Showing posts with label Beauchemin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beauchemin. Show all posts

24 June 2022

'La Fête nationale' par Léon Lorrain


Léon Lorrain
1855 - 1892
RIP
Verse for the day from Léon Lorrain's Les Fleurs poétiques, simples bluettes (Montreal: Beauchemin, 1890).

LA FÊTE NATIONALE

(La Saint-Jean-Baptiste)

A L'HONORABLE M. F.-G. MARCHAND
          Vingt-quatre juin! Salut! ― Ô fête solennelle!
          Apporte dans nos cœurs l'amitié fraternelle,
          Ce sentiment si beau qu'on le dit surhumain!
          Retardez votre cours, heures patriotiques!
          Laissez-nous savourer les plaisirs pacifiques
               Dont vous semez votre chemin!

          Le soleil radieux, comme un puissant génie,
          Répand à flots vermeils le jour et l'harmonie;
          Il féconde nos champs de ses subtils rayons;
          Il dispense partout dans sa course enflammée
          La vie et l'abondance; une brise embaumée
               S'élève de nos frais sillons.

          Notre libre drapeau flotte, au gré de la brise,
          Au sommet d'une tour, au clocher d'une église
          Et domine nos champs, ― resplendissants tableaux! ―
          Sous ses replis mouvants, l'enthousiaste foule
          Se rallie et se presse, ensuite se déroule
               Ondulante comme les flots!

          Tous les cœurs sont émus par la même pensée.
          Voyez se réunir cette foule empressée.
          Elle confond ensemble, en ce jour patronal,
          Au seuil du temple saint où souvent elle prie,
          L'amour du Tout-Puissant, l'amour de la patrie,
              Dans le devoir national!

II

          Du ciel où vous vivez, de ces célestes dômes,
          Esprits de nos aïeux, ô bien-aimés fantômes,
               Venez contemplez vos enfants.
          Dans le ravissement leur âme se déploie;
          Leur chère liberté, le bonheur et la joie
               Brillent sur leurs fronts triomphants!
          Voyez qu'elle sied bien à leur tête ennoblie,
          La couronne de fleurs que vous avez cueillie, ―
               La couronne de liberté!
          Ils ne l'ont pas flétri, ce lys emblématique;
          Mais ils l'ont cultivé de leur main héroïque
               Comme on cultive un fruit d'été!
Félix-Gabriel Marchand
1832 - 1900
RIP

Related posts:

19 October 2020

Armand Durand; or, A Summer Project



Armand Durand; ou, La promesse accomplie
    [Armand Durand; or, A Promise Fulfilled]
Madame Leprohon [Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon;
    trans, J.-A.  Genaud], 
Montreal: Beauchemin, 1894
367 pages

In her time, Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon – Madame Leprohon – was more popular with francophones than anglophones, so does it not make sense to tackle this, her third novel, in translation? I thought so. It was my summer project. That the season ended weeks ago speaks to my inabilities, and is no reflection on the novel itself. The story is simple and has a rushed, rather predictable conclusion – but it is deftly told and is populated by fully-drawn characters who live in a Quebec the author knew well.

The novel begins with Paul Durand, descendant of the earliest settlers of New France, who has come to inherit a large and profitable farm in "the seigneurie of — Alonville we will call it — on the banks of the St. Lawrence."* Handsome and hardworking Paul has put off marriage so as not to impose upon his mother, who had lived many, many years in the Durand family farmhouse... until she didn't.

I shouldn't be so flippant. Mère Durand is depicted as a fine woman. After her death, son Paul looks to be in no hurry to take a bride — but then he encounters Geneviève Audut. Newly arrived from France, delicate Geneviève is employed as governess to a pair of thoroughly dislikable children related to the seigneur. Geneviève herself is a relation —a poor relation — whom no one treats her particularly well. Her charges are the worst: "Mamma says we will never learn anything till we have a tutor, and that she would get us one to-morrow, only she does not know what to do with you. No body will marry you as you have no dot."

After overhearing this little shit, Paul proposes to Geneviève, which in turn sends the women of Alonville into a tizzy:
What could he see in her, indeed, a little doll-faced creature with no life or gaiety in her, to bewitch him in such a manner? What made him marry a stranger when there were plenty of smart handsome girls in his own village that he had known ever since they wore pinafores?
Much to their delight, Geneviève proves a disaster in keeping a farmhouse, but Paul Durand loves her to the end... which comes when she gives birth to the titular character. 

Again, I shouldn't be so flippant. Though I could see it coming, Madame Leprohon's description of Geneviève's death touches the heart.

Believing that his infant son is in need of a mother, Paul marries spinster Eulalie Messier, a plain-featured woman of good character, who had been generally recognized as Alonville's youngest spinster. His new bride loves and cares for the infant Armand Durand as her own, and Paul comes to love her as a result. Eulalie wasn't so old an old maid that she couldn't provide her husband with another son. They name him Paul, after his father.

And then, she dies.


I fear I've made Armand Durand seem gothic, when it is really a mélange of melodrama and literary realism. Its depictions of French Canadian traditions and society, which Mary Jane Edwards suggests is the reason behind Madame Leprohon's popularity, was just one element that kept me reading.

With Eulalie's death, focus shifts to the two Durand boys and their schooling at "the old Montreal College." Armand, the more retiring of the two, is the intellectual. Paul, though younger, is both literally and figuratively the bigger brother. He has confidence and brash. Poor Armand, so pretty and slight, becomes a target of his fellow classmates. "Miss Armand," as he's called, is bullied to a point at which he lashes out, bloodying the brute Rodolphe Belfond, after which the two become fast friends.

As the title suggests, Armand comes to take the place of the main character. Paul fis begins to fade with the end of their schooldays, returning to Alonville to help run the family farm. Armand remains in Montreal, working for a lawyer, with the goal of becoming one himself. It all makes sense, and works well until jealousy rears its ugly head. On visits to Montreal, Paul feels like a country bumpkin, and comes to resent the money their father sends to help support Armand. He begins a campaign of lies, implying that the funds are wasted on drink and dandyism. The scheming reaches its apex when Paul Durand pere lies in his deathbed as Paul fis intercepts letters addressed to his older brother. The upshot is that Armand Durand is disinherited.   

Madame Leprohon's greatest challenge in writing this novel must surely have had to do with events following the father's death. Armand marries Delima Laurin, his landlady's niece. Written this way, the decision seems so rash, and yet this reader understood the proposal of marriage and its timing. Sadly, Armand and Delima soon prove themselves ill-suited. 

I'll write no more for fear of spoiling things... and because I'm hoping you'll read it.

I found Armand Durand to be one the finest Canadian novels of the nineteenth-century.

Am I wrong?

Was something gained in translation?

* All quotes come from Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon's original text.  

Object: A fragile volume printed on thin paper, bound in embossed scarlet boards, my copy once belonged to the Bibliotheque de Chénéville. It was purchased earlier this year from a Gatineau bookseller. Price: C$19.41. I see no evidence that it was a discard. Should I be concerned?

Access: Armand Durand first appeared as a serial on 1 October 1868 in the Montreal Daily News. That same year, the novel was published in book form by John Lovell. That edition can be read — gratis — through this link at the Internet Archive.

The novel is in print today, with introduction by Loraine McMullen and Elizabeth Waterston, as part of Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series. It can be ordered here, thorough the press.

Pay no heed to print on demand vultures. Take it from a Montrealer, this isn't Quebec:


The Tecumseh edition aside, I see no copies of Armand Durand — English or French —listed for sale online.

As might be expected, this once-popular novel has come to be the stuff of academe. The only copy I see in a public library can be found in Toronto.

24 June 2017

Pour la fête de St-Jean-Baptiste, 1858



Montreal's Crystal Palace as it was in preparation of the 1874 fête St-Jean-Baptiste,  sixteen years after this verse was composed by lawyer L.J.C. Fiset (Joseph-Cyprien Fiset, 1825-1898).The version here is found in Les fleurs de la poésie canadienne (Montreal: Beauchemin & Valois, 1869).

Bonne fête!
LES VOIX DU PASSÉ
(Pour la fête de St-Jean-Baptiste) 
C'est la fête du peuple, il la veut grande et fière!
La nature sourit à sa noble bannière;
          Le soleil annonce un beau jour!
Le Tout-Puissant exauce et la vierge qui prie
Et les bons citoyens offrant à la patrie
          L'humble tribut de leur amour. 
Que ne puis-je, en son nom, fixant tes destinées,
O Canada Français, t'annoncer des années
          De gloire et de félicité!
Que ne puisse, de Dieu l'élu comme Moïse,
Mourir en signalant une terre promise
          A ta nationalité! 
Mais les temps ne sont plus où de divins oracles,
Aux peuples dévoyés, par d'éclatants miracles
          Indiquaient un chemin tracé:
Aveugles, pour guider nos pas dans la nuit noire,
Ecoutons, saisissant le fil de notre histoire,
          Ecoutons les voix du passé....  
II 
—"Peaux blanches, abordez sans crainte ce rivage,
"Oubliez parmi nous les périls du voyage
          "À travers le grand lac salé;
"Nous vous offrons nos bois, nos fleuves, nos montagnes
" Et l'épi de maïs cueilli par nos compagnes
          "Aux dents de perle, au teint hâlé. 
"Partagez avec nous! Dans nos vastes domaines,
"Le castor vit en paix avec les douces rennes
          "Qui viennent boire à son étang;
"L'esprit de feu qui brille au-dessus de nos têtes,
"En chef hospitalier, convie aux mêmes fêtes
          "Le guerrier rouge et l'homme blanc. 
"Soyez les bienvenus! mais quand nos solitudes
"Se rempliront du bruit d'étranges multitudes
          "Qui sur vos pas vont accourir,
"Laissez à nos enfants les signes de leur race,
"Leur vie errante et libre et leur pays de chasse,
          "Nos os et notre souvenir!"... 
III 
Des siècles expirés franchissant les ténèbres,
Race éteinte, pourquoi, sur des tons si funèbres,
          Viens-tu jeter dans nos festins,
Comme un reproche amer, l'hymne de l'espérance
Où, jadis, saluant l'étendard de la France,
          Tu croyais charmer les destins? 
Viens-tu nous annoncer que l'espoir n'est qu'un rêve,
Que tout change ici-bas sans retour et sans trêve,
          Que tout sentier mène au néant?
Qu'avec Tyr et Sydon, Babylone et Palmyre,
Des peuples, des héros, grands noms que l'on admire,
          Nul n'échappe au gouffre béant? 
Que semblable au torrent de la marée avide,
Des enfants d'Albion l'invasion rapide
          Nous fera sentir ses rigueurs?
Que nos fils parleront une langue étrangère,
Que les traditions apprises de leur mère
          Ne feront plus battre leurs cœurs? 
Ah! cesse de troubler nos fêtes patronales!
D'un plus noble avenir nos brillantes annales
          Offrent des gages glorieux.
Silence!... un chant plus doux module à notre oreille
Les refrains endormis que ce beau jour réveille.
          Ecoutons la voix des aïeux! 
IV 
"Quand au sommet d'un mont stérile,
"Le royal habitant des airs,
"Loin des sentiers de l'univers
"A su se choisir un asile,
"Ce n'est pas que des aquilons
"Le cortège ait pour lui des charmes;
"Mais il ressent moins d'alarmes
"Pour l'avenir de ses aiglons. 
"Tel, de l'heureuse Normandie
"Quittant la rive en soupirant,
"Aux bords lointains du Saint-Laurent
"Champlain fonde une autre patrie.
"Ce n'est pas l'exil de la Cour
"Qui le pousse vers cette plage;
"Non, son cœur y voit l'héritage
"Des Français qui viendront un jour! 
"Ainsi commença l'épopée
"Qu'au prix de son sang généreux
"La France grava dans ces lieux
"Avec la hache, avec l'épée;
"Ce fut une œuvre de géant!
"Qui nous rendra nos jours de gloire?
"Pourquoi faut-il que la victoire
"Nous ait trahis au dernier chant! 
"D'Israël le bras tutélaire
"Succombe aux coups de Dalila;
"Montcalm que, seul, Wolfe égala,
"Cède à la fortune arbitraire!
"Mourons! pour la dernière fois
"Sur nos drapeaux a lui l'aurore.
"Vivons! si Dieu nous laisse encore
"L'honneur, notre langue et nos lois! 
"Dépôt sacré, pour ta défense,
"Nos fils, quand nous ne serons plus,
"S'armeront des mâles vertus,
"Seuls dons que nous laisse la France!
"Mais si par le sort envieux
"Leur âme, aux faux dieux asservie,
"Sur leurs autels te sacrifie,"
"Viens, viens nous retrouver aux cieux!" 
Vos vœux s'accompliront: dormez, ombres chéries,
Dormez; nous le jurons par l'immortel Cartier!
Ce dépôt illustré par vos mains aguerries,
Gardé par notre amour depuis un siècle entier,
Cet auguste héritage, aujourd'hui que nous sommes
Eprouvés par la lutte, un demi-million d'hommes,
          Qui songe à le sacrifier? 
Le trahir? nous! comment? par peur? comme le lâche
Tout couvert de mépris justement prodigué!
Comme le serf obscur qui, courbé sur sa tâche,
Se plie au joug honteux de père en fils légué!
Par un sordide espoir? comme le mercenaire
Qui livrerait son Dieu pour un hideux salaire!...
          Mais nous étions à Châteauguay! 
Nous n'étions que trois cents à notre Thermopyle:
Pour défendre nos droits, nous serions trois cent mille
          Invoquant la foi des traités;
Et votre sang soudain, s'allumant dans nos veines,
Déroberait encore aux Parques inhumaines
          Nos immuables libertés! 
Tels, des rochers rivaux que la discorde anime,
Unissent leurs efforts pour soustraire à l'abime
          Les débris de leur seul vaisseau:
Les torts sont oubliés, le péril les efface;
De leurs divisions s'évanouit la trace,
          Comme celles des vents sur l'eau. 
Ainsi puisse Albion sur l'océan du monde,
Bénissant un accord si fécond en bienfaits,
Aux splendides couleurs de la reine de l'onde
Allier pour toujours le pavillon français;
Et puissent dans nos champs qu'un même fleuve arrosa,
L'érable et le chardon, et le trèfle et la rose,
          Croître unis et fleurir en paix!
Related posts:

25 July 2016

Bad News for Modern Man



The Cashier [Alexandre Chenevert]
Gabrielle Roy [trans. Harry Binsse]
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1955

I wonder how much sleep Gabrielle Roy lost over this novel. It was conceived as the follow-up to Bonheur d'occassion, her bestselling debut, but ended up being published third. The author struggled with it for years, only to be awarded with weak sales. Criticism tended to be positive, save in Quebec where she received some of the most merciless reviews of her career.

How appropriate then that Alexandre ChenevertThe Cashier, in translation – opens on the title character suffering a bout of insomnia. He worries about recent acts of terrorism, tensions in the Middle East, the Chinese, the Russians, weapons of mass destruction, and the flood of cheap Asian imports. Just the other day, Alexandre read an alarming article that warned the planet is warming.

Roy's novel was completed in 1953 and is set six years earlier.

The author loved Alexandre Chenevert, even if readers did not. Truth be told, he's not the most attractive figure. Sour, dour, short, balding and skeletal, he stands slightly stooped at his wicket in Branch J of the Savings Bank of the City and Island of Montreal. The suits he wears have seen better days.

Alexandre's fight for sleep has been going on for years. The medicine cabinet he shares with his wife Eugénie holds something that might help. Alexandre bought it, but can't bring himself to take it: "But were he to at last savor sleep, how could he do without it afterward? The drug that conferred this boon he would long for, no matter what the price, and he would lack the will to give it up." Besides, the medication will only muddle his mind; it would only be a matter of time before he would make a mistake.

Alexandre forgoes the pills, and yet makes an error in doling out an extra hundred dollars to a client the very next workday. Lack of sleep, you understand. This, not the deaths of two infant daughters, is the crise that disrupts his life. He consults his branch manager's doctor, a fine fellow named Hudon, who advises Alexandre to not think so much. "You let things weigh too much on your mind. For heaven's sake... you carry the whole world on your shoulders!"

And yet, even when giving his diagnosis, Hudon recognizes something of himself in Alexandre. Exhausted by the steady stream of patients required to maintain his lifestyle, the doctor considers letting some go. But which to cast off? They've come to rely on him. A good man, Hudon can't help but worry about their wellbeing, as his patient is subsumed on a streetcar by calls for his help from Friendless Youth, the Salvation Army and the Jewish Federation of Charities:


Are you, Alexandre? Are you?.

Roy's bank teller is a man of modest means who must deal with a terrible inheritance:
Modern man was the heir to such a mountain of knowledge. Even had he limited his curiosity to that which was published in his own day, he could never have succeeded in absorbing it all. And where did truth lie in all this mass of writing? Alexandre lived in the age of propaganda.
The Cashier was never suppressed, nor is it forgotten, but it was ignored by me. I found my copy, a first edition, in the summer of 1985 at a bookstore on St-Laurent, a street on which Alexandre Chenevert walks. I'd been meaning to read it for three decades, taking care to ship the book in moves from Montreal to Vancouver, Vancouver to Toronto, Toronto to Vancouver, Vancouver to Ottawa and Ottawa to St Marys. I was twenty-two when I bought it. I'm fifty-three today, one year older than Alexandre Chenevert.

At twenty-two, under Mulroney, Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev, the world weighed heavy.

It's weighing heavier this summer.

I'll never be able to absorb it all.

A Bonus:

The Gazette, 15 October 1955
Object: An attractive hardcover in green boards. Sadly, the jacket illustration is uncredited. My copy set me back $5.00... but remember, those are 1985 dollars.


Access: Binsse's translation was commissioned by Harcourt, Brace, its American publisher. The Cashier was also published in the United Kingdom by Heinemann (above). In 1963, the novel followed Brian Moore's Judith Hearne as the fortieth title in the New Canadian Library. Miraculously, it survives as part of the series today.

The original French was first published in 1954 by Beauchemin. That same year, it appeared from Parisian publisher Flammarion as Alexandre Chenevert, cassier. It remains in print to this day. The current edition, published by Boreal, follows the 'nineties NCL design in using Adrien Hébert's Rue St-Denis, 1927 on its cover. A bit off for a novel that takes place two decades later, but I like the painting so much that I don't care.


Nearly all of our university libraries hold French or English-language, often both, while our public libraries generally fail. editions are common in our university

The novel was published in German as Gott geht weiter als wir Menschen (Munich: List, 1956), which Google translates as God Goes Further Than We Humans.

I've never seen a copy.

Related post:

24 November 2014

The Dreams That Things Are Made Of



Farewell My Dreams [La fin des songes]
Robert Élie [trans. Irene Coffin]
Toronto: Ryerson, 1954 

Farewell My Dreams isn't a title I would've used; "The End of Dreams", the most literal translation, works just fine. No wispy romance, this debut novel is one of the most depressing and rewarding books I've read this year – and there are just thirty-seven more days to go.

Friends in youth, Marcel Larocque and Bernard Guerin enter middle-age connected only through respective marriages to sisters Jeanne and Nicole. No one is happy. Pudgy Marcel, a Montreal journalist, stares too long at his wife's youngest sister and dreams of past infatuations. Privileged Bernard, a lazy lawyer, wanders aimlessly, half-hoping that something will interest. When offered a seat in Quebec City, he goes through the motions, but stops in his tracks at the sign of the first obstacle. Meanwhile, the wives suffer.

Though the plot suggests otherwise, this is much more than a novel of mid-life crises. Démon de midi takes on new meaning as Marcel's mental illness, so very subtle in the early pages, comes to dominate his actions.

Six decades after first publication, La fin des songes remains in print; not so the English-language translation. I doubt this has anything to do with Irene Coffin, though her work is clumsy and talents ill-suited. The language is stilted, her dialogue peppered with words like "shall" and "forsooth".

Yes, forsooth.

Beaver Hall Hill is "Cote Beaver Hall" and Montreal's great commercial street appears variously as "Ste.-Catherine" and "Sainte-Catherine". The biggest gaff of all comes when the translator has Bernard announce that he is looking to be elected federally.

My advice? Read it in the original if you can. Read the translation if you can't. Either way, you'll be both depressed and rewarded.

A coincidence: Remember Douglas Sanderson's The Deadly Dames? Sure you do. That's the thriller in which a woman is killed by a streetcar rounding Peel and Ste-Catherine. Well, the very same corner features in La fin des songes:
He stopped a taxi which took him to the corner of Peel and Ste.-Catherine. The street-cars were making an infernal din and the crowd, as dense as at noon, flowed slowly. He landed in a tavern where smoke and bad lighting gave the beer drinkers a phantom-like appearance. It suited his mood well, but Bernard began to laugh. "I surely am not going to live in the atmosphere of detective stories."  
The critics rave: La fin des songes received the Prix David and has been described as the great novel of la Grande Noiceur. Reception of the English-language edition was enthusiastic – the exception being a critic I know only as "A.G.P.". Here he is in the 4 March 1955 edition of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph:
When the psychologically sound people must face a reality that continues to be fairly rugged and seek escape through the medium of fiction, to depress them with neurotic maunderings is to substitute a stone for nourishing bread.
The critic later provides these words of advice:
There is an abundance of material in French Canada for more cheerful and more constructive themes. Judged by the standards of Mr. Elie's [sic] literary school these may be less dramatic but, so far as I have been able to feel their collective pulse, the contemporary reading public, by a large majority, want to be amused and to laugh. At the very least, it would be interesting for him to provide this sort of escape by way of change of pace, if nothing more.
A.G.P. makes the mistake of identifying Bernard as "Bertrand". Pay him no mind.

Object: An attractive 213-page hardcover bound in pale blue cloth with burgundy print, my copy belonged to my father. The dust jacket sells other Ryerson novels by Ada Pierce Chambers, Will R. Bird, Gaie Taylor and E.M. Granger Bennett. I'm a proud owner of the Bird title – bought for a buck last year in London.

(Cliquez pour agrandir)
Access: John Glassco once stole a copy of the first edition from the Royal Edward Laurentian Hospital; you'll find it with most of his other books at Queen's University. A total of twenty-three Canadian libraries have copies of the Coffin translation.

Though uncommon. decent copies of the Ryerson edition begin at under ten dollars. One copy – and only one copy – of the American edition, published in 1955 by New York's short-lived Bouregy & Curl, is on offer for US$14,


La fin des songs is currently available from Bibliothèque Québécoise, For some reason, I prefer Fides' earlier  Bibliothèque Canadienne-Français edition, even though the building on the cover does not appear in the novel. I purchased mine through the mail from a Montreal bookseller who claimed it was signed by Élie.

It wasn't… and the condition was much worse than described.

23 August 2014

The Angels of Mons at 100


The Angels of Mons, R. Crowhurst, c.1920
This day marks the centenary of perhaps the most extraordinary event in the Great War. The setting was Mons, Belgium, site of the first major struggle between British and German forces. The latter outnumbered the former by a factor of two to one, yet all the King's men proved victorious. They did so with the aid of angels. Or were they veterans of the Battle of Agincourt called down from heaven? Did St George lead the charge? Joan of Arc? Maybe it was the archangel Michael.


Gothic master Arthur Machen argued against all of the above, citing his supernatural fantasy "The Bowmen", not divine intervention, as the source the legend. His convincing and highly entertaining Introduction to The Angels of Mons: The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War (1915) should have prevented things like this piece of reportage from the 10 August 1915 Globe:


Got that? An unnamed man received a letter from his unidentified sister recounting a conversation with a certain Miss M, who had told the man's sister that an undisclosed friend told her about seeing angels. Later, another anonymous man told her that he too had seen angels.

Now, before you and Jan Harold Brunvand discount this story, I point out that the man who received the letter was "one of the most prominent citizens in Toronto", and that Miss M. was "daughter of the canon". The canon? Which canon? Why, Reverend Canon M., of course.

Lest you doubt an anonymous man's word about something written to his sister by a woman who was told something by someone and someone else, allow me to present this article about an unnamed preacher, who on alluded to the words of an unidentified soldier as reported by an unknown nurse. Ye of little faith are advised to consider that this featured in a sermon that was delivered somewhere at some point:

The Globe, 11 April 1916
A year and a half later, on 2 October 1917, the newspaper reported on another sermon. This time the clergyman was named:


Reverend Gustave Adolf Kuhring was several thousand of kilometres from the scene of battle, so relied on his powers of oratory in delivering a chilling account of the British advance as led by St George, his horsemen and his archers:
A German officer later taken prisoner asked:—
       "Who were those men with the bows and arrows? We tried to get their leader, the one on the white horse, but couldn't hit him."
       "It is sworn by numerous witnesses," said Mr. Kuhring, "that when the British came to examine the bodies of the dead, by far the larger number of them had no wounds on their bodies."
A century later, we're still looking for those testimonies, and that of the "nurse who had been brought into contact with one of the soldiers from the battle [sic] of Mons." In their absence, I recommend "The Angel of Mons" by Ethel Ursula Foran.

The Battle of Mons, 23 August 1914
Like Rev Kuhring, Montreal poet Ethel Ursula Foran was a believer; unlike Rev Kuhring, her faith was not blind. "The Angel of Mons" is the longest poems in her debut collection, Poems: A Few Blossoms from the Garden of My Dreams (Beauchemin, 1922). A piece of juvenilia, the date of composition is unknown. The poet was thirteen years old on the day of the battle.

THE ANGEL OF MONS
(A legend of the Great War of 1914-1918.
The Great War that Napoleon in exile foretold
O'er the nations of Europe like a tidal-wave roll'd—
Crumbling Crowns into dust, snapping Sceptres in twain,
Shaking Thrones to earth to ne'er rise again,
Scattering armies of might, burning humbler homes,
Laying low in the dust spires, temples and domes,
Bringing death and grim ruin in its terrible wake
Until half of all Europe was a blood-crimsoned lake.
The fires of destruction blazed fierce on each shore,
All sounds were drowned out in the thundering roar
Of cannon, of rifle, of bomb and of shell,
Turning heavenly peace into furious hell.
While Death in all forms stalked over the world,
And its blood-stained banners were fiercely unfurled.
There were terrors untold in the Teutons' advance
Which rallied the forces of Britain and France.
It was thus in the midst of that world-shaking strife,
A struggle intense to save Liberty's life,
That the darkness of night was lit into a glow,
In the heavens above, in the valleys below,
When the flashing of shells, as they rushed through the sky,
To the thundering guns of the trench made reply,
When the "curtain of fire" cast its blaze o'er the plain,
And the soil was deep-drenched with torrents of rain,
When the signals of death rushed over the sky
And the hovering aeros inter circled on high,
When each trench was at once a shelter and tomb,
As the spirits of life and death met in the gloom,
Whence eager eyes watched for a move or a sign
To reveal the fate of their much-harassed line;
The sentinels on duty gazed anxious afar
For a hint of the fight in the trenches of war.
All through the long night as the Germans advance,
Sharp vigils are kept by both Britain and France.
Not a man at the front has a moment's repose.
No watcher dare sleep though his aching eyes close.
'Twas thus, 'midst the shreaks of a furious night,
A vision appeared over Mons' naming height, —
A something that seem'd supernatural to all —
A something that thousands of soldiers recall.
Was it a spirit of Hope or a spirit of Doom
That arose on their sight amidst stygean gloom?
What is it that the watcher with night-glass there cons?
They call it, who saw it, "The Angel of Mons." 
The soldiers of France, looking out of the dark,
Thought they saw on the hills Saint Joan of Arc,
Clad in armour of silver, with a sabre of gold,
Advancing to lead them as she did of old
 They claimed that the vision so wondrous to see
Was a heavenly sign of a grand victory;
And strong grew each heart that was growing faint,
As they thought they were fighting 'neath the eye of their Saint 
The soldiers of Britain saw the vision as well;
That wonderful tale these brave fellows tell
Just as ghost-stories are told with lowering breath,
For they feared such a vision far more than death.
Then one whispered the word, in a moment of awe,
It was England's Saint George that the whole army saw.
The courage at once revived in each breast,
Of victory's wave they were now on the crest —
They declared that the War was now rightly begun —
And would end with the crush of the barbaric Hun. 
The Belgians beheld Saint Michael the Great
In the vision of Mons, like a signal of Fate,
As he drove the dark legions from Heaven above.
So his power and his justice again he will prove
By leading the ranks that are fighting for Right.
By commanding once more against soldiers of Might.
It could not be other than the Archangel there
That appeared like a spectre, in the sulphurous air;
His invincible sword he unsheathes as of yore,
He will fight for God as he once fought before,
And the hosts of dark evil will again be hurl'd
From the face of the earth clear out of the world:
Such the Belgians thought was that vision so bright
That appeared above Mons in the depths of the night.
Be Michael, or George or Joan the Saint
That appeared over Mons amidst glimmering faint,
Like a spectre let loose from the region of ghosts,
Sent to cheer on to glory fair Liberty's hosts,
The Angel of Mons was a harbinger true
Of the victory the Allies eventually knew.
It may be a legend, or it may be a fact —
With the spirits of Power it may be a pact —
Or it may be a phantom of some horrible dream —
Or it may be of God a forerunning gleam;
But the Angel of Mons was the polar star
Of many a hero in that terrible war. 
It is said that soldiers, like sailors, are all
Superstitious and fear the supernatural;
They see spirits in trees and ghosts on the waves,
The dead in shrouds coming out of their graves,
They shudder to think of the spirits that walk,
And the beasts that like human beings oft talk.
It is likely that all the things that they dread —
Be they the living or be they the dead —
Arose to their fancy as on Mons' grim height
They witnessed the vision upon that dread night.
But one thing is certain and all question defies,
That Angel brought victory to the Allies.

01 July 2014

Patriotic Verse from the Garden of a Girl's Dreams



For this day, the 147th anniversary of the birth of the Dominion of Canada, patriotic verse by the ever-charming Ethel Ursula Foran. A piece of juvenilia, it leads off Poems: A Few Blossoms from the Garden of My Dreams, her debut collection of "immature verses", published in 1922 by Librarie Beauchemin. "With all their imperfections they must remain just as they were composed", Miss Foran writes in the Preface. In accordance with her wishes, the poem is presented here with typos and misspellings intact.
CANADA 
I love this fair Dominion; my natvie land, all hail!
Its wondrous proportions are on the grandest scale;
Its endless virgin forests, its mighty inland seas,
Its Rockies and its Selkirks, like Alps and Pyranees;
Its vast expanse of prairies, where vision seeks in vain
The limits of the billowy fields of undulating grain;
Its rivers with their volumes, in their majestic sweep,
Through miles of fertile country down to Atlantic's deep;
Its cascades and the thunders of Niagara's giant fall;
The echoes of its vastness that from sea to mountains call;
Its Liberties as precious as the features that we trace,
Its blending of all elements of province, creed and race;
Its every noble aspect that God has pronounced "good,"
'Tis a marvellous mosaic of Canadian nationhood.
Yes, I love this fair Dominion, the grandest land on earth,
'Tis the land of a bright future, and the dear land of my birth.

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02 July 2013

Of Old Books and (possibly) Mummy Paper



Delightfully charming, unconventionally sentimental schoolgirl verse from Ethel Ursula Foran, whose "New Year's Day" has proven to be by far the most popular poem posted on this blog. Here a very young Miss Foran turns her attention towards favourite things material:


The dead, the embalmed, the mausoleumed... I'm certain that this is the first verse I've read to feature the word "sarcophagi".
            You chat and live with dead men of thought
            As you sit and pursue the words they wrought.
            They are peaceful companions that never betray,
            Nor dispute, nor quarrel, for silent are they.
'Tis lovely, though one cannot escape the sad thought that Miss Foran is herself now a peaceful companion.

What I find most intriguing comes in the poet likening aging books to "Egyptian mummies of old." Might this be a clever allusion to the oft-repeated myth – or is it? – that linen wrappings of mummies were used by nineteenth-century New England papermakers?

I suppose we'll never know.

Never mind.

As we nurse our respective Dominion Day hangovers, I present the six oldest Canadian books in my collection.

The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier, 1870

Purchased four years ago – US$8.00 – at an antique store in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. At my aunt's 88th birthday dinner the previous evening I'd bragged that only one Canadian politician had ever been assassinated: McGee. I am a joy at parties. No invitations declined.

Endymion
The Right Hon. Earl of Beaconsfield
Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 1880

Not by a Canadian, but it was published in Canada, I picked up Endymion three years ago for $1.99 at our local Salvation Army Thrift Store. The Dawson Brothers – Samuel and William – were once Montreal's preeminent publishers and booksellers; I came along a century later. A bookish lad raised in the oldish suburb of Beaconsfield, I knew Benjamin Disraeli's name before those of Messrs Wilson and Heath.

Tecumseh: A Drama
Charles Mair
Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1883

A first edition of the Confederation Poet's epic about the great man, this was a gift from a friend who had rescued it from a box of rejected donations to the McGill Library Book Sale. Most generous, I think you'll agree.

A Popular History of the Dominion of Canada
Rev. William H. Withrow, D.D. F.R.S.C.
Toronto: William Briggs, 1885

How popular? Well, my copy ranks amongst the sixth thousand. Purchased in 2000 for forty dollars – I paid too much. Though I've never taken so much as a glance beyond the title page, I'll bet that it's a more interesting work than Neville Trueman: Pioneer Preacher, Rev Withrow's preachy War of 1812 novel.

The Other Side of the "Story"
[John King]
Toronto: James Murray, 1886

A new acquisition, found just last week at a bookstall in London, Ontario. Storm clouds were gathering. In his "INTRODUCTORY", Mr King describes this publication as a "brochure", but at 150 bound pages I'm going to say it's a book. I've not yet had a chance to properly investigate its contents, so know only that it is a critique of John Charles Dent's The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1885). Price: 50¢.

Sam Slick, The Clockmaker
Thomas Chandler Haliburton
New York: John B. Alden, 1887

Purchased thirteen years ago for US$8.00 from a Yankee bookseller, this is surely the skinniest edition of the CanLit classic. Thin, pulpy and grey/brown in colour, the paper is typical of the publish and crumble era. I can write, with great certainty, that no mummies were destroyed in it's making.

01 January 2012

Immature Verse for a New Year



Twenty-two lines of celebration from Poems (Beauchemin, 1922), the first volume by young Ethel Ursula Foran (1900-1988). The daughter of True Witness editor Joseph Kearney Foran, himself a poet, she subtitled her collection of "immature verses" A Few Blossoms from the Garden of My Dreams.


Related posts:

24 June 2011

Burpee's Bad 'St. John the Baptist': Truly Criminal



François-Réal Angers was a truly remarkable man. A lawyer, a gentleman of letters and a strong, articulate voice against slavery in the Republic to the south, he gave light to pre-Confederation Canada. Angers' Les révélations du crime ou Cambray et ses complices; chroniques canadiennes de 1834 (Fréchette, 1837), a fictional account of an outfit known as the Cambers Gang, might just be the first French Canadian novel. Or is it the country's first true crime book? Perhaps it's a nineteenth-century In Cold Blood. I don't know. I've never seen a copy, nor have I looked over the 1867 translation, The Canadian Brigands; an Intensely Exciting Story of Crime in Quebec, Thirty Years Ago!, which is held only by McGill and the Toronto Public Library. Apparently, it more than lives up to its title.


Something for la fête de la St-Jean, "À Saint Jean-Baptiste" is one of Angers' few poems. The above, attributed incorrectly to"F. S. Angers", is drawn from Nouvelle lyre canadienne, published in 1895 by Beauchemin. Respectable verse of devotion, it becomes entirely offensive in Lawrence J. Burpee's incredibly inept 1909 translation.


Songs of French Canada
Lawrence J. Burpee, ed.
Toronto: Musson, 1909

Bonne fête à tout le monde!

07 July 2009

Chibougamau Calling



Just returned from a week-long trip to the mining town of Chibougamau. With a population of just over 7,000, it's considered the largest community in the vast Nord-du-Québec (839,000 square kilometres), yet barely registers in our literature. As far as I know, it has spawned no writers of note. I've yet to come across a work of fiction that is set in the town. That said, Chibougamou sometimes receives fleeting mention: in Yves Beauchemin's Le matou, Lise Tremblay's La danse juive and 'Maîtresse des hautes œuvres' by Anne Dandurand. This passage, from The Calling by that 'well-known and well-regarded' novelist Inger Ash Wolfe, is typical:
It had taken him a day and a half to drive through Quebec, keeping to the 117 and the 113 through Chibougamau until the highway brought him back down toward the St. Lawrence.
I suppose the biggest connection the town has with the world of books is as birthplace of former Chapters president and CEO Larry Stevenson. Sadly, there are no bookstores in Chibougamau. The shortest route from the town to the nearest Chapters store – a nine hour journey of 692 kilometres – is below.