By Sara Hailstone
Carefully pieced together by Canadian author Marilyn Simonds after discovering a young girl’s letters from a convict in the attic of a house in Kingston, Ontario, The Convict Lover reveals what life was like for prisoners in the historic Kingston Penitentiary while offering a creative nonfictive text as a cornerstone of CanLit. It took the author nearly two years to situate the letters chronologically and work through almost a decade of archival research to thread together a masterfully written narrative published in 1996 of the pair’s unorthodox relationship.
The compelling nature of the novel is rooted in the depths of the two main characters, Joseph David Cleroux (AKA Daddy Long Legs) and a 17-year-old Phyllis Halliday (Peggy), hooked together only by their letters and brief sightings of each other in the grotto of their own isolation between the homestead and quarry pit. The man and young woman exchange letters through a crevice in the quarry, and grippingly, the record of this exchange is one-sided. What remains of this exchange is only what Simonds discovered in the attic of her house—Cleroux’s line of communication. We never know what and how Phyllis wrote to the convict. Yet, in the solitude of her childhood, she gained footing and a loss of innocence in providing for the convict not only a conversation but a steady supply of tobacco. The reader is carried through these exchanges and enfolding character development with unspoken suspense in anticipation of when the convict and young woman will meet.
Simonds’ command of language carefully sculpts a sense of the agony of time and captivity between both characters that pull the reader through similar feelings of expectation for liberation and freedom. Texture and environment mark out the convict’s life. Language and his letters contour hers. Still, the story is pained because there is delicate foreshadowing that Phyllis will be left empty with the absence of the convict and his letters when he is set free. She knows that within her family homestead, she will remain, yet she longs for passion in the same breath she fears she is losing her life, “I am sinking without leaving a trace.” Her trace becomes shaded between the lines of the convict’s words. When he is finally released, she waits for him to come. He never does.
The novel can feel anti-climactic with heavy sub-plotlines detailing the Kingston Penitentiary and the almost abrupt ending of Cleroux and Phyllis mid-narrative. Phyllis remained with her family throughout her life, surviving her parents and siblings. She never married. Phyllis passed away in 1986; she endured illness for the entirety of her life. Simonds found the letters, diaries, photographs, clothes, and clippings in tins, boxes, and sugar sacks on what would have been Phyllis’s 85th birthday on August 8, 1987. Simonds never found a trace of Joseph David Cleroux after December 1921 when searching archives, census records, and birth and death records. We learn of Cleroux through his letters and the creative layers Simonds lays down with these historical pieces. The reality is we want stories to contain a resolution and provide us closure. We want the characters to meet. We want them to fall in love. We could very well reflect on the fact Cleroux could have led Phyllis through a labyrinth of fantasy for distraction, connection, and tobacco. I hope not.