Showing posts with label Copp Clark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Copp Clark. Show all posts

01 July 2022

Verse by the First of Dominion Poetesses



Verse for the day by Agnes Maule Machar from Lays of the 'True North' and Other Canadian Poems (Toronto: Copp, Clark, 1899). No less a critic than Edwin Arnold considered Miss Machar "the first of Dominion poetesses." See if you don't agree.


CANADA'S BIRTHDAY

With feu de joie, and merry bells, and cannons' thundering peal,
And pennons fluttering on the breeze, and serried rows of steel,
We greet once more the birthday morn of our Canadian land,
Wide stretching from Atlantic shore to far Pacific strand,
With sweeping rivers, ocean lakes, and prairies wide and free,
And waterfalls and forests dim, and mountains by the sea;
A country on whose birth there smiled the genius of romance,
Above whose cradle brave hands hung the lilied flag of France;
Whose infancy was grimly nursed in peril, pain and woe,
When gallant hearts found early graves beneath Canadian snow;
When savage raid and ambuscade and famine's sore distress
Combined their strength in vain to crush the gallant French noblesse;
While her dim, trackless forests lured again and yet again
From silken courts of sunny France her flower, the brave Champlain;
And now her proud traditions guard four ancient rolls of fame,
Crécy's and Flodden's combatants for ancestors we claim!
Past feud and battle buried far behind the peaceful years,
While Gaul and Celt and Saxon turn to pruning-hooks their spears;
Four nations welded into one with long, historic past,
Have found in these our western wilds one common life at last.

Through the young giant's mighty limbs that reach from sea to sea
There runs a throb of conscious life, of waking energy;
From Nova Scotia's misty coast to far Pacific shore
She wakes, a band of scattered homes and colonies no more,
But a young nation, with her life full beating in her breast;
A noble future in her eyes, the Britain of the West.
Hers be the generous task to fill the yet untrodden plains
With fruitful, many-sided life that courses through her veins:
The English honour, nerve and pluck, the Scotchman's faith in right,
The grace and courtesy of France, the Irish fancy bright,
The Saxon's faithful love of home and home's affections blest,
And chief of all, our holy faith, of all her treasures best!

May she, though poor in luxuries, wax rich in noble deeds,
Knowing that righteousness exalts the people that it leads.
As yet the waxen mould is soft, the opening page is fair;
It rests with those who rule us now to leave their impress there,
The stamp of true nobility, high honour, stainless truth,
The earnest quest of noble ends, the generous heart of youth;
The love of country, soaring far above all party strife,
The love of culture, art and song, the crowning grace of life,
The love of science reaching far through Nature's hidden ways,
The love and fear of Nature's God, a nation's highest praise;
So, in the long hereafter, our Canada shall be
The worthy heir of British power and British liberty,
Spreading their blessings 'neath her sway to her remotest bounds,
While with the fame of her fair name a continent resounds,
True to the high traditions of our Britain's ancient glory
Of patriots, prophets, martyrs, saints, who live in deathless story,
Strong in their liberty and truth, to shed from shore to shore
A light among the nations, till nations are no more!

12 April 2020

Atypical Easter Verse by Agnes Maule Machar



For this Easter Sunday, 'In Memoriam—H.W.L., A Noble Teacher' by  Agnes Maule Machar, "first of Dominion poetesses." It is a celebration of a holy day, a celebration of faith, and a memorial to a beloved teacher. The version below is taken from Lays of the 'True North' and Other Canadian Poems (Toronto: Copp, Clark, 1899), in which the poet provides a note identifying "H.W.L." as "Hannah W. Lyman, first Principal of Vassar College, New York State, and previously an esteemed teacher in Montreal, Canada."


I admit to having being confused when I first came upon this poem; it was my understanding that Agnes Maule Machar's father, Presbyterian clergyman John Machar, had been solely responsible for her education. Further investigation revealed that daughter Agnes had spent one – and only one – year at Ipswich Seminary, a Montreal boarding school run by Miss Lyman.

Though a Montrealer – born, bred, and educated – it wasn't until recently that I'd so much as heard the name Hannah W. Lyman. Henry James Morgan's wonderful two-volume Types of Canadian Women and of Women Who Are or Have Been Connected with Canada (Toronto: William Briggs, 1903) – source of the images used in this post – speaks to her importance and influence on the city:
Miss Hannah Willard Lyman, a successful and inspiring teacher of youth, was born at Old Northampton, Mass., in 1816, and died at Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where she was vice- principal of Vassar College, February 21st, 1871. She commenced to teach at Gotham Academy, Maine, and she subsequently taught in Mrs. Gray's Seminary for Young Ladies at Petersburg, Virginia. For the next twenty-two years she conducted a seminary for young ladies, in Montreal, which took the lead of all similar institutions in the Canadas. Her natural gifts, amounting almost to a genius for her profession, were enriched by an education of no ordinary range. She was a sister of Rev. Henry Lyman, a missionary, who was murdered by the natives in Sumatra in 1832, and whose life she has written {New York: 1857); also of the late Lieut.-Colonel Theodore Lyman, and the late Colonel S.J. Lyman, of Montreal. The Rev. Dr. Campbell, in his "History of the St. Gabriel Street Church, Montreal," says that "the name of Miss Lyman is yet as ointment poured forth in many hearts and homes, not only in Montreal, but all through Canada, for the blessed influences which she exerted as an instructor of young ladies." A memorial of her is preserved in McGill University by the "Hannah Willard Lyman Fund," raised by subscriptions from her former pupils, and invested as a permanent endowment to furnish annually a scholarship or prizes in a college for women affiliated to the university, or in classes for the higher education of women. Her remains were brought to Montreal and laid in Mount Royal Cemetery.
Sadly, it seems the memorial preserved in McGill University is no more.

A remarkable woman. Would that I could've visited her gravesite this Easter, but in this time of crisis it's closed for all but essential services.

IN MEMORIAM

H. W. L., A NOBLE TEACHER 
      'Tis once again the Eastertide,
            So bright, so full of summer calm;
      So fair the quiet waters glide,
            The air so full of fragrant balm,
      That earth and sky and crystal tide
            Seem chanting sweet an Easter psalm;
      So, to her risen Saviour-King,
      Methinks—a ransomed earth might sing. 
      How brightly in the sacred chain
            Of thoughts that with the season blend,
      Thy well-known image shines again
            In memory's light, beloved friend!
      Though now we seek thy smile in vain,
            Our converse hath not here its end;
      So linked art thou with this blest day
      Thou scarcely seemest passed away! 
      Thine Easter song shall sweetly flow,
            Unmingled now with loss or pain,
      And we in shadow here below
            Can almost hear the joyous strain;
      For 'Worthy is the Lamb,' we know,
            Is evermore the glad refrain;
      How, in the sunshine of His grace,
      Must thou rejoice to see His face! 
      We still must keep the feast below,
            Partake the sacramental wine;
      Thou needest no memorials now
            In presence of the Living Vine.
      Yet, though our tears will have their flow
            We would not at thy gain repine;
      For our communion still shall be
      With thee—through Christ in Him with Thee! 
      We know not what new realms of thought
            Have opened to thine eager gaze;
      We know not how thy soul is taught
            The knowledge of God's hidden ways;
      How problems once with mystery fraught
            Now fill thy heart with grateful praise,
      While we must wander still and wait
      In the dim light without the gate! 
      But well we know thy longing heart
            Hath seen fulfilled its sweetest dreams;
      Hath found its ever-blessed part
            In that deep love whose gladsome beams
      It sought afar—as seeks the hart,
            Athirst, the crystal-flowing streams,
      Now, bathing in that glorious tide,
      At last, at last is—satisfied!
      Well—though we cannot grasp the bliss
            That fills thy cup of gladness there,
      Nor know what we shall gain or miss
            In life that tends—we know not where,
      We may go forward, knowing this—
            Who cared for thee for us will care—
      And, in the 'many mansions,' we
      At last shall share thy rest with thee. 
      But while on earth shall lie our lot,
            We cherish still the thought of thee;
      The living lesson thou hast taught
      Of faith and hope and charity.
      The life with patient labour fraught,
            From self and selfish aims set free;
      A power our slower hearts to move,
      To follow in thy path of love! 
      We thank God for thy life below,
            We thank Him for the quiet rest
      Of which such toilers only know
            The sweetness, when at length possessed.
      The words that here thou lovedst so,
            In whose fulfilment thou art blest,
      Those words of comfort, still and deep,
      We softly murmur while we weep:
      'He giveth His beloved sleep!'
Wishing all a Happy Easter.

Stay healthy.

Stay safe.

Related posts:

04 September 2018

Familiar to Hundreds (including Mike Myers?)



Doors of the Night
Frank L. Packard
Toronto: Copp Clark, 1922
297 pages

The hero of this novel is a young man named Billy Kane. Raised a son of wealth – or so he thought – on the death of his father Billy learns that the family fortune has been long since spent. Happily, he secures a position as personal secretary to David Ellsworth, a known collector of rubies and one of Manhattan's richest men. Billy enjoys his work, but is concerned about his employer's generosity toward the less fortunate. It isn't that Billy doesn't believe in charity, rather that he's suspicious about those to whom Ellsworth gives money. Antonio Lavarto is a case in point:
The man was a pitiful looking object enough – one of those mendicants commonly designated in the vernacular as a "flopper." His legs were twisted under him in contorted angles at the knees, and his means of locomotion consisted in lifting himself up on the palms of his hands and swaying himself painfully along a foot or so at a time.
Despite his best efforts, Billy hasn't been able to get anything on Laverto... that is, until the night Ellsworth asks him to deliver a gift of $2000 to the flopper's flat. Billy finds evidence that Laverto is indeed a fraud, but doesn't feel all that good about it; Ellsworth likes to think the best of people, and there's no pleasure to be found in proving the old man wrong.

Billy never has an opportunity to tell his employer about Lavarto. He returns from his errand to find Ellsworth has been murdered, the
ruby collection gone, and that he, Billy Kane, has been framed. Billy manages to elude the awaiting lawmen, but is shot in his escape. On the run, losing blood, he's mistaken for Bundy Morgan, alias the Rat, a kingpin of the criminal underworld. He regains his strength, then sets the Rat's gang off in search of the missing rubies. Billy's thinking is that in solving the Ellsworth murder and the mystery of the missing gems he will be able to clear his name. However, his plan is complicated by the appearance of a mysterious "Woman in Black," who seems to have something over the Rat. This means Billy must bend to her will.

What does she want?

She wants him to fight crime, of course.

Readers of Packard will find much of this familiar. Let's begin with Billy Kane, a name that bears some similarity to Jimmie Dale, alias the Gray Seal, the author's greatest hero. Like Billy, Jimmie was raised in comfort. Both take on the personas of disreputable men. Billy becomes a crimefighter because he's blackmailed by a mysterious woman, as is Jimmie.  Even the flopper, a minor character, is familiar.


The first flopper I've ever encountered was in Packard's 1911 novel The Miracle Man. Like Lavarto, he's a fraud who only pretends to be "crippled." Played by Lon Cheney in the film adaptation, this earlier flopper is so great a character that he's mentioned on the cover of the Hodder & Stoughton paper edition:


H&S used the "Good it's a PACKARD [sic]" tag on several of its reissues. And why not? Packard was remarkably consistent. The bulk of his literary output has New York as a setting. It's a city with an underworld the Montrealer knew well, thanks in part to the NYPD, who allowed him to accompany them on raids. Manhattan is invariably divided into luxurious mansions of men like poor David Ellsworth and the squalor of rag shops, opium dens, dive bars, and cramped tenements in which members of the criminal class reign. In Doors of the Night they have names like Gypsy Joe, Red Vallon, Shaky Liz, the Cadger, and Whitey Jack.

"Good it's a PACKARD."

Doors of the Night is as good a place as any other to start reading Packard. This alone speaks to his talent.

Trivia: The most clever of all criminal schemes involves a character known as the Cherub, who spends two weeks pretending to be the grandson of a Shaky Liz. On the evening when the crime is to be committed, he has this to say:


I'd thought that diss originated with Wayne's World. Apparently not.

Trivia II: The quote on the cover of the the H&S paper edition of The Miracle Man doesn't appear in the novel, though something very similar is said by Helena to "gentleman crook and high- class, polished con-man" Doc Madison:
"Doc," she said, "it – it isn’t fair. It’s a shame – he can’t fight back."

Object and Access: A 297-page hardcover, mine is a copy of the first (and only) Canadian edition. It was purchased six years ago at London's Attic Books. Price: $10. Like Copp Clark's, the first American edition (Doran) and first British edition (Hodder & Stoughton) were also published in 1922. A cheap A.L. Burt edition followed. The last Doors of the Night saw print in the US was in 1931 as one of the Gray Seal editions (above) published by Doubleday Doran. The Hodder & Stoughton paper edition appears to date from about the same time.

Doors of the Night first appeared as a serial in The Popular Magazine (20 September - 7 December 1918).


The novel is held in one edition or another by Library and Archives Canada and twenty-two of our academic libraries.

Fifteen copies are listed for sale online, ranging from US$5.23 (a Fair A.L. Burt copy w/o jacket) to US$110.00 (a Very Good Doran 1st).

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04 November 2016

Testing Jimmie Dale's Patience (and mine)



Jimmie Dale and the Phantom Clue
Frank L. Packard
Toronto: Copp, Clark, 1922

This third Gray Seal book begins where the second, The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale, leaves off. Gentleman Jimmie and lady Marie LaSalle are entwined, adrift in a small boat on the East River. Wizard Marre is dead... and with him the last remnant of the Crime Club that had once threatened their lives. Eventually, Marie breaks the embrace and begins to row. Jimmie looks on, "drinking in the lithe, graceful swing of her body, the rhythmic stroke of the heavy oars." All is calm and the pace is slow, despite Marie's exertion, until they reach Manhattan.

Marie acts quickly. Gaining terra firma, she flings the oars in the water, then pushes the boat – and Jimmie – back into the river.
"Jimmie! Oh, Jimmie!" Her voice reached him in a low, broken sob. "There was no other way. It's in your pocket, Jimmie. I put it there when – when you were – were holding me."
Jimmie watches as Marie disappears into the crowded street, and I nearly threw the book against the wall.

The pattern repeats. Jimmie Dale and the Phantom Clue begins in
much the same way as The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale. Our hero has vanquished the villains of the previous volume only to learn that another threatens Marie. Fearful that the link between she and he will expose the millionaire clubman's secret identity as the Gray Seal, Marie disappears to take on her new foe. The difference this time is that she expects to call on Jimmie's help every once in a while, as detailed in a letter she had left in his pocket.

There follows a new set of Gray Seal adventures; some work toward the defeating Marie's new nemesis, a mysterious figure she calls the Phantom, while others don't. The plots are clever and the writing is on par, but it's all a bit too familiar... and familiarity breeds contempt. I grew tired of reading details of Jimmie's costume changes and elderly
 butler Jason's pride at having "dandled" the infant Jimmie on his knee. We're told three times that the underworld's slogan is "Death to the Gray Seal!" (down from four in The Adventures of Jimmie Dale and eight in the The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale). Because the adventures were first published apart in pulp magazines, one might expect a certain amount of repetition and reminding, but the absence of an editor's red pen here just adds to the stagnant nature of the book.

I like to think that Jimmie Dale and the Blue Envelope Murder, the next Gray Seal volume, opens with the two crimefighters together, perhaps married with children, but I  really don't care enough to investigate.

At the end, I cast my mind back to the beginning, and wondered why Jimmie hadn't simply swum to shore.

Object: A 301-page novel in bland blue cloth with damaged dust jacket. The cover illustration is by A.D. Rahn. I purchased my copy in 2012 at London's Attic Books. Price: $15.00.

I have a second copy, one of the ten Gray Seal Edition Packards I bought two years ago. Price: US$25.00 (for the ten).

Access: First published in 1922 by Copp, Clark (Canada) and Doran (United States). The following year, Hodder & Stoughton put out the first UK edition. As far as I can tell, the novel was last published in 1942 by Novel Selections as Jimmy Dale and the Phantom Clue.


The novel is held by nineteen of our universities, but not one library serving the public. Library and Archives fails, as does the more reliable Toronto Public Library.

Twenty-two copies of one edition or another is listed by online booksellers, ranging in price from US$4.50 (a cheap A.L. Burt reprint) to US$100 (the Copp, Clark Canadian first, "near fine in very good dj"). My advice is to try Attic Books.

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08 August 2016

The Further Frustrations of Jimmie Dale



The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale
Frank L. Packard
New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1931

"The Gray Seal is dead."

So ends The Adventures of Jimmie Dale. I enjoyed reading those words, even if I knew they weren't true; Packard published four more Jimmie Dale books, The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale being the second.

Don't get me wrong. I really liked Jimmie – much more than most millionaires – but I was growing tired of the Gray Seal, his crime fighting alter-ego. The Adventures of Jimmie Dale clocks in at 468 pages, and there is only so much pulp a man can digest in one sitting. What kept me going was the promise that Jimmie would finally be united with the mystery woman behind his adventures.

I do like a happy ending.

Slowly, very slowly, veils are cast aside, until the mystery woman is revealed as Marie LaSalle, a beautiful heiress who has been living amongst the dregs of society disguised a hag known as Silver Mag. In the novel's climactic scene, both Jimmie and Marie shed their respective secret identities when the Crime Club, the group that had caused absolutely sweet Marie to go into hiding, is destroyed. Witnesses are convinced that Silver Mag and the Gray Seal perished in an inferno.

As I say, I do like a happy ending.

I picked up The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale because I was curious to see how Jimmie and Marie were getting along. I expected them to be married, living lives of luxury in a Park Avenue penthouse, and solving crimes for kicks like Nick and Nora Charles (only without the drinking or the humour). My heart fell when I learned that Jimmie and Marie weren't together. There was no break-up. Ever cautious Marie decides that surviving members of the Crime Club might be suspicious of their relationship; after all, she and Jimmie hadn't known each other before the troubles started. She determines that the best course of action is to stay away from one another for a year or so.

And then Marie disappears.


Jimmie goes undercover and underground. As Smarlinghue, an impoverished painter and dope fiend, he moves amongst the criminal class in the hopes of finding a trail that will lead to Marie. Many adventures follow, few of which have anything to do with his objective. However, Jimmie is a good guy, so willingly places himself at risk to see justice done. In this respect and others, The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale repeats The Adventures of Jimmie Dale. The reader is presented with a series of well-crafted plots, ingenious and intricate, some of which further the narrative. As in the first book, the second concludes with Jimmie and Marie coming together to defeat villainy. As in the first book, they escape certain disaster, this time in a small boat on the East River:
She was crouched in the bottom of the boat close beside him. He bent his head until his lips touched her hair, and lower still until his lips touched hers. And a long time passed. And the boat drifted on. And he drew her closer into his arms, and held her there. She was safe now, safe for always – and the road of fear lay behind. And into the night there seemed to come a great quiet, and a great joy, and a great thankfulness, and a wondrous peace.
     And the boat drifted on.
     And neither spoke – for they were going home.
And so, another happy ending. But will they be borne back ceaselessly into the past?

Object: A 340-page book bound in bland, suitably grey boards. I bought my copy two years ago as part of the Gray Seal Edition of Packard's works. Price: US$25.00 for ten volumes. Are there more than ten? I'm assuming so, if only because The Adventures of Jimmie Dale doesn't figure amongst my ten.


Access: Serialized in People's magazine (November 1916 - August 1917), The Further Adventures of Jimmy Dale first appeared as a book in 1919, published by Copp, Clark (Canada), Doran (the United States) and Cassell (the United Kingdom). It sold well in its day – the Hodder & Stoughton edition enjoyed at least ten printings! – and yet a mere eighteen copies are currently listed for sale online. The cheapest is a crappy A.L. Burt reprint with jacket pasted inside. Price: US$6.00. The best comes from a St Catharines bookseller, who offers a sad Copp, Clark first: "Only about 80% of the dust jacket remains. The spine is completely gone." Price: US$25.00. Not one copy of the Gray Seal Edition is listed.

The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale enjoyed at least two translations: Spanish (El sello gris) and Czech (Šedá pečeť 2). I'd be surprised if there aren't more.

A few words about the Spanish cover: That grey seal is much too large. Jimmie always takes care to handle same using tweezers. I'm pretty certain the mask depicted is not made of silk.

Canadians looking to borrow The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale from their local library are pretty much out of luck; only our universities and the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec have copies.

It can be read here – gratis – thanks to the Internet Archive.

Related post:

02 December 2015

Whatever Happened to Jimmie Dale?



The Adventures of Jimmie Dale
Frank L. Packard
Toronto: Copp Clark, 1917

This is my fourth Packard. Put in context, that's like tackling John Buchan's Witch Wood, Castle Gay and Sick Heart River before getting to The Thirty-Nine Steps. The Adventures of Jimmie Dale is the real entry point to Packard; it's his best-known book, his best-selling work and it introduces his most popular character. As with Buchan and Richard Hannay, Packard returned to his hero repeatedly throughout his career.

Jimmie Dale owes everything to his late father, who made millions manufacturing the finest safes money could buy. You might say that the fortune came through protecting those of others. Jimmie himself dabbled in sketching and writing before turning to breaking and entering. Donning a black silk mask, he'd sneak into the expansive homes of New York's well-to-do, crack open their safes, and affix a diamond-shaped grey seal in place of a carte de visite. Nothing would be taken – Jimmie has never wanted for anything – the thrill was payment enough.


One night, all went horribly wrong. Jimmie's secret identity as the "Gray Seal" was discovered by a mysterious, unseen woman who threatened to expose him unless he turned his talents toward combatting crime. The millionaire playboy did just that – resulting in even greater thrills.

There are comparisons to be made. Jimmie Dale follows Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel by some ten years, though I would argue that he's had a far greater influence. For one, the Gray Seal's adventures take place in a contemporary setting, not some fanciful, idealized past. There's a gritty reality in the depictions of New York's impoverished and its criminal class, aided I think by the access Packard was granted to NYPD stakeouts and raids. Then there is the Sanctuary, a secret lair in which Jimmie transforms into Larry the Bat, to all appearances a down-and-out cocaine addict who moves through the city's underworld. As both Larry and the Gray Seal, Jimmie wears a wide leather belt holding the tools of his crime fighting trade.

Walter Gibson acknowledged his debt to Packard in creating the Shadow. That Batman co-creator Bob Kane never said a thing is unsurprising.

Walt Disney was a great Gray Seal fan, and would re-enact scenes from the adventures before his staff. Here's a photo of Uncle Walt with a copy of Jimmie Dale and the Blue Envelope Murder (1930) on his desk. In 1952, Disney purchased the television rights to the adventures and tried to interest NBC in a series. Too dark, it seems. Wade Sampson's excellent article "Walt Disney aka the Gray Seal"  has more on the failed pitch.

I'm making a lot of the Disney connection because The Adventures of Jimmie Dale is even better suited for television today. The novel's structure owes much to the fact that it initially appeared in serialization. The first part, "The Man in the Case", details ten intricate and brilliantly executed adventures, each instigated by the mysterious woman. It's episodic, yet there is character development and an overarching narrative. The second part, "The Woman in the Case", consists of one long adventure in which the mystery of the mysterious woman is finally solved.

The mystery the reader is left with is how such an influential character can be so forgotten. Why has there been no revival? How is it that The Adventures of Jimmie Dale is out of print? Most of all, why did it take me so long to get around to reading it?

Gray? Grey?: I've used both here: one for the character and one for his calling card. A fellow Montrealer, I expect Packard was brought up to use "grey", but he was a pro who would've known to use "gray" when writing for the American market. Interestingly, the author anglicized the Gray Seal's adventures for British publication. Four years ago, a generous reader sent me these comparisons of the American and British versions:



Jimmie? Jimmy?: From the earliest days, publishers have struggled with the hero's name.

I've encountered two different editions published as The Adventures of Jimmy Dale, though the texts of each had Jimmie as "Jimmie".

Didn't buy either.

Big mistake.

Bloomers: Mark Abley published a very good piece on these unintentional double entendres a few months back in the Gazette, noting amongst other things that the meaning of "ejaculation" has changed  over time. The word and its variations appear eleven times in The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.

This is a very fine bloomer:
"Ah!" – it came in a fierce little ejaculation from Jimmie Dale.
But it is outdone by what is the best bloomer I've read all year:
A chorus of ejaculations rose from the reporters, while their pencils worked furiously.
Curiously, the word features just once in the second Grey Seal novel, The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1919):
"Oh, colonel!" There was mingled delight and hesitation in her ejaculation.
Motion Picture News, 30 June 1917
Trivia: In 1917, the novel was adapted and brought to the silent screen as Jimmy Dale, Alias "The Grey Seal", a sixteen-part serial. Forgotten actor and director E.K. Lincoln featured in the title role. All sixteen episodes are considered lost. Appropriate, don't you think?

Object: A 468-page hardcover, my jacket-less first Canadian edition was purchased for $20.00 this past summer. It's horribly beat-up, but the money went to charity.

Access: Copies can be found at Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the Toronto Public Library and pretty much every one of our universities.

Long in the public domain, inept print on demand vultures like Nabu and "Kessinger Publishing [sic]" have really moved in on this one. As always, they are to be ignored. You can always read it for free online here at the Internet Archive.

Plenty of old copies are being offered online for as little as six American dollars. At US$150 the one to buy is a Very Good copy of the Copp Clark edition in Very Good jacket being offered by a bookseller in Milton, Ontario.

I know of two translations – Irish (Tuille de eachtraí Shéamuis Uí Dhuibhir) and Spanish (Aventuras de Jim Dale) – though I suspect there are more.


23 June 2014

St. Cuthbert's and the Rest



The new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrived Friday, just in time for the first day of summer, bringing another Dusty Bookcase sur papier. Under the microscope this time is St. Cuthbert's of the West, the debut novel by Reverend Robert E. Knowles, who by small coincidence was the subject of Friday's post.


St. Cuthbert's of the West  a/k/a St. Cuthbert's – is the most difficult, most time-consuming novel I've read since embarking on this exercise. Knowles had defeated me in the past, but this time I persevered, pushing mind and tortured soul through what may very well be the most trying 317 pages in our country's literature.

To anyone who questions the weight of this accomplishment, I present this sample dialogue:
“The session ’ll mebbe listen to me, for I’ve been yir precentor these mony years. We’ll hae nae mair o’ thae havers. Wha wants their hymes? Naebody excep’ a when o’ gigglin’ birkies. Give them the hymes, an we’ll hear Martyrdom nae mair, an’ Coleshill an’ Duke Street ’ll be by. For what did oor fathers dee it wasna for the psalms o’ Dauvit? An’ they dee’d to the tunes I’ve named to ye.”
The novel deals primarily with the politics and parishioners of a nineteenth-century Ontario Presbyterian church.

No more need be said.

Hey, remember these?


I do in this issue's "CNQ Timeline".

As always, the rest is rich. Editor Alex Good contributes a twenty-page essay on last year's Scotiabank Giller Prize, joining Stephen Henighan as one of the few critics to who really understand what the hell is going on. We also have a Ray Robertson essay, Carmine Starnino's interview with Michael Harris, Harold Heft's interview with Kenneth Sherman, new fiction from C.P. Boyko, three poems by Kerry-Lee Powell  and, ahem, Bruce Whiteman's review of The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco. John Degen, Diana Tamblyn, Kerry Clare, J.C. Sutcliffe , Michael Bryson, Emily Donaldson and Jeff Bursey round out the issue. As always, Seth provides the cover, this time adding an appreciation of Duncan Macpherson. He was, writes Seth, "Canada's greatest political cartoonist". True, so very true.

Yes, summer is here. Emboldened by having at long last tackled a Robert E. Knowles novel I look to my shelves and see that the damaged reverend offers five more.


But they can hardly be considered summer reading.

Related posts:

01 July 2013

A 123-Year-Old Prayer for Dominion Day


Dominion Day, Vancouver, 1890
From Lays of the 'True North' and Other Canadian Poems
Agnes Maule Machar
London: Elliot Stock/Toronto: Copp, Clark, 1902

05 June 2013

Frank L. Packard's Wire Thriller (and others)



My review of Frank L. Packard's The Wire Devils, newly reissued by the University of Minnesota Press, is now up on the Montreal Review of Books website. You can read it here.

How good it is to see Packard return to print. Yes, some of the man's work has been available from POD publishers, but just how much confidence can one have in things like this "Frank L. 1877-1942 Packard" edition from Nabu Press.

Wait, isn't that Montreal's Spiš Castle? You know, the one built by 12-century Hungarians?

Amazon.ca sells Nabu's The Wire Devils for $31.54, and the new University of Minnesota Press edition at $12.96. I recommend the latter – and not because I'm cheap. The UMP's is not only free of the "missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc." that plague Nabu, but includes a very fine Introduction by Robert MacDougall of the University of Western Ontario.

Prof MacDougall describes the novel as a wire thriller, late 19th and early 20th-century works that use the railroad, telegraph and telephone "as a backdrop for adventure." Dime novelist Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey penned Fighting Electric Fiends (1898) and his Street & Smith stablemate Franklin Pitt served up Brothers of the Thin Wire (1915), but I think it was Canadians, in Packard and Arthur Stringer, who dominated the genre.

The Wire Devils first appeared as a serial that ran over six issues in The Popular Magazine (20 March - 7 June 1917), was published in Canada by Copp Clark, the US by George H. Doran and A.L. Burt, and in the United Kingdom enjoyed two Hodder & Stoughton editions.

Messrs Dey and Pitt would've envied Frank L. Packard's success, but I'd argue that the true King of the Wire Thrillers was the handsome, savvy Arthur Stringer.

As far as I can tell his first foray into the genre was a short story, "The Wire Tappers", published in the August 1903 issue of Smart Set. I've not seen it, but am willing to bet that it was the basis of Stringer's 1906 novel of the same name.

The next year brought Phantom Wires. By far the most commercially successful wire thriller, it saw editions from Little, Brown, Musson, McClelland & Stewart and Bobbs-Merrill, It's likely that the last, a cheapo from A.L. Burt, appeared in 1924.

Even in 1906 and 1907, when first editions of The Wire Tappers and Phantom Wires sat on bookstore shelves, the wire thriller must have seemed a touch old-fashioned. "Look!" exclaims the heroine of the latter "they're talking with their wireless!" Stringer anticipated the future by following the two with The Gun Runner, a novel in which a wireless operator from Nova Scotia plays hero.

Whither the fax thriller?

The Wire Tappers
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922

20 September 2012

Entering the Unknown with Frank L. Packard



The Four Stragglers
Frank L. Packard
Toronto: Copp Clark, 1923

It's hard to know just what to expect when picking up a Packard; reference books offer little or nothing, archived reviews are few, and with one or two or three exceptions book bloggers have given him a pass. Add to all this the sad fact that the dust jackets to his books are almost always missing, as is the case with this soiled, stained, beat-up copy I spotted last October in the "FREE" box at Montreal's Cheap Thrills.

A few pages into this free book, I was beginning to think that it might just end up being my favourite Packard novel. Although that first flush of excitement gave way to disappointment, I don't regret the read.

The Four Stragglers opens in the darkness of an unnamed battlefield during the Great War. Cut off from their respective units, three soldiers take refuge in a thicket; a fourth lies dead or unconscious a few metres away. Flares flying above reveal faces, and the cognizant come to recognize that they'd all played parts in a daring jewel heist not two years earlier.

It's a confusing, chaotic scene. Shouldn't it be? Shells rain down, a munitions dump explodes in the distance and somewhere out there march Germans with bayonets. Then there's that fourth straggler lying on the ground. The idea that he might be listening in on the reunion forces cryptic conversation. Eventually, one of the other three raises his rifle and fires:
     The first man screamed out:
     "Christ! What have you done?"
     "I think he was done in anyway... It was as well to make sure."
Dead. Dead. And yet the next flare that hangs in the heavens reveals that his body has disappeared.


We're transported suddenly to the Claremont, an exclusive gentleman's club in London's West End. The Armistice now more than three years in the past, the reader is listening in on a conversation between Sir Harris Graves and Captain Francis Newcombe. A man of obvious privilege, Sir Harris has the means and the time to pursue criminology as a sort of hobby. His current focus is the aforementioned theft and its connection with an elusive, infamous East End criminal known as Shadow Varne. The captain, transfixed, expresses concern:
"I fell impelled to say to you that, if this man is what you describe him to be, is so dangerous as you say he is, I would advise you, Sir Harris, in all seriousness to leave him – to Scotland Yard."
Sir Harris stands fast... and is murdered before morning. If it hasn't already, the reader's suspicion will fall on Newcombe, who is not only revealed to be the straggler who shot the injured soldier, but Shadow Varne himself.

I found the most interesting aspect of The Four Stragglers revolved around the idea of the T.G. – the Temporary Gentleman – a man who through obtaining commission would be permitted privileges heretofore enjoyed only by members of a certain class. For Varne, as Captain Francis Newcombe, lasting entry to a once closed-off world is made possible through wartime heroics. "I became a Permanent Gentleman", he tells doomed Sir Harris. "Democracy! Private Francis Newcombe – Captain Francis Newcombe – Francis Newcombe, Esquire."

Packard's novels are always peppered with the fantastic and improbable; for much of The Four Stragglers I took Newcombe's rise as another example. But then I thought of our own Sir Arthur Currie, GCMG, KCB, a man who himself rose from the lowest ranks. I don't mean for a second to suggest that Currie was a murderer – just an embezzler.

Object: The first Canadian edition, my copy appears to have been first owned by a man named Donald Shipley. A 1925 Christmas gift from "Claude", it bears the label of Wendell Holmes, a bookseller in London, Ontario.


Access: Canadians, look to your universities – of the public libraries, only Toronto's serves.


The Canadian first shares plates with the Doran American first and a later Burt reprint. It wasn't until 1934 that the Hodder & Stoughton British first appeared. Together, more than couple of dozen copies are listed for sale online. They begin at £4.00, but the one to buy is a $15 copy of the Canadian first with dust jacket by A.D. Rahn. The most expensive – forty dollars –  comes from an ill-informed bookseller  who writes: "THIS A 1923 HARDCOVER BOOK IT IS EXTREMLY [sic] RARE BOOK IT HAS A NAME INSIE [sic] THE COVER AND HAS BEEN READ THE BINDING IS SUNNED AND HAS NO JACKET THE CORNERS ARE BUMPED AND THE PAGES ARE TANNED EVENLY."


Čtyři zaběhlíci, a Czech edition, was published in 1928. Apparently the National Library of the Czech Republic has a copy.

22 March 2012

a/k/a Frank Tarbeaux



Tarboe: The Story of a Life
Gilbert Parker
Toronto: Copp Clarke, 1927

Imagine how old fashioned a fellow Sir Gilbert must have seemed when Tarboe first hit the bookstores. In 1927, the bewhiskered baronet had been a member of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council for nearly a decade. While he'd begun his career in fin de siecle London, the author had had nothing to do with Oscar Wilde, the Decadents and The Yellow Book. In the Jazz Age, Tarboe fought a losing battle against Men Without Women and To the Lighthouse for the reader's dollar.

Published late in the author's life, just five years before the end, Tarboe stands alone in a bibliography dominated by adventure romances and historic novels. What is meant to be "the story of a life" –  another man's life – is in reality nothing more than accounts of encounters Parker shared with a man named Frank Tarbeaux. Like the knighted Canadian novelist, the American Tarbeaux is pretty much forgotten today, but in his time he appeared with some regularity in English-language newspapers.

The New York Times, 21 April 1913
A colourful character, "The King of the Card Sharks", Tarbeaux's portrait is painted here by an unnamed journalist in the 10 August 1895 edition of the Auckland Star:
He is uneducated and quite illiterate, but he is as clever as a monkey at what is called, in thieves' slang, "faking the broads," bunko steering, slim gambling, the gyp game, three-card monte, and is a proficient horse-shark, and an expert in green goods.

Nearly every mention I can find of Tarboe describes the book as a novel. The title – Tarboe, not Tarbeaux – more than hints that liberties have been taken. Parker has changed names to protect the innocent, the not-so-innocent and, I expect, the litigious. Of those we see touched by the card-shark's hand, only three, Hawai'i's King Kalākaua, Prince Consort John Owen Dominis and author George W. Peck are accurately recorded.* I think it no coincidence that all were long dead at time of publication.

Tarboe is not a novel; the proof lies in its structure. Parker was far too fine a craftsman to have composed so a rambling story. Here he is constrained by fact, limited by both what he had witnessed and what he had been told by his subject.

The drama takes place far away from the restaurants, art galleries and Parisian streets in which Tarbeaux tells his tales. It's in a comfortable Melbourne hotel room that he claims to be the sole survivor of Custer's Last Stand. His adventures with bounty hunters in the Transvaal are related at the Bodega on the rue de Rivoli.

The years go by and, as Parker notes (with some boasting, I think), encounters become less frequent:
The interests of my life grew wider and I entered the British Parliament but I had travelled before that in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Greece, Turkey, Austria, Italy, Germany, and nearly all the European States, and since then in America, South America and elsewhere. I met many distinguished and notorious people, but never one with such interest for me as Frank Tarboe.
The final encounter, at a New York restaurant, takes place only through Parker's persistent pursuit of his old acquaintance. "I was called Arizona Frank", says Tarboe, launching into a story of how he once performed with Buffalo Bill.

Parker makes it plain that he has great admiration for the card shark. I'll join in. As portrayed by Sir Gilbert, the Frank Tarbeaux of Tarboe, though a crook, seems a stand-up guy:
Here was a man capable of great things, now a gambler by lack of moral courage, a menace to society while he could have been its benefactor, criminal now though he might have become a saint.
These words, coming early in the book, are followed by this passage in the final pages:
I would sooner have gone to Frank Tarboe in trouble than any relative of mine, or any friend I ever had. I'm not ashamed to have known him, to have liked him much, and here I have put upon record some of his sins, and his folly; but if we would count sins and folly, how many would stand the test? 
Three years after the publication of Tarboe, Frank Tarbeaux told his story to Donald Henderson Clarke, a writer of risqué novels. The resulting "story of a life", published as The Autobiography of Frank Tarbeaux, is much more fanciful than Tarboe. Unlike Parker, Clarke transcribed, he did not question.

In the autobiography, Tarbeaux says this about a man whom he claims was his cousin: "I shot Bob Ford, got him through the right lung down in the Gunnison County, in Southern Carolina."

That's right, Frank Tarbeaux was the man who shot the man who shot Jesse James.

Don't you believe it.

Object: An attractive book in moss green cover with gilt lettering, the Copp Clarke edition features four woodcuts by American illustrator Harry Cimino.

My copy, bought a few months ago from a London bookseller for $3.00, once belonged to the Rodney Public Library. To be honest, I'm not at all sure that it's not their property still; there is no discard stamp. The library card indicates that it was last checked out in 1933.


Access: The Copp Clarke Canadian first is joined by editions published in England (Cassell) and the United States (Harper). I see no evidence that any but the English enjoyed a second printing (peut-être). Very Good copies of the Copp Clarke edition, sans dust jacket, begin at $12.00. While Tarboe is easily found in our universities, patrons of public libraries will have real problems.

* Well, kinda. Parker slips up in recording Peck's name as "James Peck".