As He Lay Dying

The Jameson Girls
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1956
240 pages

King Jameson is dying and his daughters have gathered for the occasion. Isobel has flown in from New York, where she lives with third husband Eric. Mildred too lives in New York, but with her first husband. She arrived by train.

Isobel and Mildred don't talk.

Fanny, the eldest sister, didn't have travel at all; she lives at the family home with Lily, the fourth and youngest Jameson girl. Meanwhile, King lies semi-coherent in an upstairs bedroom facing framed photographs of his two dead wives.

Hawkrest is a grand house located on a wooded crag overlooking the Niagara River. King bought it not long after the Great War, then moved his family from New York. Before the war, the Jamesons had lived in Chicago, in which King's British immigrant parents had settled.

Hawkrest was ideal for King's burgeoning business as a rumrunner. As the years passed, he began pretending that the house had been in the family for generations. King would point to its antique furnishings, collected by the former owner, describing them as objects ancestral.

The true Jameson family history is slowly revealed. The most solacious details belong to King and his second wife, though Isabel and her many marriages provide competition. In stark contrast, Fanny, the eldest Jameson girl, settled into contented spinsterhood as a child. Mildred, the third Jameson girl, obsesses over marital fidelity, while Lily...

Well, what of Lily? The baby of the family, she's the daughter of King's sexy second wife Hazel, who died behind the wheel. Lily was in the passenger seat. She barely survived and hasn't been "right" since.

The Jameson Girls is backward looking, with the real drama existing only in memory. The reader has arrived too late, and so relies on fleeting references to past events. The present, lighter and more comical, takes place under a gathering cloud. It has two stars, the most recent being American Theodore Fairfield, who is summering in the mansion-cum-B&B across the road. A bigamist gold digger who presents himself as a son of Boston's well-to-do, he sets his sites first on Fanny, then quickly shifts to Lily. She's so pretty, so doll like, so innocent, so malleable, he's afraid he's falling in love.

The second star is  Mrs Pringle, who has taken offense in being referenced as "the maid" by King Jameson's night nurse. She is not "the maid," rather "a family friend" who just happens to have taken care of the house daily, for pay, these past thirty or so years. Fanny is so fearful the insulted, indignant Mrs Pringle will leave that she has taken over most housekeeping duties.

It's not all light, of course. Let's remember there is a man dying upstairs. Of this, Mrs Pringle is well aware:

In a burst of optimism on Saturday she had bought a black hat for the funeral: I hope I haven’t gone and wasted my good money, she thought as she ran water into the sink.

Like most Kirkus reviews, its take on The Jameson Girls (1 September 1956) is very short, yet somehow manages to give away too much. I'll share only the final sentence: "For women only, a more credible than charitable chronicle - and this prying, gossipping [sic], niggling world has its authenticity as well as human curiosity."

My interest in this quote relates to an ongoing discussion with friends regarding the "target audience," and how zeroing in on a specific reader, invariably the one most likely to purchase, can alienate others.

Canadian Forum, December 1956

Nelson, Foster and Scott's promotion was gender neutral. Would the Kirkus "For women only" have brought more sales?

Who knows?

What I can say for certain is that this man is all in on a prying, gossiping, niggling world that has authenticity and human curiosity.

You will be, too.

Not quite a bloomer: This passage, in which Fanny reacts to the revelation that sister Isobel, twice divorced, is having an affair, gives some idea of Jan Hilliard's talent:

The critics rave: For all my searching, I've yet to find an unfavourable review of any Jan Hilliard novel. Vancouver Sun critic Elmore Philpott champions The Jameson Girls in his 4 January 1954 review: "It is a witty, genial, sparking satire about the three daughters of the ex-king of the Niagara river rum runners [emphasis mine]."

Did he read it?

Object and Access: One of just two Nelson, Foster & Scott titles in my collection, the other being Jan Hilliard's A View of the Town (1954), The Jameson Girls is a solid hardcover with brown boards and uncredited jacket illustration. All evidence suggests that it was a split-run with Abelard-Schulman, printed and bound in England. Neither edition was reprinted.

There has never been another.

As I write, one copy of the Nelson, Foster & Scott edition is listed online at US$19.00.

In very good condition with dust jacket, it's a steal at twice the price.

Related posts:

A Crooked Cousin in a Country Cottage

A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic

Growing Up With Mother
Susanna Moodie's Bloomers

Gilbert Parker's Hollywood Ending

Being an addendum to last week's post on Gilbert Parker's The Money Master. 

Of the eighteen Gilbert Parker screen adaptations, The Money Master is the only one to be undertaken by the author himself. In his filmography, it follows closely behind Behold My Wife! (1920), a George Melford production based on the author's 1893 bestseller The Translation of a Savage.

That Behold My Wife! was Hollywood's second adaptation of the novel in seven years speaks to the author's popularity. A third adaptation followed.

But this post is about The Money Master... or not. The advertisement at the top of this post comes from an advert Paramount placed in the March 1921 edition of Motion Picture News.

Look for the asterisk.

cliquez pour agrandir

This was three months from release and still there'd been no decision as to the title. The film premiered on 26 June 1921 as A Wise Fool. Though it is preserved in the Library of Congress, I see no evidence that there has been a screening within living memory. What little I know of A Wise Fool comes through publicity shots and reviews, the former being surprisingly uncommon.

The image above, from the August 1921 edition of Exhibitors Herald, features Carmen Barbille (Alice Hollister) serenading her daughter Zoé (Ann Forrest), suggests one difference between A Wise Fool and its source; in the novel, Carmine last sees Zoé as a young girl.

Apologies for the the spoiler.

Anyone considering The Money Master as an autumn read is advised to skip the rest of this post as I'll be comparing the plots of novel and film.

The Money Maker concerns Jean Jacques Barbille, the fortunate heir to generations of wealth grown in rural Quebec. He takes some of those riches to Paris, where he is not recognized as the man of importance he believes himself to be. As noted in last week's review, his reception outside the French capitol meets expectations, though this is to do with capital (apologies, again). On his return voyage aboard the Antoine, Jean Jacques meets the beautiful Carmen Delores and her ne'er-do-well father. The two are fleeing Spain on account of papa Sebastian backing the losing side in Spain's recent civil conflict. The Antoine strikes a submerged iceberg off the shore of Gaspé. Jean Jacques is rescued by Carmen and the two marry.

Flash forward thirteen years. Jean Jacques lives at the family home, Manor Cartier in the parish of St. Saviour's, with Carmen and their little girl Zoé. A happy soul, his passion for business has come to consume and he is taking family life for granted.

No, that's unfair. Jean Jacques dotes on Zoé, who loves him so much.

But what of Carmen?

Mme Barbille has been sneaking around with master carpenter George Masson, whom M Barbille had hired to construct a flume. Once the project is completed, the lovers plan to flee the parish.

George and Carmen as imagined by illustrator André Castaigne.

Jean Jacques discovers his wife's infidelity and confronts George. He has the perfect opportunity to murder his wife's lover, but does not. 

I won't go into their exchange except to say that it is the very best part of the novel.

George jilts Carmen. Though Jean Jacques forgives his wife, she disappears, leaving her daughter behind.

We flash forward again, this time to Jean Jacques' fiftieth birthday, where he realizes that Zoé has fallen in love with Gerard Fynes:

He was English – that was a misfortune; he was an actor – that was a greater misfortune, for it suggested vagabondage of morals as well as of profession; and he was a Protestant, which was the greatest misfortune of all.

Faced with Jean Jacques' disproval, the two elope. It's now Zoé's turn to disappear. 

Jean Jacques goes into a complete tailspin. The modest growth of his inherited wealth is reversed. The decline is hastened by his thieving father-in-law, a dishonest cousin, and a fire that destroys his flour mill. Rather than declare bankruptcy or accept financial aid from the widowed Virginie Poucette, he allows creditors to move in. All Jean Jacques manages to save for himself is a bird cage that had belonged to Carmen and Zoé's pet canary. With nothing to anchor him to St Saviour's, Jean Jacques leaves for Montreal where – quite by chance – he encounters Carmen on her deathbed. In her last moments, they reconcile. Our hero then sets out for the Canadian west, where there had once been a sighting of Zoé and her husband.

Because this synopsis is taking far too long, I won't go into Jean Jacques' attempted murder of Carmen's last lover, and will instead cut to the discovery that he has a granddaughter. The Protestant actor father is dead, Zoé died shortly after childbirth, and the baby is now with a wealthy woman who'd been unable to conceive.

I won't go into their exchange except to say that it is the very worst part of the novel.

For reasons both unclear and unconvincing, Jean Jacques leaves his granddaughter, never to see her again. He marries Virginie Poucette and lives his remaining years on three hundred and twenty acres of land "near the Rockies" he'd bought for Zoé decades earlier. 

I realize that was long. In rushing through the ending I kept pace with the novel.

The comparison with A Wise Fool will be much shorter because I haven't seen it – who has? – and so rely on century-old reviews. The most detailed, found in the 3 June 1921 edition of Variety, suggests that the film followed the plot of the novel quite closely up to the point at which Jean Jacques loses his fortune. This includes a scene in which he destroys the guitar left behind by the absent Carmen.

 

James Kirkwood as Jean Jacques Barbille.

As in the novel, after losing his wife, his daughter, his livelihood, and his possessions, Jean Jacques becomes something of a wanderer, his only companion being the caged canary. 

Had Parker read McTeague?

The Variety reviewer was none too impressed, summing up all that follows in just two sentences:

 

In The Money Master, Jean Jacques comes upon Carmen in a hovel, not a nunnery. She dies within the hour. For all his years of searching, the desperate father never sees his daughter again. Zoé cannot return to him because she is dead. Her husband Gerald died a pauper. Their child is raised by a wealthy woman who refuses to let Jean Jacques so much as touch his granddaughter.

For the film, Parker cut the three deaths and the very existence of Zoé and Gerald's daughter. 

Would that we could see that film! I'm curious as to its depiction of life in rural Quebec, much praised in by American critics, and the character Virginie Poucette. Played by Californian Truly Shattuck, the Canadien isn't mentioned in so much as one review I've found.

Should be be concerned about Virginie?

Gilbert Parker knew what he was doing. As early as 1921, he recognized the Hollywood Ending.

I expect Virginie did just fine.

Related posts:

The Rise and Fall of a Peacock Philosopher
Behold the Translation of a Savage on Film!

The Rise and Fall of a Peacock Philosopher

The Money Master;
   Being the Curious History of Jean Jacques Barbille,

   His Labours, His Loves and His Ladies
Gilbert Parker

Toronto: Copp Clark, 1915
360 pages

I bought my first Gilbert Parker book at a library sale in the mid-eighties. By 1990, it was gone, though I have no idea where. My fault, of course. I'd paid it little attention because Parker himself wasn't paid much attention. His name had never once come up in university courses. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, then my bible, doesn't accord the man so much as one of its 1199 pages, despite popularity and critical acclaim (both now a century past).

I couldn't even remember which Parker I'd owned back then. What I did remember was an illustration and caption depicting a miserable man traveling to Quebec in the company of a beautiful woman who seemed intent on marriage. Imagine my surprise when in researching this recent read I came upon:

The image of the reluctant groom threw me because Parker depicts him as being extremely keen on marrying the woman in the funnel.

The fiancé, Jean Jacques Barbille, is heir to a fortune built over four generations. Having transformed these inherited riches into slightly greater riches, the Canadien has an idea to visit the land of his ancestors, where he expects to be recognized as a man of great importance. Paris disappoints, but folks in the nether regions appreciate his money and so accord deference. Satisfied, Jean Jacques sets off for home with purse depleted, comforted by the knowledge that his various endeavors, save one or two, are moderately successful. 

Whilst crossing the Atlantic aboard the good ship Antoine, Jean Jacques encounters Spanish Amazon Carmen Delores – she of the funnel – and Sebastian Delores, her father. They are on the run because papa – the sinister figure at the funnel's base – had been on the losing side of Spain's most recent power struggle. If anything, young Carmen suffered a far greater loss in that her lover Carvillho Gonzales was executed for his efforts:

Carmen had made up her mind from the first to marry Jean Jacques, and she deported herself accordingly – with modesty, circumspection and skill. It would be the easiest way out of all their difficulties. Since her heart, such as it was, fluttered, a mournful ghost, over the Place d’Armes, where her Gonzales was shot, it might better go to Jean Jacques than anyone else; for he was a man of parts, of money, and of looks, and she loved these all; and to her credit she loved his looks better than all the rest.

In short, Jean Jacques looks a lot like Carvillho Gonzales.

The Money Master is the twentieth book I've reviewed here this year. It follows James De Mille's The Cross and the Lily (1874) and Grant Allen's The Great Taboo (1890) in being the third to feature a shipwreck. Parker's takes place when the Antoine strikes an iceberg off the shore of Gaspé. Jean Jacques sees Carmen safely bestowed on a lifeboat, before giving up his spot to a crying fifteen-year-old boy. This he does, despite being not that strong a swimmer.

Fortunately, the Spanish Amazon is a strong swimmer. When her lifeboat overturns, she makes for a floating chair, and then uses that chair to save Jean Jacques from drowning.

James Cameron take note.

  

Jean Jacques and Carmen marry in the Gaspé, much to the disapproval of the gentle townspeople of St Saviour:

It was bad enough to marry the Spanische, but to marry outside one’s own parish, and so deprive that parish and its young people of the week’s gaiety, which a wedding and the consequent procession and tour through the parish brings, was little less than treason.

But what a story! The romance of it all is so great as to encourage the curious to travel as much as forty miles to catch a glimpse of the couple during Sunday mass. Carmen never corrects the presumption that she was saved by Jean Jacques and not the reverse. 

Jean Jacques Barbille is a man with "a good many irons in the fire." Given the opportunity, he'll sell you insurance and lightning rods. His inherited riches grow not by leaps and bounds, rather by unsteady steps as taken by a toddler.

He fancies himself first and foremost a philosophe. Though he never quite articulates his philosophy, Jean Jacques is quick to share that he spent a year at Université Laval. He carries with him a small volume titled Mediations on Philosophy, which he bought in Quebec before sailing for France.

Jean Jacques is an egotist and something of a dandy, all the while being a good man. He is kind, treats his workers well, forgives debts, and is generous toward the less fortunate. The man's greatest fault relates to the home. He is so taken with his reputation and many business concerns that Carmen feels neglected; this in turn results in the most interesting scenes I've read in an old novel this year...

And, you know, I've read twenty.

Carmen does not feature in the scene, though she does in the next, which is easily the second most interesting scene.

Reading The Money Master forty or so years after having first purchased a copy, I'm at a loss to explain how it is Gilbert Parker is so ignored.

Trivia: Adapted to the Hollywood screen in 1921 as A Wise Fool, the subject of the next week's post. 

Object: The first Canadian edition, it features seven illustrations by French artist André Castaigne, best known for having illustrated the first edition of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra. 'Tis a thing of beauty, purchased ten or so years ago in London, Ontario. Price: $2.50.

I'm also the proud owner of the Hutchinson's UK first edition, which I picked up in fin du millénaire Montreal for 30¢.

Sadly, it lacks its dust jacket (see below).

Access: The novel first appeared serialized in Hearst's Magazine (Aug 1913 - April 1914) and Nash's Magazine (Nov 1913 - Jul 1914).

As I write this, a Riverview, New Brunswick bookseller is offering a Very Good copy of the Copp Clark first edition at two dollars. There's no mention of a dust jacket, so I'm assuming that the bookseller believed it had none. Further west, a bookseller in Whitby, Ontario has a Canadian first with dust jacket!

The asking price is $100.

If you don't have the cash, consider the two dollar copy. It's a steal, particularly if you live nearby and can avoid shipping charges.

Before making your decision, consider Harper's American first with its unusual wrap-around jacket illustration, drawn from one of Castaigne's interior illustrations.

A bookseller in Portland, Oregon is offering this copy at US$35:

At the high end – US$350 – we have the Hutchinson UK first on offer from Babylon Revisited, a favourite bookseller. Must say that the cover illustration pales somewhat when compared to the work of Monsieur Castaigne.

Buyer beware, none of Castaigne's illustrations feature in the Hutchinson.

As always, print on demand copies are not to be considered.

Woodrow Wilson would agree.

Related post:

Acadian Driftwood
Of Cannibals and Christians
Gilbert Parker's Savage Novel
Behold the Translation of a Savage on Film!