The Mystery Anthology Mystery Solved?

Canadian Mystery Stories

Alberto Manguel, editor

Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1991

288 pages

My review of this, the eleventh of Alberto Manguel's twenty-two anthologies, was posted yesterday at Canadian Notes & Queries online:

The Mystery Anthology Mystery Solved?

What did I think?

Well, for one, it has the most inept introduction I've ever encountered. These jackets to books by writers who are not so much as recognized will provide further clues.

Phantom Wires
Arthur Stringer
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril, 1923

The Shadow
H. Bedford-Jones
New York: Fiction League, 1930

The Blue Door
Vincent Starrett
New York: Doubleday, 1930

The Maestro Murders
Frances Shelley Wees
New York: Mystery League, 1931

The Hidden Door
Frank L. Packard
New York: Doubleday, 1933

Trouble Follows Me
Kenneth Millar
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1946

Exit in Green
Martin Brett [pseud Douglas Sanderson]
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1953

Related post:

The Mysterious Question Mystery

'The New Year comes white-winged, unstained, a star...'

Century-old jingoism to begin a New Year by Minnie Henrietta Bethune Hallowell Bowen (1861-1942) of Sherbrooke, Quebec, from John W. Garvin's anthology Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918). During the conflict, Mrs Bowen served as President of the Sherbrooke Patriotic Association.

THE NEW YEAR, 1917 A.D.

Canada's National Service

          The New Year comes white-winged, unstained, a star
               Loosed from God's hand across a world of night!
          What thoughts await its coming from afar?
               What deeds shall quicken in its unknown light?

          All Time is God's — to give and to withhold!
               To men the power is given to use or waste —
          To turn the passing splendour into gold,
               Lasting and beautiful — or bid it haste.

          Dearer than jewels — bought with holiest blood —
               Are these few months God-given to our hand
          By Him whose might held back the threatening flood
               There at the Marne, that we might arm and stand.

          The grey tide swells apace — the nations fall
               Before its pitiless, embracing lust!
          Here at the threshold of another year —
               Still with God's gift of time — we face our trust!

          The bells are ringing in the quivering towers —
               The chimes are calling over glistening snow.
          The year is dawning in its awful powers —
               The hours are coming and the hours must go!

          These few, small days may be the last that wait
               On our decision! Riven ears may know
          The iron thunders of approaching Fate
               That closes Mercy's door and arms the Foe.

          Dear blood, outpoured for love of God and Man,
               Has drenched the far-off altar with its red,
          And heavenly fire that through the trenches ran
               Has wrapped the lives that suffered in our stead.

          How can we give enough — since they have died?
               Since they have lived — shall we not greatly live
          And know in life or death with holy pride
               No wealth of service is too much to give?

          The Call to Service! ringing loud and clear
               Beats in the angel pinions overhead —
          Still time is given that deadened ears may hear
               Before the final word of doom is said.

          Work! for humanity's sublimest goal!
               Fight! in a cause too great to be denied!
          Hear! for the Dead are speaking to your soul!
               Wake! for God calls the Nation to His side!

Related posts:

A Poet Laureate's 'Prayer for the New Year'
Decades-Old Verse for the New Year by E.J. Pratt

Temperance Verse for New Year's Day

An Old Poem for the New Year by Arthur Stringer

Immature Verse for the New Year

A New Year

'The year is dead, for Death slays even time...'

Verse for the day from the 1935 revised edition of Our Canadian Literature, an anthology of verse selected by the poet's friends Bliss Carman and Lorne Pierce.

A Happy New Year to all!

Related posts:

'Farewell, Old Year' by James Alway Ross, MPP

On the Year's Last Eve

Just Say the Invitation Never Arrived

'A Canadian Day, September 15th, 1916'

Century-old verse by Captain Theodore Goodridge Roberts, younger brother of Sir Charles God Damn, inspired by the Canadian victory at Courcellette.

"A Canadian Day, September 15th, 1916" is one of two Roberts poems included in John W. Garvin's anthology Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918).

Related posts:

Ruth Strong's 'The Campus - June, 1916'

A Poem for Mother's Day from the Great War

Timely Verse from Christmas a Century Past

Thanksgiving in the Midst of War

Ruth Strong's 'The Campus - June 1916'

Miss Ruth Strong
Torontonensis, 1918

Century-old verse by Ruth Strong of Hamilton, an undergraduate of the University of Toronto, featured in Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1917).

Related post:

A Poem for Mother's Day from the Great War

A Poem for Mother's Day from the Great War

Century-old verse by Miss Elspeth Honeyman, whose brothers served in the 29th Battalion (Vancouver). From Canadian Poems of the Great War, chosen and edited by John W. Garvin (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918).

MOTHERHOOD, 1916 

          The night comes down and the wind is chill,
               (Are both my boys asleep?)
          Daylight tinges the distant hill,
               (Why is it I cannot sleep?) 

          A passing lad and a whistled tune,
               (France is so far away!)
          Roses bloom and the month is June,
               (The heat is the worst, they say.) 

          The list was long in the morning's news,
               (They are so young to die!)
          Which strong heart will the bullet choose —
               Where will his body lie? 

          Boys go clattering down the street,
               (Which will come back to me?)
          I hear the tramp of the soldiers' feet,
               (Dear God, that such things be!) 

          What will they buy with the blood of men?
               (Hearts break, but they do not die.)
         Victory, Honour, — and War again?
               (Dead faces turned to the sky?)

Timely Verse from Christmas a Century Past

The Globe, 25 December 1915

A CHRISTMAS STAR

                    Christmas chimes across the snow,
                         Can you ring the old refrain
                         When the world is seared with pain,
                    When the lights of joy burn low?
                    Lovely chimes across the snow,
                         Ring: May Peace be born again! 

                    Hearts that ache amidst the mirth,
                         Can we sing the songs of cheer?
                         Those who sang with us last year
                    Strive afar on alien earth.
                    All our songs are little worth,
                         Broken, faltering, thrilled with fear. 

                    Yet for thought space finds no bar;
                         Seas may part, but not divide;
                         Brothers, sons, our Country s pride,
                    Now we send our greeting far;
                    Lo, we set our love, a star
                         In your skies this Christmas-tide!

A Christmas poem by Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, sister of Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, from Canadian Poems of the Great War, edited by John W. Garvin (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918).

A Merry Christmas to all!

Related posts:

Christmas Greetings from Gay Page

'Christmas in Heaven' by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

Arthur Stringer Pines for Christmas
Miss Machar's 'The Call of Christmas - 1914'

Christmas Verse by the Master of All Poets

Thanksgiving in the Midst of War

'Thanksgiving' by Douglas Leader Durkin
Canadian Poems of the Great War
John W. Garvin, ed.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918

Related posts:

'October in War Time'

A Thanksgiving Hymn

Thanksgiving Day Advice

'Thanksgiving Morn'

An Expatriate Canadian Poet's New England Thanksgiving for Canadian Thanksgiving

Bilious, Bitchy and Bedevilled by Spite? Not at All.

Just in time for Christmas, the new Canadian Notes & Queries is here. Seth provides the cover, along with a short tribute to the Maclean's illustrated cover. The magazine switched to photographs before I came along, but old issues lingered in our home. The 10 January 1952 cover by Oscar Cahén was a favourite. I think of it each dying year as winter moves in.

Here I am getting all nostalgic.

John Metcalf, not Maclean's, is the focus of this CNQ. Contributors include Caroline Adderson, Mike Barnes, Clarke Blaise, Michael Darling, Alex Good, Jeet Heer, Kim Jernigan, David Mason and Dan Wells. Cartoonist David Collier gives us a two-page adaptation of Going Down Slow. Roy MacSkimming, Christopher Moore and Nick Mount have interviews with the man, while I praise Metcalf's invigorating, irreverent Bumper Books.

But wait, there's more: a new short story from Kathy Page, four poems by Jim Johnston, along with reviews from Steven W. Beattie, Kerry Clare, Emily Donaldson and Bruce Whiteman.

I think all contributors will forgive and understand that my favourite thing about the issue is the collectable. A numbered, limited edition chapbook containing a new John Metcalf story, it's available only to subscribers.

And subscriptions are only $20.

And they make a great Christmas gift.

Here's how to order.

A bonus:

(cliquez pour agrandir)

The back cover of Carry On Bumping (Toronto: ECW, 1988).

Now, that's how you sell a book.

The Foster Poetry Conference at Fifty

Irving Layton, Milton Wilson, Leonard Cohen, Eli Mandel and Aviva Layton,
Foster Poetry Conference,, October 1963

Off to the Eastern Townships this morning to celebrate the publication of The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco:

Brome Lake Books

265 E Knowlton Rd

Knowlton, QC 

12 October 2013, 2:00 pm

And what better day than today? 'Twas fifty years ago – 12 October 1963 – that Glassco's Foster Poetry Conference opened at the Glen Mountain Ski Chalet. With Glassco, F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, Irving Layton, Louis Dudek, Ralph Gustafson, Eldon Grier, D. G. Jones, Leonard Cohen, Leonard Angel, Kenneth Hetrz, Henry Moscowitz and Seymour Mayne, it remains the greatest gathering of Quebec's English-language poets.

Three days of poetry, comradeship and drink, even the most subdued reports paint it as a great success. Scott was so fired by the experience that he pressured Glassco to edit the proceedings for McGill University Press.  

Glassco agreed to take on the project, but soon came to recognize that the contents failed to capture anything of the exuberant nature of the conference. The late night conversations, the raw exchanges, the drinking – almost all that had been informal, spontaneous, and dynamic had been left unrecorded. What's more he found work on the book a "horrible bore." On 4 May 1964, he wrote Jean Le Moyne: "I shall never be an editor again: this is the work for professionals who have secretaries, electric typewriters, photocopy machines, the co-ordinative faculty and endless patience: but the book is now ready for press."

When the galleys arrived Glassco found the quality so poor that the November 1964 publication date had to be scratched. For months the anthology hung over his head as he awaited, with dread, the reset galleys. What arrived was much improved and he moved quickly to clear the sheets from his desk. Then, just when his work appeared to be finished, Glassco discovered that he'd been saddled with the task of distributing payments to the twenty contributors. The irritation was only compounded by the small sums. Leonard Cohen received three dollars, barely enough to purchase a copy of the book.

My work in editing Glassco's letters was much more pleasurable.

'Communion Pascale' de Émile Nelligan

From Franges d'Autel (Montreal: n.p., 1900)

Related posts:

'The Easter Parade, 1915' by Robert Stanley Weir

Uncollected Easter Verse by Arthur Stringer

'Robert Burns' by Mr. John Steele of St. John, N.B.

Robert Burns Statue
Victoria Park, Halifax
Photograph by David Murray

Verse by John Steele found in Selections from Scottish Canadian Poets; Being a Collection of the Best Poetry Written by Scotsmen and Their Descendants in the Dominion of Canada, published in 1900 under the auspices of the Caledonian Society of Toronto, printed by Imrie, Graham & Co.

Nearly everything known about the poet is contained in the accompanying photograph and biography:

I'm willing to bet a bottle of Lagavulin that the versifying John Steele is very same John Steele, laborer, who is recorded here in the 1851 Census of New Brunswick:

(cliquez pour agrandir)

At the time, a 40-year-old John Steele was living in Chatham Parish, Northumberland County, New Brunswick, with exhausted wife Grizzla (34) and their seven children: Elizabeth (18), Marion (16), Joseph (14), John (9), Ann (7), Mary (5) and Richard (1 month).

For the day, one more from the fecund Mr Steele:

Faith, Philanthropies and Verse for Air Raid Victims

Montreal in Verse:
     An Anthology of English Poetry by Montreal Poets
[Leo Cox, ed]
[Montreal]: Writers of the Poetry Group of the Canadian Authors Association, Montreal Branch, [1942]

A fundraiser in aid of the Queen's Canadian Fund for Air-raid Victims in Britain, this little chapbook of was published sixty years ago this month. Just in time for Christmas.

The Second World War looms large in these pages, but is dwarfed by Mount Royal.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

Thirty-two poets contribute thirty-two poems, and the hill that gives Montreal its name features in nearly half. I think the explanation may be found in the contributors' addresses. You won't find A.J.M. Smith, A.M. Klein or Leo Kennedy in these 48 pages, with few exceptions this is the verse of the city's privileged. And of this group, no one enjoyed greater status and comfort than Amy Redpath Roddick, whose family names kick off poetess Mildred Low's contribution, "Children of the McGill Campus":

Roddick and Redpath and old McGill,
Who, being dead, are living still,
How does it meet your kind intent
The way your benefice is spent?

Lady Roddick herself can't avoid same:

Six decades on, it's impossible to read this verse without thinking of F.R. Scott's "The Canadian Authors Meet" and the poets "measured for their faith and philanthropics". The good folks at Poetry Quebec have made a similar observation. That said, I'm not about to throw Montreal in Verse on the scrap heap. If anything, it reminds me of how much there is to explore of our literary past. Contributors Stella M. Bainbridge, Lily E.F. Barry, Warwick Chipman, Leo Cox, Lorraine Noel Finley, John Murray Gibbon, Christine L. Henderson, A. Beatrice Hickson, W.J King, Alice M.S. Lighthall, William D. Lighthall, Mildred Low, Margaret Furness MacLeod, Martha Martin, Dorothy Sproule, Jean Percival Waddell, Robert Stanley Weir and Margaret Ross Woods all had titles to their names, but I've yet to pick up even one of them.

Researching these names I discover that John Murray Gibbon once wrote a universally praised, yet entirely forgotten novel entitled Pagan Love (1922). Then there's R. Henry Mainer, whose Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road (1908) centres on a hard-as-nails widowed Upper Canadian tavern owner.

The most intriguing is A. Beatrice Hickson, whom Canada's Early Women Writers tells us not only founded and ran a school for "misdirected and wayward" girls, but "painted figurines which were unique in design and costume and whose popularity outran her ability to produce them."

In language and theme, Miss Hickson – she never married – stands apart from her polite and proper fellow poets:

Before reading this slim volume of verse I'd never heard of Leo Cox, who wrote these charitable lines in his Editor's Note:

As in all anthologies, quality and style vary considerably, but all the pieces possess in common a strong love of Montreal, of her history and infinite charm. These verses are a loving tribute from sensitive citizens.

Apparently Macmillan published a collection of Cox's verse in 1941. Must track it down. I'll pass on his  Story of the Mount Stephen Club.

Object: A nicely produced, staple-bound chapbook in red paper wraps, this copy comes to me from my father. The pencilled correction to Amy Redpath Roddick's poem is in an unknown hand. Dare I hope that it is the work of Lady Roddick herself?

The 1 May 1943 edition of the Gazette reports that nearly one thousand copies of Montreal in Verse had been sold, contributing $200 to the Queen's Canadian Fund. The selling price was 25¢.

Access: Not found in even one of our public libraries – those wishing to borrow a copy should look to our universities. Two copies are currently listed for sale online, the most expensive of which ($45) is dedicated and signed by contributor Jean Percival Waddell.

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!

Richler Retitled

Another deadline approacheth. Tradition dictates that things here become a little less wordy and a bit more visual. There'll be no great theme this time – just a few uncommon covers that I find odd, silly or terribly amusant.

Popular Library's 1955 edition of The Acrobats, retitled Wicked We Love, leads the parade. The sexy substitution will come as no surprise to those familiar with the paperback publisher. Mordecai Richler received no special treatment – look what they did with Casino Royale.

I can't think of any other Canadian writer who experienced so many title changes at the hands of American publishers. In 1963, The Incomparable Atuk was fine with André Deutsch and McClelland & Stewart, but not Simon & Schuster.

The New York publisher not only replaced the title, but got rid of Len Deighton's wonderfully whimsical cover.

Yes, Len Deighton.

Canadian and British publishers seem to have been happy with Shovelling Trouble, as a title for Richler's 1972 collection of essays, but not the folks at Knopf down in New York.

Here, I cheat a bit. Shovelling Trouble and Notes on an Endangered Species and Others aren't exactly one and the same. Published in 1974, the latter scrambles the contents, and drops nine essays while adding nine others.

And finally, from 1983, this reflection of a great cultural divide. The Knopf cover – need I point to the right? – is by Lawrence Ratzkin, the very same man who twenty years earlier designed Stick Your Neck Out.

My thanks to John W. MacDonald for the image of Wicked We Love. His entertaining and informative essay on this surprisingly rare edition is highly recommended.