In Canada's Green and Pleasant Land

As a Watered Garden
Marian Keith [Mary Esther Miller MacGregor]
Toronto; McClelland & Stewart, 1946
297 pages

My Marian Keith collection began with The Bells of St Stephens, purchased seventeen years ago in London, Ontario, not long after our move to nearby St Marys. I ask you, what self-respecting bibliophile could pass up a jacket like this?

I'd barely heard of Marian Keith and had no idea how popular she'd once been in that area of the country. Eight more Marian Keith titles were added during our decade in St Marys. They were thick on the ground. The Bells of St Stephen's set me back four dollars, twice as much as any other. A few were rescued after having failed to sell at library book sales. Before last week, I'd never read one.

I've now read one.

Academics position Duncan Polite as Keith at her best, but as I'd never come across a copy my foray into the author's work ended up being the late career As a Watered Garden. Why this novel? Well, I'd read that the plot involved a great mystery.

The first chapter is the best. Thirty-five-year-old Islay Drummond is taking stock of the large family farmhouse off Georgian Bay, recently inherited from Great-Aunt Christena. No one knows just what to make of the bequeathal, least of all sisters Kate and Jeanette:

"More sensible if she left it to me." Jeannette had been wanting to see this since the will was read. "What a wonderful place to leave the children summers!"

Kate replies:

"Wonder she didn't saddle us with it, she knew how I hated the old farm. She was quite capable of it!" 

The answer seems to be that Islay happened by not long before the old woman died. It was the first visit in a very long time. Islay had meant to drop by again, but you know how busy things can get.

Islay plans on spending the summer at the old farmhouse, having been granted a four month leave from her employer, "the irritable and exacting Mr. Francis," but neither sister believes she'll last. Both point to the mod cons of Islay's life in the city. "She has an electric range in her apartment!" Kate exclaims. "And frigidaire," adds Jeanette.

These exchanges take place shortly before Kate and Jeanette gather their respective broods and drive away. Stoic elder brother Robert follows. He'd arrived without wife Mary and their children. Pete, who is closest to Islay in both age and affection, is the baby of the family. He lives the life playboy and so speeds off in a small little coupe, honking all the way.

If, like me, you enjoy novels dealing with family dynamics, As a Watered Garden may not be for you. Islay's siblings never return. That said, distant relatives abound. The closest is cousin Steve Laird whose farm borders hers. He's planted a vegetable garden for Islay, but doesn't appear to be interested in doing much more.

This poses a bit of a problem as Islay is intent on dedicating her four months away from Mr Francis to writing a novel:

It was her secret. Even Pete didn't know it. That winter when she broke her ankle... she'd been laid up for weeks. And somehow she'd started scribbling – little sketches of the office staff  – 'profiles' the editor called them, whisking through them competently. Ought to be a story, must have a plot. Make a real yarn of it. That's what people asked for... Well, this summer she was going to see what she could do.

What Islay wants more than anything is silence and solitude.

She won't get it. 

We know from the first that there is an ex-fiancé around and about – he threw her over years ago for a New York City party girl – but the first intrusion comes in the form of anemic waif Artie. 

How could Islay turn the boy away? Artie's memories are dominated by a draught that caused the loss of his family's farm and contributed to the deaths of his two siblings. The surviving family is newly arrived in the area, having driven over three thousand kilometers from dusty Saskatchewan.

Young Artie first appears during a downpour. As a Watered Garden being the title, I'm certain this is intentional. Later on, the house in which the boy and his parents live will be flooded during a summer storm.

There's irony for you.

Things happen, not nearly so dire, and are interesting if inconsequential. Other characters intrude on Islay's solitude and her literary effort stalls. The mystery, such as it is, concerns Great-Uncle Peter's daughter Bessie:

Great-Aunt Christena had burned Bessie’s picture up. You never talked about Bessie. Never even said her name. Even when you were very small you knew not to do that.

But why?

The answer has nothing to do with murder, adultery or anything even remotely unpleasant. Quite the opposite. It's really of a type that is common in family histories; Bessie married a man Christena disapproved of. 

The Windsor Star, 30 November 1946

Though published post-war, As a Watered Garden is set in the final summer before the conflict. I was struck that the Drummond siblings are entirely untouched the Great Depression. Every one of them is thriving. The automobiles used in their departure are spiffy. Though Islay is a secretary, hers is every bit as new and stylish. Even amongst the well-to-do, she really cuts a figure with her stylish outfits. Artie's family aside, not one character struggles with economic circumstance.

As a Watered Garden has been described as the first book in Keith's Georgian Bay Trilogy. Yonder Shining Light and Lilacs in the Dooryard followed, which take the reader through the Second World War into the post-war, though I don't expect I'll be bothering with either.

As a Watered Garden was a perfectly pleasant read, if you like that sort of thing.

The critics rave: 

The men and women with whom she peoples her books are sympathetically real and easily recognizable as those one meets in everyday life. And she herself obviously believes that everything always comes out right in the end. While her books may never make any shattering imprint upon the larger stream of literature they leave a very peasant ripple in our Canadian brook.

– Eileen Kerr, The Gazette, 7 December 1946

Object and Access: Lacking the dust jacket, bound in blue boards, my copy once belonged to E.L. MacDougall of 189 Blythwood Road, Toronto.

As I write, two copies are listed for sale online, both offered by London, Ontario booksellers. At US$20.00, the cheaper of the two has retained its dust jacket.  

Related post:

The Dustiest Bookcase: K is for Keith

Let the Right One In

The Invisible Gate
Constance Beresford-Howe
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1949
241 pages

I met Constance Beresford-Howe at the 1991 opening of a Toronto bookstore. She was sixty-nine at the time. I thought she was much older. This had less to do with appearance as bibliography. Her debut novel, The Unreasoning Heart, had been published a full forty-five years earlier. What I didn't know was that she'd been a 23-year-old McGill undergraduate at the time. Of This Day's Journey, her second novel, was published the following year while she was writing her Masters thesis. Constance Beresford-Howe was working on her PhD at Brown when The Invisible Gate hit bookstores.

The Montreal Gazette, 19 November 1949

Looking back on old posts, I see that I didn't think much of her first novel, thought better of her second, and predicted that I'd like the third even more.

That prediction proved correct.

The Invisible Gate is set in Montreal. It begins with protagonist Hannah Jackson stepping off a city bus and walking home through Notre Dame de Grace Park. The month being November, she notes the bare trees though her mind is on local boy Will Ames. The year being 1945, Will is on his way home from Europe. His most recent letter estimated the would arrive on Sunday:

"I've thought of you so often, Hannah, these last few months. It may seem funny to you after we've been friends for so long. But I think of you differently now than ever before. It's taken three years of war and three thousand miles to show me; but if you'll let me, I want to talk pretty seriously when I get home, about marriage."

Hannah is returning from her work at a law office. Her home is a bit of a wreck, but she does what she can:

Mother and father, poor lambs, couldn't help dying – they hated leaving me with the kids. And I hated it, too. Fourteen is no age for that responsibility. Those brats, John and Pen, and Laurel, so delicate. Aunt Marge may have been our guardian, but she was so twitter-brained! It was me that worried all the time over shoes and bills and report cards, me who sat up nights with croup, me that whaled Pen for stealing...  it made me old... old at twenty... older now at twenty-eight, and I'll never be young again. And John ... buried in Africa now; joined up just when he was beginning to be a real brother, and left me with nothing but his baby...sweet old Fan!

Quite the info dump.

Now a toddler, Fan is a delightful handful. Her mother, John's widow, didn't stick around long before decamping to California. Fifteen-year-old Pen hangs around with a tough crowd, but is otherwise reformed. He does what he can to support the household. Not so twenty-year-old-sister Laurel. Willowy, gorgeous, fragile, and blonde, she's fallen in with a crowd of artistic types.

Returning to Hannah, did you not sense a lack of passion in Will's letter? He arrives earlier than expected accompanied by Noel Carter. The two had bonded during the Blitz. Noel is tall, dark and close to handsome. English-born, his parents divorced when he was a tot. As neither wanted him, Noel was sent to an aunt in Montreal. She didn't want him either. As soon as Noel turned seven, he was sent to a Toronto boarding school. "Let me add that I richly deserved it," Noel tells Hannah, "and have led a thoroughly bad life ever since."

Noel is slightly taller, slightly older, and much more self assured than Will. As a very young man, he'd moved to New York with aspirations of becoming a serious novelist. After his first novel received its first rejection, he threw it and all other literary writing in the fire, then dove into the commercial. Noel made good money dashing off scripts for the radio serial Joanna Miller, Small-town Girl. During the war he was awarded the Military Cross, the DSO, and a half-dozen other medals, achieving the rank of major. 

But what of Will?

We learn more about Noel's backstory in that early scene than we do Will's. In fact, we never do know much of Will's history, the suggestion being that there isn't much worth noting.

By the end of the evening, Noel has moved into the room of dead brother John, hotel rooms being hard to come by. I was worried about scandal – a man rooming in a house with two unmarried women – but that fear proved unfounded.

Remember Will wanting to "talk pretty seriously" about marriage when he gets home? Well, it takes him a while to get around to it. After three years of war, he feels a need to acclimatize. Not so, nearly-handsome Noel. He's a go-getter. When Will declines the offer of a job in the bond market, Noel picks it up. Next thing you now, he's bought a new car, yet still keeps his room in the Jackson house.   

I had a sense of where this was heading and expect you do, too.

Proven correct, my initial reaction to The Invisible Gate was that it wasn't quite up to Constance Beresford-Howe's previous efforts, but then scenes began to haunt. Hannah's lunchtime meeting with Noel is one of the most uncomfortable I've encountered. Noel's later confrontation with Hannah in her home's basement laundry room is another. I'm sure that this latter scene would've been even more powerful had it been for the self-censorship of the time.

The Invisible Gate was better than The Unreasoning Heart and Of This Days Journey because at age twenty-six she had become a better, more mature writer, even if the plot is just as unimaginative.

I must admit that the reason I prefer this to her two previous efforts is personal. The novel made me nostalgic for Notre Dame de Grace – NDG – where I lived many years as a young man.

Though fleeting, I enjoyed the depiction of Montreal's nightlife, something rarely seen outside the novels of David Montrose, Douglas Sanderson, the early pulps of Brian Moore, and the non-fiction of William Weintraub. Constance Beresford-Howe is the first woman I've read to write about Montreal as a sin city.

The corner of Sherbrooke and Girouard, 1941.

And then there's my late mother. She grew up on Old Orchard Avenue. She would've stepped off a city bus hundreds of times, then walked home through NDG Park. Like Hannah Jackson, she would've gazed at the bare trees of November 1945.

Dedication: 

Constance Beresford-Howe's father was born in 1890 in Calcutta. The 25 July 1958 edition of the Westmount Examiner informs that he was educated at Cheltinham College, the London School of Economics, and the Tilley School of Languages in Germany before his 1913 immigration to Canada. Once here, he studied at McGill, met his wife Marjorie, and found long employ as an insurance agent with North American Life.

His end, not at all peaceful,  came nine years after The Invisible Gate was published.

The Westmount Examiner, 25 July 1958

Bloomer: 

"I suppose she's gone off somewhere tonight with her musician friends, and didn't tell me because she knows I think they're queer and drink too much."

Trivia: Will informs Hannah that he will be home early because Noel managed to "double-talk" a Ferry Command pilot into transporting them to Gander aboard a LC-4. "We had to crouch eight hours among a lot of packing cases in the tail, but it was worth it," says Will.

The LC-4 was built by Kansas-based Buckley Aircraft Company in 1930. Number produced: 1. The author may have been thinking of the Douglas DC-4. 

 

Trivia (personal): The Beresford-Howes – Russell, Marjorie, daughter Constance, and son John, – lived in Montreal at 2063 Marlowe Avenue. According to the 1931 census, the family had a live-in domestic named Noella Cadieux.  

2063 Marlowe Avenue (left door, bottom flat) in October 2020.

I was born at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, 2100 Marlowe, which is on the very same block!

About the author: Having be part of the committee responsible for he Constance Beresford-Howe plaque, I thought I knew a lot about the author, but I had no idea as to her weight at birth.

The bio errs with "The Invisible Gate, like her previous novels, is laid in her native Montreal." Beresford-Howe's first novel, The Unreasoning Heart, is set in the city, but her second, Of This Day's Journey, takes place at a college somewhere in New England. The Invisible Gate was her third novel.

Object and Access: A slim hardcover with black boards, the jacket-less copy I read was bought several years back in Toronto as part of a lot. It was once property of Wellington Consolidated Schools, which I assume to have been a school board that once existed in and about Wellington County in Southwestern Ontario. It has since been replaced in my dusty bookcase by a copy with dust jacket I happened upon earlier this month.

It would appear that the Dodd, Mead edition enjoyed nothing more than a single printing. A UK edition was  published three years later by Hammond. Was it also a single printing? I ask because I've found two different dust jackets.

As I write, one copy of the Dodd, Mead edition is listed for sale online. With no jacket, it's going for US$40.00. Shipping to Canada will set you back even more.

I'm interested in the first UK edition, published in 1952 by Hammond. As far as I can tell, it enjoyed just one printing, yet appears to have had two very different dust jackets. Sadly, neither is currently listed for sale online.

Related posts:

Reason Over Passion in a Bland Bachelor's Lap

Destination: Montreal

Constance Beresford-Howe Memorial Plaque

The 1925 Globe 110: Less Motoring, More Reading

Much to my dismay, this year's Globe 100 was published late last month. I thought I'd made it clear last year that November is too early. This annual round-up of the year's best books should never appear before December. How is it that a conservative newspaper is so willing to flout tradition?

Four books from the Globe's 1925 and 2025 lists.

Published on the second Wednesday in December, the 1925 list is introduced by Arts editor M.O. Hammond, who shares his concerns regarding motoring, dancing and radio, while repositioning books as something other than diversions:  

"It is a good year for books," writes Hammond, and yet at 110 titles the 1925 Globe list is far shorter than any previous year. For goodness sake, the 1920 list numbered 264!

I suspect the Globe advertising department was somewhat to blame. The list runs just three pages, and in terms of column inches the feature attracted less than a third of the last year's advertising. Of the companies that did place ads, Eaton's wins for including this:

How I'd love to see a photo the Book Advisor's "special nook."

(Apologies, I didn't mean that to sound filthy.)

The 1925 Globe 110, consists of nine categories:

Travel

Juvenile

Economics & Sociology

Poetry & Drama

Fiction by Canadian Writers

British & Foreign Fiction [sic]

History & Biography

Religion & Theology

Essays

Canadians are represented in every one save 'British & Foreign Fiction' (naturally) and 'Economics & Sociology' (make of that what you will). More than ever, Canadians dominate 'Poetry & Drama' taking nine of the ten titles:

Far Horizons - Bliss Carman

Canadian Singers and their Songs - Edward S. Carswell

Pillar of Smoke - John Crichton [Norman Gregor Guthrie]

Songs of a Bluenose - H.A. Cody

Low Life: A Comedy in Three Acts - Mazo de la Roche

British Drama - Allardyce Nicoll

Little Songs - Majorie L.C. Pickthall

Wayside Gleams - Laura G. Salverson

The Sea Wall - Lyon Sharmon

Locker Room Ballads - W. Hastings Webling

To my surprise, three of the ten feature in my collection:

The introduction to the two fiction categories comes courtesy of C.C. Jenkins. He begins: "Glancing over the past year's lists of fiction, one is moved to the comment that, though there are a few outstanding works, [there are] none that give promise of greatness." 

Here are eight 1925 novels that did not make the Globe's 1925 list:

Dark Laughter - Sherwood Anderson

Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos

An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

No More Parades - Ford Maddox Ford

Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - Anita Loos

Carry On, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf 

Where Hammond was concerned of strain, stress, and restlessness in post-war society, Jenkins writes of nervousness and hysterical predilections of its fiction, all the while gently assuring the reader that these conditions are abating:

Fiction is slipping back into its old groove – that of merely telling a story and telling it as well as possible  – which groove, after all, may be followed with permanent success. That is what the reader has demanded in the past and what he will continue to demand in the future. 'Jazzed ' literature is but a passing phase, which has just about seen its day.

He's partial to old standbys like James Oliver Curwood, Jeffery Farnol. Ellen Glasgow, A.S.M. Hutchinson, William J. Locke, George Barr McCutcheon, and Stewart Edward White, all of whom are included in this list.

For the second year running, Canadian fiction writers score eighteen titles:

Glorious Apollo - E. Barrington

Treading the Wine Press - Ralph Connor

The Scarlet Sash - John M. Elson

The Golden Galleon of Caribee - Gordon Hill Grahame

The Living Forest - Arthur Heming

Day Before Yesterday -Fred Jacob

The High Forfeit - Basil King

Brains, Limited - Archie P. McKishnie

Painted Fires - Nellie McClung

Emily Climbs - L.M. Montgomery

Wild Geese - Martha Ostenso

Broken Waters -  Frank L. Packard

The Power and the Glory - Gilbert Parker

The Crimson West - Alex Philip

When Sparrows Fall - Laura Goodman Salverson

The Laughing Birds - Archibald Sullivan

The Chopping Bell and Other Laurentian Stories - M. Vitorin

Captain Salvation - Frederick William Wallace

I own four, yet have read only Wild Geese... and that just this October!

The well-loved olive green book is a first edition of Emily Climbs.

Though Wild Geese leads the 'Fiction by Canadian Writers' list, it's clear Jenkins does not share my enthusiasm:

I know it's been just just two months, but the impression Wild Geese left in this reader's mind is still quite deep. Jenkins isn't terribly keen on Canadian novelists and short story writers. "Fiction writers of Canada have made a formidable contribution to the world's lighter reading" isn't much of compliment. Ralph Connor's Treading the Wine Press is described as a "story with strong characters but somewhat weak in continuity and plot interest." Characters in Frank L. Packard's Broken Waters are "mere automatic, made to fit the story's needs." Alex Philip receives faint praise for The Crimson West:"a powerful bit of work, not outstanding in a literary way, but very creditably done."

Jenkins is much more complimentary of The High Forfeit by long-time Dusty Bookcase favourite Basil King:

This is one of the first books I ever bought by Rev King. How is it I still haven't read it?

Nineteen-twenty-five is the pinnacle of twentieth-century English-language literature, yet as far as the Canadian is concerned, it's little more than a dead zone. The most notable novel that did not make the Globe's list is R.T.M. Scott's The Black Magician.

It is right that it didn't make the cut.

The Canadian non-fiction titles, typically travel books, collections of sermons, and dry political biographies penned by allies, surprises with the inclusion of Marjorie Pickthall: A Book of Remembrance. A favourite volume in my library, it's a beautifully produced, loving tribute to a once-celebrated, now forgotten writer, put together by those who clearly shared great affection for their departed friend.

Marjorie Pickthall's posthumous Little Songs is listed amongst the years's best poetry collections. Like the others, it is long out of print. The good news is that two of the forty Canadian titles on the 1925 Globe 110 are in print today: Martha Ostenso's Wild Geese, Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery, and Painted Fires by Nellie McClung.*

Three is thrice the average for these century-old lists!

I like to think the Canadian books on the 2025 Globe list will fare even better. I also like to think that in one hundred years book publishing will still exist.

* When first posted, I'd written that only two titles, Wild Geese and Emily Climbs, were in print today. A reader's comment reminded me that Painted Fires was revived in 2014 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Thank you, Melwyk!

Related posts:

The Globe 100 133 of 1924: Hammond's Organ

The Globe's Best Books of 1923:

'Canadian Authors Can Be Read With Pleasure, Profit and Pride'

Best Books of 1922: Amidst a Flood of Mediocrity

The 1921 Globe 100 206: Don't Mention the War 

Best Books of 1920: Beware the Bolshevik Poets

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb

and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing (1919)

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1917:

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1916

The Season's Best Books in Review – A.D. 1915;

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

Wild Wild Geese

That Old Black Magician

The Great War and Its Discontents

The Magpie
Douglas Durkin
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974
351 pages

Craig Forrester has received a telephone call from Mrs Gilbert Nason, wife of one of the wealthiest men in Winnipeg, inviting him to a dinner party at the family home: "no dinner party was complete nowadays without its war hero — she would promise that he would not be asked one question during the evening, about his experiences at the front — and Marion would be there to tease him — and, well, would he come?"

Craig accepts the invitation. Marion, the Nasons' daughter, does indeed tease, as when she ushers him toward another woman, whispering:

“She’s a war widow, but she’s young and — come on, you’ll see for yourself.” She took him by the hand and pulled him after her across the hall and through an open doorway into a small reception-room. Mrs. Nason got up from where she had been sitting and came forward to meet him. “So here you are!” she greeted him, extending her hand. “My, but you’re looking well! Here’s our hero, Jeannette."

The scene takes place in July 1919, eight months after the Armistice, and one month after the violent end of Winnipeg General Strike.

The promise of the post-war future is very much a topic of dinner conversation. Methodist minister Reverend George Bentley, who joins Craig and Jeanette at the Nason family table, has strong opinions about the demands of the working man:

“Unless we restore our institutions to their status of the days before the war,” Bentley declared, “there is no hope for civilization.”
   Jeannette Bawden broke through at last with a word of protest. “Why take the trouble to save it, Mr. Bentley?” she asked in her softest voice.
   Marion chuckled in spite of herself — or because she had been awaiting just such an opportunity — and was reprimanded by a look from her father.
   “Why take the trouble to save our Christian heritage?” the good gentleman asked, surprised.
   “I wasn’t aware that it was Christian,” Jeannette retorted.
   Craig caught a glance from Marion and the two exchanged furtive winks. He was beginning to like Jeannette Bawden and was pleased, for some reason or other, to find that Marion shared her views.

   “Jeannette, you heretic,” Mrs. Nason interrupted, “I’m not going to permit you to badger Mr. Bentley. Craig, can’t you talk her off the subject.”
   “On the contrary,” objected Bentley, recovering himself, “I think I rather enjoy being badgered by a woman when she is as charming as—”

Craig makes no attempt to take Jeannette Bawden off the subject, he'd much rather hear what she has to say. Craig is the Magpie of the title, so named by a colleague who'd noted his habit of listening to conversation without contributing. Invariably, another would make a point he was contemplating:

“Craigie has a nimble wit but a heavy tongue,” his father had said of him in the old days.

Craig's father died on the family farm while he was off fighting overseas. He blames himself for not having been present. The two had always been very close, and were no doubt brought closer by the early death of Craig's mother.

At twenty, Craig was sent off to university. At twenty-four, his father bought him a seat on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange as a graduation gift.

The Winnipeg Grain Exchange as it was c.1920.
Craig's office is described as being on the seventh floor.

While tense moments in the pit follow, I admit my eyes began to glaze over. Debate over barley futures wasn't for me. I was more interested in the promises that had been made working men who had brought victory. More than anything, what grabbed my interest was the reception of the returning soldier and the portrayal of women.

Mrs Nason's assurance that Craig would not be asked about his experiences at the front proved true. However, the very next month, during a second dinner, this one at the Nason summer home, he finds himself seated beside coquettish Vicky Howard:

“Don’t you think you can persuade Captain Forrester to tell us some of the heroic things he did when he was in France, Marion?” Miss Howard cooed, with her cheek touching Craig’s left shoulder.

   “I should think you could get him to do that, Vicky,” Marion suggested. “I’ve never known how to get a returned man to tell of his experiences.”

   “I’ve heard some — some perfectly wonderful stories from men who have come back — one boy in the bank —”

Vicky Howard is one of several female characters of Craig's generation in the story. Each interesting in her own way, together they reflect a jarring shift in societal expectations and social norms. The Magpie spans 1919 and 1920, a touch early for bound breasts and flapperism to have reached the Canadian prairie, though it should be noted that one of the characters has bobbed her hair. 

Marion Nason delights in her friend Jeannette's needling Reverend Bentley, whose ministry has been supported by her father and other wealthy businessmen. This, combined with her beauty, leads Craig to make her his wife. However, once she has left her father's house she becomes a different person, one who is more concerned with maintaining the lifestyle into which she was born rather than the plight of others less fortunate.

Jeannette Bawden's life has been very much changed by the war. It killed her husband. Jeanette's desire for social upheaval is fuelled in part by revenge. Jeanette will end up living in sin with an outspoken veteran who shares her newfound politics.

Vicky Howard flirts openly with Craig during that second Nason dinner and in the evening that follows. When he does not respond, she opts for a one-nighter with Claude Charnley, Craig's rival for Marion's affection. The following summer, by which time Craig has married Marion, Vicky makes an overt pass: "People don’t wonder about such things nowadays. They used to.... before the war.... but not now. They take some things for granted.....” 

Then there's Martha Lane, Craig's friend since childhood. The girl from the neighbouring farm, they'd lost touch when she went off to study sculpture in Europe. Martha's father doesn't understand her art, but takes pride in her achievement. Once she and Craig reconnect, they spend hours alone together working on an exhibition of her works. 

These young women  are so unlike those depicted in pre-Great War Canadian novels and live in a much different world. To have a man, in this case Craig Forrester, spend time alone with, say, Jeannette Bawden or Martha Lane, would've destroyed reputations.

Hodder & Stoughton ad in The Victoria Daily Times, 15 December 1923

For other characters, the post-war world is all too familiar. Craig is driving late one afternoon when he encounters Jimmy Dyer as he walks home from work. They''d served alongside each in Europe and are now, to paraphrase Neil Young, back in their Canadian prairie homes. Jimmy's is the same little green and white shack he left to fight, leaving behind his wife and children. He's a cheerful sort, until talk turns to the war: 

"They’re all doing their damnedest to forget about it. They’re sticking a few hundred of the broken ones in hospitals here and there and they’re putting in a cenotaph and a bronze tablet here and there for the fellows who won’t be back. For the rest of us they’re putting green seats in the parks where we can sit down and go over our troubles if we want to without being asked to move on. In a year’s time they’ll send us a medal with a couple of inches of coloured ribbon and a form letter and the thing will be all over. Instead of shouting ‘On to Berlin’ they’ll change it to ‘Back to Normalcy’. We’ve spent four years of the best part of our lives fighting for the big fellows, and we’ll spend the rest of our days working for them just the same as we did before the war. The only real difference is that we had a band or two and a banner or two and a chaplain or two to remind us that we were fighting for the glory of God and the brotherhood of mankind, and now we have the squalls of hungry kids and the insults of a few God damned slackers to cheer us on our way. That sums it up for me, just about.”

Contemporary reviewers really struggled with this one. Some papers merely acknowledged the novel without reviewing it. In this case, the political elements are downplayed: 

The Border Cities Star, 22 March 1924

The Magpie was first published in 1923 by Hodder & Stoughton Canada. My 1974 edition was published as number 23 in the University of Toronto Press's Social History of Canada. It was given to me by a generous reader of this blog.

I'd assumed that the novel had been in and out of print over those five decades, but I was wrong. The Magpie had been out-of-print. What's more, after the University of Toronto Press reissue, The Magpie again slipped out of print for decades, until brought back in 2018 by Invisible Press.

It can be purchased through this link.

I'd been meaning to read the novel since my days as a Canadian Studies student in the 'eighties. Its depictions of the Winnipeg General Strike made it important, or so I thought. In fact, there are no depictions of the Winnipeg General Strike in The Magpie, just as there are no depictions of the Great War. The novel is a reaction to both events. It is a novel about the aftermath of conflict, as experienced by those who were harmed and those who benefited. 

The once-silent Magpie begins to speak out.

Favourite pasage (w/ spoiler): After his chance encounter with Craig, we never see Jimmy Dyer again. Craig keeps meaning to call, but many months pass before he returns to the Dyer family's extremely modest home. On a whim, he's decided to bring along Gilbert Nason, his liberal-minded businessman father-in-law. Over tea, they learn that Jimmy is dead; he never quite recovered from his encounter with mustard gas. Gilbert Nason reacts by offering help, but is soundly rejected:

"There’s a lot of women left alone in the world — lots of them right here in this city — and some of them might take help if you offered it to them. Some of them can’t help themselves. But I can. Jimmy Dyer never took charity from anyone and he wouldn’t want his wife to take it from anyone, either. No, Mr. Nason, there are some of us who are strong enough in body to go out and work for our children and strong enough in mind, too, to do a little thinking for ourselves. Somewhere I read of what one woman made her mind up to do when she got word that her husband had been killed. She was going out to take the life of some warmaker — take it with her own hands. And that’s what the men who make war are driving us to do. They will force the women to make war on those who made war for us. We’ll go out and find the men who sit in upholstered chairs and play the game of politics and business and move the Jimmy Dyers of the world about on the checker board like so many bits of wood. We’ll find them. They killed our men. We’ll kill them. What else have we to do? We’ll dog their steps. We’ll make them afraid to go out unattended. They’ll be afraid to touch food or water for fear of being poisoned. There’ll be ways, and ways—and ways! But we’ll stop it — we’ll stop it! We’ll bring no more sons into the world for them to feed to cannons. We’ll send no more husbands out behind brass bands to spill their blood in the field. We kept the homes — the gardens — the flowers.... the poppy beds....” 

Trivia (w/ spoiler): In the final pages, Craig is forced to come to terms with the fact that from the early days of his marriage Marion has been having an affair with Claude Charnley. The last page suggests a future with Martha Lane.

Canadian Singers and Their Songs
Edward S. Caswell, ed.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1919

In his own life, Durkin was the unfaithful spouse. His lover was also named Martha – Martha Ostenso – with whom he collaborated on over a dozen novels, including her 1925 bestselling debut Wild Geese. Their affair lasted over two decades, ending in marriage only after the death of his wife. 

Object and Access: My U of T Press edition is bound in black boards. The jacket design is not credited. 

Used copies of the first edition aren't nearly as dear as one might expect. Very Good and better copies of the first edition (all sans jacket) begin at $36.00. The copy to have is an inscribed and signed, offered by a Gatineau bookseller for $155.00.

The novel is available here – gratis – thanks to Faded Page.

Related posts:

Dead Man Sitting
Wild, Wild Geese

Wild Geese on Film (Part 3): After the Harvest

The third of three addendums to the recent post about Martha Ostenso's 1925 bestselling novel.

The only film adaptation of Wild Geese released during my lifetime, yet I missed its airing on 4 March 2001.

I was the father of a toddler at time.

After the Harvest was a made-for-TV movie. A part of Baton Broadcasting's Canadian Literature Initiative, a very slim, very small bone thrown so as to get the okay for its takeover of CTV. The corporation promised all of one million dollars spread over two years to encourage independent productions. What followed were adaptations of Anna Porter's The Bookfair Murders, the Gail Bowen mysteries Deadly Appearances and Murder at the Mendel, and Murder Most Likely, which was based on the Michael Harris book The Judas Kiss.

The Porter and Bowen books were murder mysteries, Harris's was an investigation into a corrupt RCMP officer who in 1983 tossed his wife off the 17th-storey balcony of their Toronto condo. All four were published in the 'nineties.

Wild Geese, which features no murder, was a seven-decade-old novel. When first published it sat on store shelves alongside Bliss Carman and E. Barrington, not John Grisham and Daniel Steele. 

Detail of a Henry Morgan & Co ad, Montreal Gazette, 19 November 1925.

After the Harvest was by far the best received of the Canadian Literature Initiative films. Watching it today, it is easy to see why.

The first thing that strikes is the look, which captures the beauty of the Canadian West, using natural lighting to full effect. There are shots that look  like paintings come to life. Cinematographer Gregory Middleton would go on to Passchendaele, The Watchmen, and Game of Thrones.

Care was taken in costuming, sets, and pretty much everything else, farm machinery included. 

Added to these are extraordinary performances. One expects as much from Sam Shepard, who is perfectly cast as tyrannical, yet dispassionate Caleb Gare.  That stare! He commands nearly every scene, as the story demands. Liane Balaband, who plays Lind Archer, is another standout. Her role as "the Teacher" is somewhat greater than in the novel, though I do think CTV's promo reel exaggerates the character's influence:

Finally, there's the script. I've left this for the end because, by necessity, spoilers will follow. Anyone coming fresh to Wild Geese may wish to skip to the After the Harvest YouTube link below.

Read the book, see the movie, and remember they do not tell the exact same story.

According to a Sandra Martin piece in the 3 March 2001 edition of the Globe & Mail, screenwriter Suzette Couture first read Ostenso's novel after having been given a copy by Maggie Siggins when working on the film adaptation of A Canadian Tragedy: JoAnne and Colin Thatcher. Like me, she was hooked.

Couture makes changes in bringing Wild Geese to the screen, but in ways that will, with few exceptions, pass unnoticed by all but the most recent or most familiar reader.

The first words are uttered by Judith Gare, played by Nadia Litz, as she lies seemingly naked in a wheat field:

"I've heard it said that there is one moment in life when we're happy and the rest is spent remembering."

In the second scene, Lind Archer stands alone by the side of a dirt road trying to hail a ride. John Tobacco, who is passing on a horse-drawn wagon, stops:

LIND: I was just dropped here, they wouldn't take me any further. I'm expected...

John says nothing.

LIND: ... at Caleb Gare's?

JOHN: No one goes up that road.

LIND: Then why do you?

JOHN: I go everywhere. I deliver the mail.

So much of the novel is contained in this exchange, so much of the mood is set, and yet like Judith Gare's opening monologue it doesn't feature in the novel.

There's the cinematography, the attention to detail, and the acting, but what impresses most is Couture's script. Her dialogue does much to rein in the novel's length, as in this exchange between Lind and Judith:

JUDITH: Caleb's father farmed this land. We're born to it, to live here and die here. It's just the way it is.

LIND: And your mother? She never takes your side with him?

JUDITH: She doesn't care. Not for any of us.

LIND: You really believe that?

JUDITH: What's it to you anyway?

LIND: You don't know me. You don't know anything about me.

JUDITH: Tell me then.

LIND: The man who was supposed to marry me left.

JUDITH: I've heard worse.

LIND: My father's dead.

JUDITH: I call that lucky.

This is another scene that does not appear in the novel, but it is easy to be fooled in that it fits so perfectly.

Couture provides Lind with a backstory. That she's Catholic explains why she does not join Caleb in services at Yellow Post's church.

Very clever.

I don't mean to suggest that I'm all in on After the Harvest. 

As in Ruf der Wildgänse, the 1961 Austrian-German adaptation, Amelia tells Mark Jordan (inexplicably renamed Jordan Sinclair), that she is his mother. This never happens in the novel. I see no reason to do so aside from the resulting drama. It is indeed tear inducing.

The much criticized ending of Wild Geese is just as contentious in this adaptation. Here Caleb survives the fire to be met with his wife in the final scene. I don't know that it is the perfect ending, but it is superior. Because I think the scene worth watching, I won't quote the dialogue. It begins at the ninety minute mark, pretty much right down to the second, and is just about the best thing I've ever seen from a Canadian television production. 

The film can be seen in it's entirety on on Youtube (for now, at least):

Watch it while you can.

I recommend it highly.

Related post:

Wild Wild Geese

Wild Geese on Film (Part I): Wild Geese
Wild Geese on Film (Part 2): Ruf der Wildgänse

Wild Geese on Film (Part 1): Wild Geese

The first of three addendums to the recent post about Martha Ostenso's 1925 bestselling novel.

Released in the autumn of 1927, Wild Geese is a lost silent film, though you wouldn't know it looking at the IMDb entry:

My thinking is that the star ratings concern the novel; it's either that or they were left a couple of decades back by computer savvy centenarians who remembered the film from when they were young. 

Montreal Gazette, 21 May 1928

I doubt the latter is true, but let's pretend.

What would they have seen?

I've had to rely on ninety-eight-year-old reviews, none of which are terribly long or contain much detail. The one published in the 7 December 1927 edition of Variety is the most interesting:

The reference to a "Minnesota household" intrigues. The novel is set in the fictional farming community of Oeland, which is generally accepted to be in the very real province of Manitoba. 

Judging from surviving stills, "poor wig outfitting" seems fair.

Eve Southern played Judith Gare. That's Anita Stewart as Lind Archer on the right. Of the cast, Russell Simpson, who portrayed Caleb Gare, is hands down the best remembered today. He was cast as Pa Joad in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath.

Russell Simpson as Caleb Gare and Belle Bennett as wife Amelia in Wild Geese.  

The reviewer makes no mention of the film's ending, but others do. Apparently, it isn't nearly so positive as Ostenso's.

Returning to those IMDb ratings, I note that no one left an actual review. My thinking is that the one star ratings were left by frustrated high school students looking for a shortcut. This and other Goodreads reviews suggest as much.

And so, this anecdote:

In 1985, I work part-time in a Montreal video store. For context, this was the year in which Betamax was suffering death throes. Come autumn, kids who'd previously rented Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Risky Business abruptly shifted focus to The Natural, the 1984 Barry Levinson film about a middle aged has been who becomes a baseball legend. Set in the early twentieth century, 48-year-old Robert Redford played the lead.

The sudden demand caught the store's owners off-guard. We had eight copies of The Breakfast Club and nearly as many of Police Academy but just one of The Natural. As it turned out, students in nearby Bialik High School had been assigned the Bernard Malamud novel upon which the film is based. 

A young man not much older than the kids I was serving, I'd seen The Natural. Much as I like Levinson and Redford, I did not like their collaboration. My issue was wasn't so much with the body rather the ending, which is diametrically opposed to Malamud's perfect, perfectly depressing conclusion. 

It's also very over the top.

Let this be a lesson, kids.

Read the book.

Related post:

Wild Wild Geese