A Forgotten Mystery; a Shattered Dream

The Twenty-First Burr
Victor Lauriston
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922
292 pages

Victor Lauriston was born William Edward Park on 16 October 1881 in the hamlet of Fletcher, not far from Chatham, Ontario. As an adult, he changed his name because he thought Park too plain for a writer. This was in 1918, sometime between the sixth and seventh rewrite of The Twenty-First Burr.

The Twenty-first Burr is a mystery novel populated in part by characters with assumed names and hidden identities. It begins with twenty-year-old Laura Winright's rushed return to North America after two years touring Europe. I've read enough old novels to know that such a young lady would not have been been permitted to go off alone to the Old World. That Laura did so – and in the midst the Great War – is a mystery left unexplained and unexplored.

"Was she a spy?" asks my wife.

Good question.

Our heroine's haste has everything to do with a telegram sent by her father, Detroit department store baron Adam Winright. Laura never lived in the Motor City, rather she was raised at the family mansion, Castle Sunset, at Maitland Port (read: Goderich, Ontario) on the shore of Lake Huron. 

Laura's return takes nearly everyone by surprise, most of all George Annisford, her betrothed. Not only does he fail to meet her ship as it docks in New York, he scolds her in a wordy telegram:

Oh, see here, chick! You've come down on us like the wolf on the fold. We haven't time to send out for crackers and cheese. Of course your father is just fine and dandy. Why shouldn't he be?

But Adam Winright is not fine and dandy. By the time Laura reaches Maitland Port, her father is dead.

Laura is convinced he was murdered, but brother Tom, her lone sibling, isn't convinced. What's certain is that Adam Winright was being blackmailed by a man signing himself "Andrew Webster." Brother Tom sends for Detroit private detective Harry Burnville to get to the bottom of it all.

Going further into the story risks doing the mystery a disservice, but only because plot is not its strong point. What makes The Twenty-First Burr worth reading are its characters. George, goodnatured and ever-positive, hides a fragile heart. Mrs MacTurk, the Winright's Scotch housekeeper, is a sour old bird who obsesses over apparitions and keeps a logbook of her sightings. My favourite character is the widow Villard, who sniffs in contempt at the memory of a young actress who it turns out... Ah, but that would be spoiling things.

Contemporary reviews invariably focus on Glory Adair, a nurse and amateur sleuth who relies on palmistry in bettering Burnville, her professional rival .

The Twenty-First Burr certainly has its flaws. Any speculation that Laura may have been a spy is quickly put to rest by her forgetfulness, which serves no purpose other than to slow the plot. This reader was amused by the amount time lost to rail travel, all of which could have been avoided if only Lauriston hadn't chosen to have the principle players live so far apart.

No doubt some weaknesses have to do with all those drafts. According to the author, the first was written in 1905, nine years before fighting broke out in Europe. The conflict is rarely mentioned, and then only in passing; it's effect on the home front is nonexistent. This reader counted four able-bodied young men, not one of whom is fighting overseas. And then we have the conclusion, in which Glory, who solves Adam Winright's murder, shares observations and clues not found elsewhere in the novel.

The Twenty-first Burr is anything but a fair-play mystery, but I don't hold a grudge. The characters are captivating and the locations are so uncommon as to be interesting. Mystery lovers living in Grimsby will be flattered by descriptions of their town as it was one hundred years ago: "the stone road, the fine country homes, the peach orchards, rank on rank of green trees orderly as soldiers on parade."

The worst thing about The Twenty-First Burr is that it shows such promise, yet was Lauriston's only mystery. McClelland & Stewart used the plates from George H. Doran's American edition. Neither publisher went back for a second printing.

Lauriston spent his royalties on buying those same plates. He hoped that they would one day be used in returning the novel to print. An author's fantasy, it ended in 1941 when they were sold for use in the war effort.

The Windsor Daily Star, 21 August 1941

The accompanying article – 'Chatham Writer's Dream Shattered After 19 Years' – begins:

Sale of 700 pounds of lead and copper plates in New Britain, Connecticut, recently, put an end to a dream that has lived in the persevering mind of Victor Lauriston, Chatham novelist, ever since he sold his first book 19 years ago. He had hoped sometime to use the plates for a reprint of the book, "The Twenty First Burr," [sic] a detective story.
     Metal in the plates will be melted to help win the war. Owing to exchange regulations, proceeds of the sale will go to pay a 16 years' storage bill. 

Lauriston lived well into old age, dying two days after his ninety-second birthday, yet he wrote only one more novel. A roman à clef titled Inglorious Milton, according to the Border Cities Star (20 October 1934), it "set every tongue in Chatham wagging." Lauriston's papers hold the manuscript, along with numerous letters of rejection. The novel was finally published by the Tiny Tree Club, a branch (sorry) of Chatham's literary society. I've not read it, but should. The Border City Star article compares it to Joyce's Ulysses.

I can only assume society members are portrayed in a flattering light.

Object: Light brown boards with black impressing. The jacket illustration is by Margaret Freeman. My copy once belonged to a woman named Olive Shanks.

At the time of the 1921 census, Miss Shanks, then age 29, lived with her parents (John and Hattie) and siblings (Bessie and Mark) at 146 Park Street, Chatham, Ontario.

146 Park Street, Chatham, Ontario
November 2020

In 2019, her copy ended up in my home, having been purchased from bookseller David Mason. Price: $90.00.  

Access: The Twenty-First Burr was published by Doran in the United States and in Canada by McClelland & Stewart. Neither edition enjoyed a second printing. As of this writing, two copies are listed for sale online, both from London booksellers: London, Ontario's Attic Books offers a jacketless copy of the Doran edition at US$35.00; London, England's Any Amount of Books is asking £30.00 for its jacketless Doran. The McClelland and Stewart edition is nowhere in sight. 

Sixteen of our academic libraries hold copies of one edition or the other, as does Library and Archives Canada.

The Twenty-First Burr can be read online here thanks to the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive.