Department of English
Writing the Journey: June 1999
"Writing the Heroic Narrative and the 'Truths' of the Travel Diary: Inclusion/Exclusion and Dillon Wallace's Journeys to Labrador, 1903-05"
Craig Monk
Department of English, University of Lethbridge
craig.monk@uleth.ca
Dillon Wallace, the New York lawyer and adventurer, was known in the early twentieth century as "about the biggest man in the North." The Lure of the Labrador Wild (1905), his most famous book, was based upon an ill-fated journey to the Labrador interior. That expedition claimed the life of Leonidas Hubbard, Wallace's close friend and an editor with the American adventure magazine Outing. In 1905, Wallace remounted the expedition with the assistance of another friend, Leigh Stanton. Outing helped finance the trip because of the commercial success of Wallace's first book, and true to form he brought forward The Long Labrador Trail (1907) to relate his further adventures in the northern wilderness. To get another perspective on Wallace's travel writing, one might read The Long Labrador Trail in connection with Stanton's travel diary, purchased from the Wallace family by the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1992. Whether or not Wallace used the details provided by Stanton's account to supplement the story in his book, a reading of both texts reveals the extent to which Wallace's heroic tale differs from the detailed chronicle of the diary.
Among other things, this contrast helps illuminate the aims of Wallace's travel writing: his preoccupation with his own achievement underlines the extent to which his narrative was intended to celebrate the exploits of an American who negotiated the "savagery" of Labrador. However, Stanton's diary reveals the extent to which Wallace downplayed the achievement of his companions; in writing himself the hero, Wallace portrayed these companions, especially his native guide, in a paternalistic manner. Stanton's description reminds the reader of the more ordinary concerns of the explorer: hunger, fatigue, and disappointment. But evidence suggests that his "factual" account of the journey is, itself, not free from the subjectivity of the travel writer. Neither document emphasizes the blunders of Wallace's expedition; indeed, neither document addresses the fact that their journey was a failure. The 1905 expedition was, in reality, a race that Wallace lost: he was making his way across Labrador at the same time as Mina Hubbard, the widow of his fallen colleague. Mrs. Hubbard blamed Wallace for the death of her husband, and she set out across the North to vindicate her "Laddie." Her Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador (1908) similarly makes no reference to Wallace, suggesting that in the case of all the documents relevant to the adventures of American explorers in Labrador in the summer of 1905, travel writing is as much defined by the omission of facts as it is by the inclusion and arrangement of them.
Craig Monk
University of Lethbridge
4401 University Drive West,
Lethbridge, Alberta,
Canada, T1K 3M4
Tel: (403) 329-2597
Fax: (403) 382-7191
craig.monk@uleth.ca
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