Inventing Sam Slick: A Biography of Thomas Chandler Haliburton

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Richard A. Davies has been an authority on Thomas Chandler Haliburton
for over 25 years. During this period he has published numerous essays
and edited several books. His knowledge of Haliburton’s life is
unequalled, and this biography has long been awaited. It is a rich
source of facts, a model of thorough archival research; yet I have to
admit to disappointment. Just as Haliburton himself could write vivid
sketches but failed to control an extended narrative, so Davies, with
all the known facts at his fingertips, finds difficulty in making his
story flow.

Several reasons suggest themselves. It is, to be sure, virtually
impossible, when writing the biography of someone who was both
politician and writer, to please historians and literary critics alike,
especially when Canadian, British, and American issues are involved. One
feels, however, that, had some of the less-significant facts been
winnowed out, the resulting story would have been clearer and more
compelling. Moreover, though this cannot accurately be called a hostile
biography, it is certainly an unsympathetic one. Davies obviously finds
the irrepressible but often shrewd Sam Slick more vulgar than funny.
(The title, incidentally, is deceptive: the invention of Sam Slick plays
only a small part in the book as a whole.)

Unsurprisingly in our race-sensitive age, Davies displays the requisite
disgust at Haliburton’s dubious racial attitudes, which he exposes
with seeming relish. That Haliburton held racist views, even by
19th-century standards, is all too clear, but Davies weakens his case by
attributing to Haliburton sentiments put into the mouths of fictional
characters (as if Shakespeare were culpable for presenting Iago’s
racist views). In so doing, he casts doubt on his ability to respond
adequately to Haliburton’s satiric complexity.

All in all, this is a detailed, accurate, but decidedly solemn portrait
of a man of Falstaffian girth and also of Falstaffian witty
preposterousness. He can offend our sensibilities, but one does not need
to reproduce the negating Prince Hal’s chillingly pious zeal. A
valuable gathering of information, then, but an indifferent biography.