Vernon house's mysterious inhabitants turn out to be great fodder for novelist
Credit to Author: Dana Gee| Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2019 18:00:12 +0000
Laisha Rosnau
When: Oct 23, 8:30 p.m., Performance Works & Oct 24, 6:30 p.m., Waterfront Theatre
Tickets and info:writersfest.bc.ca
As a kid Laisha Rosnau regularly walked by an old house on her way to downtown Vernon.
While it wasn’t as scary as the Radley house that gave the Finch kids the shivers in To Kill a Mockingbird the Vernon house, however, was subject to its own rumours, some of them spooky.
Many years later the occupants of that North Okanagan house are at the centre of Rosnau’s second novel Little Fortress.
The house had been home to a family of Italian aristocrats by the name of Caetani since 1921. The father, a Duke, was a bit of socialist and Italy at the time was strictly fascist, so he packed up his mistress Ofelia, their young daughter Sveva and Ofelia’s companion/secretary Miss Juul — well-to-do women had those in the early part of the 20th century — and moved the lot to British Columbia.
“Sveva passed away in 1994 (aged 77) and I grew up basically in the ’80s. I would walk by the house all the time,” said Rosnau over the phone from her home in Coldstream, just north of Vernon. “When I was a teen I started hearing rumours about who lived in the house and I would hear that there were witches in there or lesbians, or artists. It seems those things were conflated. There were whispers and rumours so there was definitely a mystery around the house.”
Years later, when Rosnau was home from university one summer, she set about catching up with friends. During one visit Rosnau was leafing through a coffee-table book. The book turned out to be the story of Sveva, complete with photos, her artwork and persona letters.
“My friend just lived a few doors down from the house and she said: ‘you know that book is about one of the women who lived in the house.’ I started reading the story more closely and finding out about it and was floored this sort of story of international dramatic intrigue had somehow ended up at the house down the street from where I grew up,” said Rosnau.
Always a collector of good stories, Rosnau filed this one away and went about getting her education. She graduated from UBC with a masters in fine arts.
After living in Victoria, Tofino, Whitehorse, Vancouver and Prince George, Rosnau eventually returned to Vernon with her husband and two infants in tow and the story of Caetanis started to bubble up in her brain.
“I came up from that postpartum phase, when my kids were one and three, and I thought this is my time. I’m back in Vernon,” said Rosnau, who is a sessional instructor at UBC Okanagan.
So she signed her kids up for daycare and dove into the Vernon archives and researched the three women and the Duke.
“I would get taken to pyramids in Egypt, a lighthouse in Denmark, and palaces in Rome,” said Rosnau, who discovered that the archive included personal notes from Coca Chanel to her regular customer Ofelia.
“I was taken to this huge world. I was fascinated by what created the circumstances, the psychological circumstances that would lead these women from living such huge international lives to being essentially trapped by their own volition in a house in Vernon. I was the opposite, I felt trapped in Vernon and wanted to leave for this huge international life, so that was my sort of entry point, my connection.”
Rosnau discovered the women retreated into the house after the Duke suddenly died of throat cancer in 1935. Ofelia, who was always a little bit out of sorts, soon went downhill. Rosnau figures in today’s world Ofelia would be diagnosed with a variety of mental health issues including agoraphobia, depression and OCD. The women remained secluded until Ofelia’s death in 1960.
After that Sveva and Miss Juul went out into the town and the people of the town noticed.
“Sveva came out of seclusion in 1960 and became quite integrated with the people of Vernon — the naturalist club and artistic community. She became an amazing visual artist,” said Rosnau. “I heard people describe her as being larger than life — in physical stature very, very tall, 6-foot-1. She had this imposing imperious way about her. Everyone had heard the stories and rumours when they were in seclusion and when they came out those stories were well known. On the other side I would hear about Miss Juul being a tiny, little mouselike creature who kind of skittered around behind Sveva. So they were this very odd couple that was just roaming the streets of Vernon. The 6-foot-1 Roman countess and her 4-foot-11 little lady servant.”
Because Sveva became a locally known artist with an interesting backstory she donated her family’s papers to the local archives. Upon her death the family home was to become an artist’s retreat and cultural centre. Today the Caetani Cultural Centre still stands and still welcomes artists. In fact, Rosnau herself wrote one of the drafts for Little Fortress in what was once the Caetani’s dog kennel.
“It had been renovated,” said Rosnau.
For Rosnau the archives proved fruitful for the early part of the 20th century up until the Duke’s death in 1935. Then they go fairly quiet — only bills, medical records and bank statements — until Ofelia’s death in 1960.
“There were no letters,” said Rosnau about that time. “So that left me two questions as a writer: what happened to the letters? Also what happened when those women were in that house?”
Rosanu was able to talk with some very senior Vernon women who knew the Caetani’s and Miss Juul. The picture they painted was of a controlling mother and a devoted daughter. As for Miss Juul, well, she was described as someone “skittering around behind them.”
Miss Juul piqued Rosnau’s interest. She wanted to elevate her from the sidelines so she made her the narrator of this fictionalized historical tale. Through Miss Juul’s eyes the reader sees a story of a changing world, class issues and love, something Miss Juul was never able to master.
“Who is this woman and why did she leave her entire life behind to be devoted to this family,” said Rosnau. “What personal history made her psychologically prepared to do that? That’s what I find fascinating, finding out about the women that were sort of forgotten or on the sidelines of history, which is most of us, right?”
While the archives held plenty of information Rosnau has heard that Sveva left more journals and diaries to the Vernon Museum with the stipulation they can’t be opened until 25 years after her death. Well, times up.
“I haven’t gone back to the museum and archives yet,” said Rosanu. “It next on my list of things to do.”