tm afraid I’m becoming too much of a hermit.”
Moodie was a Scot, from the Orkney Islands, and at thirty-three years old, he had a lame arm due to an injury suffered while fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. He’d emigrated to South Africa soon after the war in the hope of earning quick money, but that hope had been dashed. As a retired officer on a small pension, Moodie had little to offer a wife, yet deep in his heart he knew there was someone for him. His trip to London had another purpose: to find a publisher for his manuscript of African tales, mostly about hunting wild animals.
At the Pringles’ Moodie regaled their feisty red-headed boarder, Susanna, with his anecdotes. Susanna, tall and thin, didn’t mind that John was short and stocky, for he had thick hair that framed a face she thought noble. She liked that he was a writer and that he openly admired her poems, which she gladly read to him.
John fascinated her. She looked forward to the evenings, when he would play his flute after their meal with the Pringles. Sometimes he invited her for a walk on Hampstead Heath, where they lingered under the shade of the ancient oak trees. On a walk in the early autumn, under a cool blue sky, John was deep in thought. Then he turned to her and asked tenderly:
“Beloved Susie, would you marry me and come to South Africa?”
Susanna shivered, from the cool breeze and from excitement. These were the words she had both dreaded and dreamed of hearing. She was tempted to marry John, whose chivalrous and poetic nature she had come to love in such a short time, but she didn’t want to emigrate to South Africa. She couldn’t imagine being near the leopards, elephants – and worst of all, the snakes – that John hunted around his farm. She loved John more than anyone, except perhaps Catharine, but she had some thinking to do before she gave her answer.
Despite her fears, Susanna soon accepted Johns proposal of marriage. He immediately left for Scotland to meet with relatives and request inheritance money to help support a bride. John was a member of the gentry, but his estate, Melsetter, had gone bankrupt.
Left alone, Susanna began to doubt whether she would be able to bring herself to emigrate to the faraway farm. She’d thought she could be happy anywhere with John, whether beneath the burning sun of Africa or building a nest among the eagles of the storm-encircled Orkneys, but by January 1831, Susanna chose to break the engagement by sending a “Dear John” letter. The Pringles, and other friends like James Bird and Reverend Ritchie, counselled Susanna not to abandon her writing career in London. They reminded her that South Africa was a colony where slavery, which she abhorred, was legal.
Susanna rented a back room in a house five minutes from the Pringles. To keep the rent affordable, she had to share the room with Miss Jane Jones, an acquaintance of the Harrals. Susanna pursued the literary life and was herself pursued by men who admired her for being a published poet and author of lively reviews and articles.
By the time John returned to London, Susanna had grown tired of the rounds of parties and agreed to meet with him. When John declared that he had given up any plans to live on his farm in South Africa because he wanted to stay near her, Susanna was overjoyed. She accepted, without any more doubts, his second proposal of marriage.
On April 4, 1831, Susanna and John were married in a modest ceremony at St. Pancras Church in London. The guests had first gathered
