Last Words of a Raconteur

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence [Divers]
Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé [trans Jane Brierley]
Montreal: Véhicule, 1990

159 pages

Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé follows Arthur Hailey, William C. Heine, Tom Alderman, Richard Rohmer, Bruce Powe, and Joy Carroll as the seventh Canadian novelist I ever read. Three things set him apart, the first being that he was Canadien, in the nineteenth-century definition of the word. The second is that he was from the nineteenth century. The third is that he is a different class of writer. The Last Canadian has nothing on Les Anciens Canadiens.

Set in and around the conquest of New France, Les Anciens Canadiens (1863) was a critical and commercial success in the years preceding Confederation. It is by turns a historical novel, a supernatural novel, a religious novel, a gothic novel, a horror novel, a war novel, a memoir, and a romance. It was also the first Canadien novel to be translated twice into English; by Georgians M. Pennée (1864) and Charles G.D. Roberts (1898). In 1996, it was translated a third time by Jane Brierley. Her Canadians of Old is the only complete translation.

Since my teenage years, when I first read the Roberts, I've been struck by the focus on Les Anciens Canadiens to the exclusion of Aubert de Gaspé's other writings. It wasn't until 1988, 122 years after the first French-language edition that there was an English translation of his Mémoires. That translation, A Man of Sentiment, was also by Jane Brierley.

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, was the second Brierley Aubert de Gaspé translation. In a sense, she was at the end, or rather after the end as the author died decades before Divers first appeared in bookstores. It presents four pieces composed late in life, discovered amongst family papers. Writes the 1893 editor in his avant-propos: "Je prie le lecteur bienveillant de prendre en considération que ce sont les derniers écrits d'un octogénaire, qui est décédé avant d'avoir eu l'avantage de pouvoir les repasser."

The note isn't entirely honest in that two of the four had appeared previously in 1866 numbers of Le Foyer Canadien. Brierley takes a small liberty in rearranging the order. And why not? It's not as if Aubert de Gaspé had a say in Divers, or whether it would be published in the first place.

So we begin with 'Yellow-Wolf, 'Le Loup-Jaune' in Divers. The longest of the four, it takes the form of a tale told the author as a very young man by a elderly Malecite chieftain. The supernatural figures, as does brutal reality in the form of torture he suffered in Iroquois captivity. In 'Woman of the Foxes' ('Femme de la tribu des Renards') the victim this time is a young Iroquois slave girl who is acquired by a forefather of the author's dear friend Antoine -Gaspard Couillard. 'Big Louis and the Legend of Indian Lorette' ('Le Village indien de la Jeune-Lorette'), the finest of all four, relates to an exchange between the author and Big Louis, a Huron known for his intelligence and repartee. The latter shares the story of the great serpent, which very nearly brought an end to his people, all the while recognizing that he is sharing the tale with a man whose own people, religion, and drink has brought even greater devastation.

The final piece, 'General Wolfe's Statue' ('La statue de général Wolfe') is something of a detective story in which the author shares his findings and theories as to the origin of a less-than-life-size wooden tribute that once stood at the corner of du Palais and Saint-Jean in Quebec City. Murder figures! The translator continues the research in her endnotes.

The statue in its current location at the Morrin Centre, Quebec City. 

Jane Brierley was awarded the 1990 Governor General's Award for English-language Translation for this book, but she brought so much more. She adds an  introduction and meticulous annotations. Each of the four pieces is preceded by a "translator's advice to the reader," providing context.

The tales themselves comprise just 84 pages, but Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence is not a fast read. There is the richness of style, there is the weight of history and all that, and there is artifice to be recognized. Canadians of Old is most certainly the place to begin with Aubert de Gaspé... after that, A Man of Sentiment. But how wonderful that this exists! 

Object: A trade size paperback, Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence is one of the the most attractive books in Véhicule's fifty-one year history. Credit goes to the translator who worked with J.W. Stewart on its design. The interior features thirteen illustrations, a map, and a photograph. The striking cover painting is a self-portrait by Huron chief Zacharie Vincent (1815-1886).

Access: Used copies listed online range between $9.76 and $131.12. I recommend the one going for $9.76. Better yet, pristine, unused copies can be purchased directly from the publisher at $14.95 through this link.

The original French, Divers, was first published in 1893 by Beauchemin. A Gatineau bookseller is offering a library discard of the first edition at $41.60. It has been rebound in just about the ugliest boards imaginable, but still seems a bargain.

Divers can be read online here courtesy of the University of Toronto and Internet Archive.

Related posts:

Gothique Canadien

Remembering la Corriveau

Old Folks
Reluctantly Revisiting Canada's Great Virus Novel

Véhicule Press: Ten for Fifty

Véhicule Press celebrated its fiftieth anniversary this past weekend. One of eight people invited to speak at the celebration, I kept kept my comments short, but only because Mark Abley, who co-hosted the evening with Nyla Matuk, threatened hook and hammer if I went over my allotted time. I left the stage unscathed by channelling Big Star... as opposed to, say, Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Fifty years is a remarkable achievement, particularly in this country. The press has survived while others, large and small have ceased or been absorbed by foreign multinationals. I'm proud to have played a small role in its history.

For you bibliophiles, I've have put together a list of ten old favourite Véhicule Press books from my collection:

Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence [Divers]

Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé [trans Jane Brierly]

1990

Jane Briery translated the complete published oeuvres of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, beginning with Les Anciens Canadiens (Canadians of Old), one of this country's most translated works. The last, Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, received a Governor General's Award for Translation. 

Veiled Countries/Lives

Marie-Claire Blais [trans Michael Harris]

1984

Marie-Claire Blais is my favourite Québécoise writer. To think that we've both been published by the same press!

Comprising Pays voilés (1963) and Existences (1967), this volume is the only translation of her poems. 

The Crow's Vow

Susan Briscoe

2010

The poet's only book. How I looked forward to her next.

It was not to be.

A wonderful friend and a beautiful soul.

Neons in the Night

Lucien Francoeur [trans Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood]

1980

The oldest Véhicule Press book in my collection. Francoeur inscribed it to "Joe," describing a 1981 John Abbott College class as "wild and crazy." I was a John Abbott student at the time, but do not remember his visit. If memory serves, I purchased my copy at Aeroplane, a basement-level book and record store on Sherbrooke Street in NDG. 

The Heat Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco

John Glassco

2013

A Gentleman of Pleasure, my biography of Glassco, was the culmination of seven years' work. The Heart Accepts It All was edited in its wake. Credit goes to Carmine Starnino for proposing this book. For a time, I thought of it as my farewell to things Glassco, but I now realize I was just taking a breather.

Dr. Delicious: Memoirs of a Life in CanLit

Robert Lecker

2006

Best to leave the description of this book to the author:

The idea of being Dr. Delicious instead of plain old Professor Lecker made me think about the kind of writing I would have done if I was really the tasty version of myself. Professor Lecker would be reluctant to tell stories about his own life. He would resist the temptation to make his life in Canadian literature personal. He would not gossip. He would write scholarly articles and books that no one would read. But Dr. Delicious would lead a completely different life. He would delight in his classroom experiences. He would take liberties with his life story. He would talk about the ups and downs of being a Canadian publisher. He could bring in music, painting, hypochondria, malt whisky, deranged students, government grants, questionable authors, bank debt, termite infestations, a teaching stint in Brazil, lawsuits, the pleasures of hot-sauce. He would write about his passions, his failures, how the whole business of CanLit drove him crazy, lost him sleep, drove him on.

Stepping Out: The Golden Age of Montreal Night Clubs

Nancy Marrelli

2004

Hello Montreal! Stepping Out covers thirty years – 1925 to 1955 – during which Montreal's night clubs presented the finest jazz musicians, crooners, and burlesque acts in North America. Oh, the photos!

Remember the scene in The Great Gatsby when Nick suggests Gatsby lie low in Montreal? This is the city he had in mind.

The Crime on Cote des Neiges

David Montrose [Charles Ross Graham]

2010

A second sentimental favourite, The Crime on Cote des Neiges was the first title in the Ricochet series. Sixteen have followed. I'm most proud of the John Buell reissues – The Pyx and Four Days – but this stands as one of this country's three best private dick novels

Remarkably, after all these years, Montrose/Graham remains a mystery. For all my efforts, I've yet to find a single person who so much as remembers meeting the man.

Wardlife:

The Apprenticeship of a Young Writer as a Hospital Clerk

Andrew Steinmetz

1999

Another book by a friend. I first met Andrew in the summer of '85 at Station Ten, which I maintain was the smokiest of all Montreal night clubs. My eyes still sting. Andrew was then a member of Weather Permitting. We two were young pups, each imagining that we might one day produce a book. Andrew was the first to realize the dream. As much a fan of his writing as I was of Weather Permitting. 

Lasting Impressions:

A Short History of English Publishing in Quebec

Bruce Whiteman

1998

Short and bitter sweet, Bruce Whiteman's history of English publishing is an invaluable resource. Véhicule Press figures. How could it not?

It's only in writing this that I realize Lasting Impressions was published a quarter-century before last weekend's half-century celebration.

Here's to the next fifty!

Related posts:

Gothique Canadien

A Penthouse Killing in Montreal

Four Days in Darkest Quebec
This Just In...

Gothique Canadien

Cameron of Lochiel [Les Anciens Canadiens]

Phillipe[-Joseph] Aubert de Gaspé [trans Charles G.D.

     Roberts]
Boston: L.C.Page, 1905

287 pages

Pulled from the bookcase on la Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste, returned on Canada Day, I first read this translation of Les Anciens Canadiens in my teens. It served as my introduction to this country's French-language literature. Revisiting the novel four decades later, I was surprised at how much I remembered.

Les Anciens Canadiens centres on Archibald Cameron and friend Jules d'Haberville. The two meet as students at Quebec City's Collège des Jésuites. Cameron, "commonly known as Archie of Lochiel," is the orphaned son of a father who made the mistake of throwing his lot behind Bonnie Prince Charlie. Jules is the son of the seigneur d'Haberville, whose lands lie at Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence, some eighty kilometres north-east of Quebec City.

Montreal's Lakeshore School Board – now the Lester B. Pearson School Board – was very keen that we study the seigneurial system.

And we did!

We coloured maps using Laurentian pencils; popsicle sticks and papier-mâché landscapes were also involved. There was much focus on architecture and geography, but not so much on tradition and culture.

We were not assigned Les Anciens Canadiens – not even in translation – which is a pity because I find it the most engaging historical novel in Canadian literature. 

It was through Les Anciens Canadiens that I first learned of Marie-Josephte Corriveau – la  Corriveau – who was executed in April 1763 for the bloody murder of her second husband, Louis Étienne Dodier. Her corpse was subsequently suspended roadside in a gibbet (left). Just the sort of thing that would've caught the attention of this high school Hammer Horror fan.

La Corriveau owes her presence in the novel to José Dubé, the d'Haberville's talkative trusted servant. Tasked with transporting Jules and his "brother de Lochiel" Archie from the Collège to the seigneury, he entertains with legends, folk stories, folk songs, and tall tales. José's story about la Corriveau has nothing to do with the murderess's crime, rather a dark night when "in her cage, the wicked creature, with her eyeless skull" attacked his father. This occurred on on the very same evening in which his dear père claims to have encountered all the damned souls of Canada gathered for a witches' sabbath on the Île d'Orléans (also known as the Île des Sorciers). Says José: "Like an honest man, he loved his drop; and on his journeys he always carried a flask of brandy in his dogfish-skin satchel. They say the liquor is the milk for old men."

Seigneur d'Haberville [Les Anciens Canadiens]
Phillipe Aubert de Gaspé [trans Georgians M. Pennée]
Toronto: Musson, 1929

Les Anciens Canadiens is unusual in that José and other secondary characters are by far the most memorable. We have, for example, M d'Egmont, "the old gentleman," who was all but ruined through his generosity to others. The account of his decent, culminating in confinement in debtors' prison, is most certainly drawn from the author's own experience. And then there's wealthy widow Marie, "witch of the manor," who foretells a future in which Archie carries "the bleeding body of him you call your brother."

The dullest of we high school students would've recognized early on that Archie and Jules' friendship is formed in the decade preceding the Seven Years' War. The brightest would've had some idea as to where things will lead. The climax, if there can be said to be one, has nothing to do with the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, rather the bloodier Battle of Sainte-Foy.

Not all is so dark. Aubert de Gaspé, born twenty-six years after the fall of New France, makes use of the novel to record the world of his parents and grandparents: their celebrations, their food, and their games ("'does the company please you,' or 'hide the ring,' ''shepherdess,' or 'hide and seek,' or 'hot cockles'"), while lamenting all that is slipping away:

In The Vicar of Wakefield Goldsmith makes the good pastor say:

     "I can't say whether we had more wit among us than usual, but I'm certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well."
     The same might be said of the present gathering, over which there reigned that French light-heartedness which seems, alas, to be disappearing in what Homer would call these degenerate days.

Les Anciens Canadiens is so very rich in detail and story. Were this another country, it would have been adapted to radio, film, and television. It should be assigned reading in our schools – both English and French. My daughter should know it. In our own degenerate days, she should know how to make a seigneurial manor house out of popsicle sticks. 

Object: Typical of its time. As far as this Canadian can tell, what's depicted on the cover is the Cameron tartan. The frontispiece (above) is by American illustrator H.C. Edwards. 

The novel proper is preceded by the translator's original preface and a preface written for the new edition.

Twelve pages of adverts for other L.C. Page titles follow, including Roberts' The Story of Red Fox, Barbara Ladd, The Kindred of the Wild, The Forge in the Forest, The Heart of the Ancient Wood, A Sister to Evangeline, By the Marshes of Minas, Earth's Enigmas, and his translation of Les Anciens Canadiens.

Access: Les Anciens Canadiens remains in print. The first edition, published in 1863 by Desbarats et Derbyshire, can be purchased can be found online for no more than US$150.

First editions of the Roberts translation, published as The Canadians of Old (New York: Appleton, 1890), go for as little as US$28.50.

In 1974, as Canadians of Old, it was introduced as title #106 in the New Canadian Library. This was the edition I read as teenager... and the edition I criticized in middle-age. Note that the cover credits the translator, and not the author:

 

That said, the NCL edition is superior to Page's 1905 Cameron of Lochiel – available online here thanks to the Internet Archive – only in that it features Aubert de Gaspé's endnotes (untranslated).

Les Anciens Canadiens has enjoyed three and a half translations. The first, by Georgians M. Pennée, was published ion 1864 under the title The Canadians of Old. It was republished in 1929 as Seigneur d'Haberville, correcting "printer's errors" and "too literal translation." Roberts' translation was the the second. The most recent, by Jane Brierley, published in 1996 by Véhicule Press. is the only translation in print. It is also the only edition to feature a translation of the endnotes.

Jane Brierley's translation, Canadians of Old, can be purchased here through the Véhicule Press website. Ms Brierley also translated Aubert de Gaspé's Mémoires (1866; A Man of Sentiment, Véhicule, 1987) and Divers (1893, Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, Véhicule, 1990).

Lester B. Pearson School Board take note.

 

Related posts:

Old Folks
Remembering la Corriveau

For All Its Faults: Remembering the New Canadian Library

Blue Plaque Special: Quebec City Edition

Portrait of a Former Mistress
Ontario Gothic Romance (with the scent of Brut)
Alberta Gothic

Old Folks

Jean-Louis Lessard has just completed a very fine series on early Canadian writer Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, the seigneur best-known for Les Anciens Canadiens (1863). I first encountered this historical romance as part of a CEGEP course on the literature of Quebec (if memory serves, Hubert Aquin's Prochain épisode and David Fennario's Without a Parachute were also on the reading list), but the words I read belonged to translator Sir Charles G.D. Roberts.

I've always viewed Roberts and his translation, The Canadians of Old, with a dab of derision, an irrational discourtesy that originates with the cover of the New Canadian Library edition used in the course. Those familiar with the NCL's second series design will be grateful that the only image I could find is so small. It was such an ugly book, made all the worse by the inexplicable presence of Roberts' name in place of the author's. Even the title is wrong: Canadians of Old, when it should be The Canadians of Old. Of course, none of this had anything to do with Roberts, who was three decades dead when this particular edition appeared. Like I say: irrational.

To be fair to Sir Charles, his name doesn't even appear on the cover of the handsome 1890 first edition, despite the fact that he was at the time a poet of some acclaim. I don't believe Roberts ever really considered himself a translator. The idea for the book came from New York publisher Appleton, and was accepted at a time when he was in dire need of cash. That said, it wasn't a bad match. Roberts may not have shared Aubert de Gaspé's interest in Boileau and Racine, but both he and the seigneur were readers of Sir Walter Scott. The name of the novel's protagonist, Archibald Cameron of Locheill, provides a good indication of the depth of the baronet's influence. This was raised to the surface in 1905, when publisher L.C. Page reissued the book as Cameron of Lochiel - dropping the double 'l', thus bringing the character's name into line with Cameron of Locheil in Waverley, Scott's hugely successful first novel.

This second title has received a good amount of criticism these past ten decades, but let's again be fair; though adopted in Canada by Copp Clark, it was first imposed on the book by a Boston publisher with an eye on the American market. I'll add that the 1865 theatrical adaptation was titled Archibald Cameron of Locheill ou un épisode de la guerre de Sept Ans au Canada, and that the plot has more to do with Archie than pal and fellow protagonist Jules d'Haberville.

Les Anciens Canadiens holds a unique position in this country as a novel translated by four different hands. The first, by Georgina M. Pennée (The Canadians of Old, 1864), was later revised by Thomas Guthrie Marquis and published in 1929 as Seigneur d'Haberville: A Romance of the Fall of New France. I imagine that Roberts' translation is the most read (the NCL edition sold nearly 1800 copies in the first six months alone); a great shame since it has been surpassed by Jane Brierley's 1996 translation. The only one currently in print, it is highly recommended, as are her translations of Aubert de Gaspé's Mémoires (A Man of Sentiment, 1988) and his posthumous Divers (Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, 1990), which received a Governor General's Award.

Oh, and Prochain épisode and Without a Parachute? Also recommended.