Times-Colonist
June 3, 2001
By May Brown
When Joan Mason Hurley set out to write her latest novel, Invitation to the Party, she had a clear goal in mind, and that was to create a “pleasant read”.
The Victoria author, who writes books under her maiden name Joan Austen Leigh, says she sought to present a departure from the themes of abuse, sibling rivalry and dark pasts that shape many novels.
“I admire Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Milford and wanted to write a modern novel somewhat resembling their style,” says, Hurley, whose previous books are the Canadian best-seller Stephanie and its sequel Stephanie at War ; Mrs. Goddard, Mistress of a School, A Visit to Highbury and Later Day at Highbury.
Invitation to the Party takes place in a fictitious town in B.C.’s Okanagan wine region where the highlight of the year, for those privileged to attend, is a party hosted by a wealthy woman in honour of William Shakespeare. The novel interweaves humour romance, domestic discord writer’s block and a surprise ending, all centring in a way around the pending party.
At the age of 80, Hurley has enjoyed a long career as a writer, taking her from the world of
manual typewriters, with their messy ribbons and carriage returns, to that of computers, a technology she embraced more than 20 years ago and which she still considers “magical”.
Even so, Invitation to the Party took five years to write, as Hurley is thorough with her work. This is reflected in the advice she gives new writers: “just write, read it aloud and criticize it,” she says, “and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.”
Having also created several award-winning plays, Hurley notes a significant difference between writing for the reader and writing for the stage.
“A novel is more difficult, but more satisfying,” she says. “Play writing is a dialogue. You don’t have to describe anything.”
She also likes the fact that novels are interpreted only in the reader’s mind, while “a play can be distorted by the director.” In fact, she was so discouraged after seeing one of her plays badly staged that she decided to focus on her novel-writing career instead. (Still, her plays remain popular: the awarded-winning one-act Death Seat has just been requested by Irwin Publishing for a new anthology.)
The ”Austen” in Hurley’s maiden name come from English author Jane Austen, to whom she is related. It is through this connection and her own literary career that Hurley was recently awarded a Doctor of Letters degree from the prestigious Goucher College in Baltimore, Md., which house the world’s largest collection of Jane Austen first editions, letters and memorabilia.
The presentation was planned as part of the college’s convocation exercises May 18 in Baltimore, but there was one small hitch: Hurley was in hospital here at the time. So arrangements were made to have the ceremony transmitted live across the continent to the hospital via speaker-phone.
It was 11:15 a.m. in Baltimore, and 7:15 a.m. here. The sound of the college’s marching bands could be heard loud and clear in the background, and as the event began, some of the 18 guests at Hurley’s ceremony formed their own processional, wearing their academic robes.
Presenting the award was Goucher College English Professor Dr. Laurelynn Kaplan, who praised Hurley not only for her literary career, but also as co-founder of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) which has grown to 3,700 members since its inception in 1979. Kaplan also acknowledged Hurley as founder and former editor of “Persuasions”, the society’s journal, through which “she helped to keep the imagined work of her great-great-aunt alive.”
At the appropriate moment, an academic hat was placed on Hurley’s head by author Carol Shields. “Then,” says Hurley with a smile, “we devoted ourselves to champagne and orange juice!”
A champagne breakfast celebration seems a fitting way to toast a women known for hosting her own elegant parties. Friend Philip White recalls poetry readings hosted by Hurley, at which each guest was asked to bring a favourite poem, read it aloud and say why they liked it.
Jane Thom, who met Hurley through the Jane Austen Society, has been invited aboard Hurley’s sailboat for tea. “She loves giving parties. She has a gift for hospitality,” says Thom.
Hurley also put her creativity to use when she and her husband Denis ran the Shawnigan Beach Resort Hotel for 25 years, organizing activities from dances and crayfish races to toy horse racing and even the inevitable bingo.
Jon Schaffter, former headmaster of St. Michaels University School, has known Hurley since 1977. She is, he says, “boundlessly curious, always learning.”
“She wanted to take a trip to Russia and she set about learning Russian,” he recalls. She also went canalling in France. And just the other day, she asked the Schaffters if they could bring her a talking book of James Joyce’s Ulysses. (This would be added to her already considerable bedside stack of reading material, including Brian Southam’s Jane Austen and the Navy, Carol Shield’s Republic of Love and Sheila Munro’s Lives of Mothers and Daughters.)
“Joan is one of those one-of-a-kind people,” says Schaffter, “an extraordinarily complex, multi-talented individual.”
Canalling in France would come naturally to Hurley, who has a love of the water. After her husband died 15 years ago, Joan continued to sail their 27-foot sailboat on her own, and not without incident. In an article she wrote for Pacific Yachting in the fall of 1999, Hurley tells of being knocked unconscious when the boat hit a rock in a narrow passage. When she came to, she wrapped a towel around her head to stop the bleeding, then called the Coast Guard. Some boating friends later said they were listening at the time and heard the Coast Guard ask if Hurley’s boat was taking on water. Next they heard a precise, English voice say with great irritation, “I can’t possibly tell. It would mean taking up the carpet and removing the stairs.” The rising tide eventually freed Hurley’s boat and she headed for shore, then drove herself to a clinic for stitches.
Hurley brings the same energy to land travel as she does to the sea, having regularly driven the Malahat in all kinds of weather to sing with a Victoria choral group. In her new book, she creates the character of Mrs. Beaumont, a woman who speed from Vancouver to the Okanagan a fast as her car can take her.
“Mrs. Beaumont drives fast on the Coquihalla because that’s the only place she feels in control, where she can do what she like,” says the author. “It’s a sort of vent for her frustrations.” Hurley doesn’t disclose here own reasons for her love of the road, but a clue may lie in the cars she has owned, including a 1970 Corvette Stingray, and, recently, a sport utility vehicle.
While Hurley is known for her connection with Jane Austen, she readily bridges the gap between the past and present. At one time, she owned both a laptop computer and the portable writing desk used by her famous great-great-aunt. In the spring of 2000, Hurley and her daughters, Freydis, Damarais, and Tibbie, handed the family heirloom over to the care of the British Library in London, England.
As it turns out, Hurley inadvertently provided a 20th-century collectible of her own for the Library archives. She had written a speech for the desk presentation, but once she arrived in England, she changed her mind about what she wanted to say. Searching for something to write on, all she could find where the cardboard inserts from a package of pantyhose, so she wrote her notes on those and gave them to library staff to transcribe.
It was only later that Hurley learned that the British Library’s official Keeper of the Manuscript had carefully filed the pantyhose inserts away as “artefacts for posterity.”
May Brown is a freelance writer and reviewer living in Victoria.
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