The Governor's Lady

Janis Svilpis is a professor of English at the University of Calgary.

This well-crafted novel is straightforward in style and
characterization. The historical detail is unobtrusive; the plot and
narrative pacing rarely create excitement. Nevertheless, it is rewarding
reading, built out of understated but cumulatively memorable scenes.
Raddall gives a credible account of the United Empire Loyalist
experience in the 1770s and 1780s through his sympathetic but
unsentimental fictionalized portrait of Sir John Wentworth and his wife,
Frances.

They are high-ranking colonial gentry, but not major actors in the
events that shape their lives. Fannie is married to her first husband,
Theodore, when Johnnie arrives home from England, where he has been
lobbying for the repeal of the Stamp Act, to take up the governorship of
New Hampshire. While Theodore is dying of consumption, Fannie and
Johnnie become lovers, marrying hastily after Theodore’s death to
legitimize her pregnancy. Their relationship is strained, partly by
differing interests (his in colonial administration, hers in high
society) and partly by the events leading to the American Revolution. He
fights ineffectually for the Loyalist cause; she is exiled to England
and takes a series of lovers. The meagre reward that patrons in England
offer Johnnie is the post of Surveyor General of His Majesty’s Woods
in Nova Scotia. Respectable Halifax society scorns Fannie’s
infidelity, even though William, the “Sailor Prince,” third son of
George III, is among her conquests. Finally, Johnnie’s faithful
service and Fannie’s maneuverings win him the governorship of Nova
Scotia.

Raddall writes convincingly of unhappy people who lose what they love
and take what comfort they can. He does so without heavy moralizing and
without romanticizing Fannie’s many affairs. One of the novel’s
strong moments shows her contemplating the once-famous “Perdita,”
now crippled and abandoned by her lover, but failing to see herself in
the sad figure before her. Johnnie understands himself and his wife
better than she does, but his eventual triumph is bittersweet. In sum,
this is a quietly thoughtful, satisfying novel.