Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 5: 'Sad End of a Noted Politician' by James MacRae

For the month, the fifth of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

To think I once worked to celebrate this horrible man.

I first learned of John J. MacDonald – "James MacRae" – a few months after moving to St Marys, the small Ontario town he adopted as his home. That introduction came through The Four James, William Arthur Deacon's 1927 study of MacRae and fellow poets James McIntyre, James Gay and James D. Gillis.

The four are forever united by that book. Indeed, their very legacies are crafted by that book and its subsequent reissues, the last of which was published forty-eight years ago by Macmillan.

"Canada's Four Worst- And Funniest-Poets."

They're not the four worst, nor are they the four funniest.

It's all too easy to see the Four Jameses as being similar (Paper Lace), when in fact they were actually very different from one another (The Beatles). McIntyre, the most prolific, was the most grounded. Like so much of his verse, 'Ode on the Mammoth Cheese,' his greatest hit, was intended to raise a smile at country fairs. Deacon encourages us to laugh at it, when we should be laughing with it. Gay, a loving and loveable loon who thought himself Tennyson's rival, is the most fun to read. Gillis wasn't so much a poet as a prose writer. He's included for no other reason than to make for a great title.

The differences between these four men is most evident in their respective reactions to the 1880 murder of politician and Globe publisher George Brown.

Unsurprisingly, the tragedy inspired no verse from prose-writer James Gillis. James McIntyre writes of his sorrow in a poem titled 'Departed Statesman.' James Gay expresses great affection for the fallen man with 'The Honourable G. Brown.' James MacRae's 'Sad End of a Noted Politician' is something else entirely.

A different kind of loon than Gay, much of MacRae's poetry is taken up by hate thrown on women, strangers, Protestants, and Liberals. 

'Sad End of a Noted Politician' comes from The Poems and Essays of John J. MacDonald, (Ottawa: Ru-Mi-Lou, 1928), the poet's third and final book.

MacDonald's nom de plume is misspelled on the cover.

SAD END OF A NOTED POLITICIAN

On a cold winter night, cruel death in its might,
Deprives Mr. Brown of his senses;

Now the joys that attend all his honours must end,

And his long night of sorrow commences.

As he hears the decree, he determines to flee

To the gate of the dwelling of glory,

But that gate he finds closed, and his entrance opposed,

Although sad to his party the story.

Thus insultingly used, thus disowned and refused,

He goes on in another direction;

At that medium place, where the Papists have grace,

He asks humbly for rest and protection.

But in vain as before for thgat rest to implore—

He must follow his downward gradation;

With the devil despite he soon meets at the gate,

And there follows this sort of conversation:—

 

     G.B.—Disappointed and grieved, of mu comforts bereaved,

                 And my relatives all at a distance,

                 I have come to request of you leave her to rest,

                 And to ask your paternal assistance.

     DEV.—Oh! my corpulent friend, I your case apprehend,

                 And will grant you coveted pittance;

                 If you tell me the claim that you have on the same

                 You will gain to my dwelling admittance.

     G.B.—It is little you know in these regions below;

                You must think I'm a Papist or Paddy;

                As a Child if you prize the retailer of lies,

                I can certainly claim you for daddy.

     DEV.—You must still keep aloof till you give me some proof

                 On your noble and worthy exertions;

                 For I oft shall mistake if I venture to take

                 Every wandering stranger's assertions.

     G.B.—In my nethermost robes I have brought you some globes,

                You will find them a recommendation;

                     They will prove beyond doubt that I laboured throughout

                 In extending your own dominion.

     DEV.—By the stories they tell now I know you too well,

                 And to have one more prudent would rather,

                 For, exposing my plan by the course which you ran,

                 You have brought disgrace on your father.

                 For to win the applause some men for my cause

                 Some discretion and caution are needed;

                 But, regardless of this, you have acted amiss,

                 And my wise inspirations unheeded.

                 But your failings I feel have resulted from zeal

                 To encourage your partners in evil;

                 So forgetting your sin, you may quietly come in

                 But you must be exceedingly civil.

Related posts:

The Murder of George Brown: He Died With Grit

A Mildly Eccentric Man Turns Nasty
Poet Names Newspaper Editor as Lucifer's Heir

Mean Mister MacDonald Attacks a Prime Minister

Words of Hate for Maria Monk

A Prudish Poet's Struggle with Stays

The St Marys James

Local Poet!

A Local Poet is Recognized

Unpleasant Verse for New Year's Day

McIntyre's Mammoth Ode

Dustiest Bookcase: S is for Slater (not Mitchell)

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

The Water-Drinker

Patrick Slater [John Mitchell]
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1937
149 pages

I read Patrick Slater's The Yellow Briar a few months after moving to southern Ontario. Our new neighbours and friends had read it in school. Another friend, Michael Gnarowski, was preparing a new edition for Dundurn's Voyageur Classics series. Copies were plentiful in our newly adopted corner of the country. It took little effort, little time, and less than thirty dollars to amass a nice little collection of various editions. The new Dundurn edition set me back twice as much as the others combined. 

l-r: the 1933 Thomas Allen edition, the 1963 Macmillan edition, the 1966 Macmillan edition, the 1970 Macmillan edition, and the 2009 Dundurn edition.

My lazy pursuit was encouraged by clippings left by former owners. These were found between the pages of one of the two Thomas Allen copies I own:

I really liked The Yellow Briar, but can't quite remember why. Wish I'd posted a review on this blog. I didn't because these new neighbours and friends were so familiar with he book; it didn't seem neglected or forgotten. As years passed, I realized that the offspring of our new friends and neighbours – closer to me in age – knew nothing of Patrick Slater and The Yellow Briar. 

Slater wasn't really Patrick Slater but a lawyer John Mitchell. The Yellow Briar, sold by the author and his publisher as a memoir, was a hoax. As hinted in the headline of a clipping above – 'Author Who Jailed Self In Spite of Crown Dies' – Mitchell was a troubled soul. This photograph suggests as much:
 

The image comes from yet another clipping – this one from Saturday Night – which I found in the pages of my copy of The Water-Drinker.

Published four years after The Yellow Briar, The Water-Drinker is a collection of verse coming from a man who'd previously published only prose. It begins with a twenty-one-page introduction in which Slater/Mitchell offers a mea culpa, before expounding on literature, poetry, growing old, and purse picking. The thirteen poems that follow are interrupted by nine colour plates featuring paintings by F.H. Varley, Paul Kane, Cornelius Krieghoff, and Maurice Cullen, amongst others. A tenth illustration – uncredited – appears only in black and white:

Might it be by the poet himself?

My copy, purchased in 2010, once belonged to Louis Blake Duff (1 January 1878 - 29 August 1959). It appears to have been a birthday gift, presented on his sixtieth birthday:

Duff was the author of several books and chapbooks, most having to do with the history of southern Ontario. A respected local historian, his death was noted by William Arthur Deacon in the pages of the Globe & Mail:

Dr. Duff deplored what he called the booklessness of Canadians, their disinterest in literature. As a passionate bibliophile – his own library contained 10,000 volumes – he could not help but be depressed by this characteristic which he considered a national trait.

My copy of The Water-Drinker was one of Dr Duff's 10,000 volumes.

It set me back all of $2.50.

Dorothy Dumbrille is Accepted By the Communists

All This Difference

Dorothy Dumbrille

Toronto: Progress, 1945

208 pages

Progress Books, publishing arm of the Communist Party of Canada, announced April 15, 1945 as the publication date of Dorothy Dumbrille’s All This Difference. I’ve found no evidence that the novel hit the shelves on that day, that month, or in the three months that followed. The earliest reviews — and there were many — are from early August of that year. I can’t help but wonder whether its delay had something to do with the publication of Two Solitudes, which occurred a few weeks before All This Difference was to have been released. 

MacLennan's novel was received not as a book of the season, but a book for all time. Globe and Mail literary editor William Arthur Deacon’s April 7 review begins: 

Spectacular as was Canadian achievement in the novel in 1944, Hugh MacLennan of Montreal has opened 1945 with greater power. In light of Two Solitudes, the excellence of Barometer Rising diminishes to the level of an apprentice piece. The promise of the first book is justified abundantly in the second. Considering style, theme, characters, craftsmanship, significance and integrity, Two Solitudes may well be considered the most important Canadian novel ever published. 

The English press praised the book, as did the French, and sales were strong. By that October, MacLennan’s novel had sold 45,000 copies and was in its sixth printing. I can’t say I’ve ever visited a used bookstore in this country that didn’t stock a copy. And yet, though I kept an eye out, it was years before I first saw a copy of All This Difference. The first was at the home of my Montreal friend Adrian King-Edwards, owner of The Word bookshop. A couple of years later, I spotted another on a dollar cart outside Attic Books in London, Ontario. I haven’t come across another since.

So begins my review of All This Difference, posted yesterday at Canadian Notes & Queries online. You can read the whole thing here:

Dorothy Dumbrille's Communist Manifestation

Her second novel, but first to be published in book form, it's a highly ambitious work, as reflected in this publisher's advert:

The Globe & Mail
4 August 1945

I stopped short of describing All This Difference as "great," but had so much to say that I never got around to discussing the book's appearance. The bland jacket does it a disservice, particularly in light of the illustrations within. Each of its twenty chapters opens with a line drawing by self-taught Glengarry artist Stuart McCormick. Montrealers will recognize the Museum of Fine Arts.

The only other edition of All This Difference followed eighteen years after the first. Lacking the McCormick illustrations, it came from a very different publisher.

Toronto: Harlequin 1963

As I point out in the review, All This Difference was the very last Harlequin published before committed itself to romance... which is not to say it didn't try to sell the novel as a romance.

It also holds the distinction of being the only "HARLEQUIN CANADIAN."*

Wish they'd kept that up. Would've made my work a whole lot easier.

* My friend bowler informs that one other title, Kate Aitken's Never a Day So Bright, also bears the "HARLEQUIN CANADIAN" label.

Related post:

Dorothy Dumbrille's Easter Prayer

Who Is Canada's Outstanding Novelist? (1945)

Critic William Arthur Deacon isn't much discussed these days – or even much recognized – but for a good part of the last century he was Canada's foremost literary champion. As book editor, he held sway for forty years in the pages of the Manitoba Free Press (1921), Saturday Night (1922-28), the Mail & Empire (1928-36), and the Globe & Mail (1936-61),

I've taken a few swipes at Deacon over the years, including this one in defence of Collins White Circle. His judgement was often questionable – Robert Norwood? Really? – but I do admire his enthusiasm and dedication. Looking through his correspondence, it sometimes seems he was in touch with anyone who ever penned a novel, poem or play in this Dominion. Dorothy Dumbrille was one such person. It was in researching her second novel All This Difference (the subject of a forthcoming review), that I came upon the following comments published on 3 February 1945 in "The Fly Leaf," Deacon's weekly Globe & Mail column. It's interesting not only a snapshot of a dire time in the country's literature, but as a reflection of Deacon's aforementioned questionable judgement.

I've added the covers of what were then the most recent books by the authors Deacon mentioned. My comments are in italics.

Most frequently asked and least answerable is the question. Who is Canada's Outstanding Novelist? This week it came in the form of a request to choose between Morley Callaghan, Mazo de la Roche, Frederick Philip Grove and Hugh MacLennan. Fortunately, there is no towering genius in Canadian fiction to prevent others from receiving attention. In these early days, the notable acts are that Canadian authors display the most varied preferences for subject and style treatment and that readers also differ widely in their judgments.

The Building of Jalna
Mazo de la Roche
New York: Little, Brown, 1944

Certainly the works of Miss Mazo de la Roche have attained a world-wide popularity far beyond those of any other Canadian writer in any field. Her Jalna fixation is the result of stupendous demand. Millions of people in many countries are familiar with the Whiteoaks family.

Miss de la Roche's Jalna fixation was then nine novels into its sixteen novel run.

More Joy in Heaven
Morley Callaghan
New York: Random House, 1937

The Master of the Mill
Frederick Philip Grove [pseud. Felix Paul Greve]
Toronto: Macmillan, 1944

Mr. Callaghan showed exceptional talent as a member of the Hemingway school and seems to be going into partial eclipse with it. It is some years since he published a new book. Very different in type, Frederick Philip Grove, a somewhat heavy writers merits too solid to be ignored. He brought into Canadian fiction an intellectual and artistic integrity that was and is important. Neither the novels of Mr. Grove nor those of Mr. Callaghan have been specially popular.

It had been seven years since Callaghan had published a novel. Four more years would pass before the next, Luke Baldwin's Vow. It's considered a children's book.

Barometer Rising
Hugh MacLennan
Toronto: Collins, 1941

It is comment enough on the impression of Barometer Rising that my correspondent should include Hugh MacLennan in the quartet. Two Solitudes, when it is in circulation, will do much to reinforce Mr. MacLennan's position as a potential best Canadian novelist. He will be watched to the last comma.

Two months later, when it was "in circulation," Deacon wrote, "Two Solitudes may well be considered the most important Canadian novel ever published." It remains MacLennan's best-known novel (though The Watch That Ends the Night is much better).

Earth and High Heaven
Gwethalyn Graham
Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1944

But there are plenty of others. Gwethalyn Graham's Swiss Sonata placed her among the leading Canadian novels [sic], as Earth and High Heaven has now elevated her to a similar prominence among American novelists.

Earth and High Heaven was Graham's second novel. It followed Swiss Sonata, her first, by six years. She never wrote another. I speculate as to the reason here.

The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek
Thomas H. Raddall
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1943

Forges of Freedom
Franklin Davey McDowell
Toronto: Macmillan, 1943

The Higher Hill
Grace Campbell
Toronto: Collins, 1943

Thomas M.H. Raddall, author of Roger Sudden, His Majesty's Yankees and Pied Piper of Dipper Creek, may well wind up as the Canadian novelist whom everyone reads. Franklin Davey McDowell has already, in The Champlain Road, given Canada one novel of permanent worth and his far-finer Forges of Freedom deserves a much wider public than it has reached. Grace Campbell has a very large and ever-growing audience for her two books.

I studied Raddall in university, but not The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek. Decades passed before I so much as heard of The Champlain Road, despite the fact that it won the 1939 Governor General's Award for Fiction (The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek won in 1943). Another decade passed before I learned of Franklin Davey McDowell's "far-finer" Forges of Freedom. I've never so much as seen a copy, and could find no better image of the book than the screen grab presented above. Grace Campbell was much easier.

Carrying Place
Angus Mowat
Toronto: Saunders, 1944

Among the new writers of higher promise is Angus Mowat, who is sure to be a writer intensely admired by other writers. I think his books will endure as long as any written in our generation.

Father of Farley, Angus Mowat wrote just two novels: Then I'll Look Up (1938) and Carrying Place (1944). His enduring books have been out-of-print for over seven decades. 

Thirty Acres [Trente arpents]
Ringuet [pseud. Philippe Panneton; trans. Felix & Dorothy Walter]
Toronto: Macmillan, 1940

But there are now so many dozens of these Canadian novelists. Ringuet's Thirty Acres, for instance, comes pretty near to  being a perfect performance. Alan Roy Evans [sic] is another up near the top in merit. I have faith in the sensitive abilities of Jessie L. Beattie and wish she would publish more. Alexander Knox, playwright and actor, did one exquisite novel of the Ottawa Valley, called Bride of Quietness, before turning to better-paid work. He should be induced to continue with fiction. And so on... and so on.

The English translation of Ringuet's Trente arpents was a staple of the New Canadian Library and is still published in the original French. Allen Roy Evans is one of those odd Canadian writers who achieved far greater sales in a language other than their own. Der Zug der Rentiere, the German translation of his 1935 fictionalized memoir Reindeer Trek, has enjoyed at least six different editions. When Deacon wrote his column, Evans' newest work was All in a Twilight (1944). I've never seen a copy, and can find no image online. Ditto Jessie L. Beattie's Three Measures (1938) and Alexander Knox's Bride of Quietness (1933). That said, I have seen Knox in film adaptations of Nicolas and Alexandra, Joshua Then and Now, Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, and Gorky Park. More than anything, I remember him acting opposite Edward G. Robinson in The Sea Wolf.

It may be of great ultimate advantage in our literature that the variety of cultural backgrounds among Canadians precludes any uniformity in our fiction and in the tastes of Canadian readers. But we waste talent shockingly. I think of a woman like Irene Baird writing two novels like John and Waste Heritage and then being allowed to sit back and write no more. Darkly the River Flows will be along shortly to launch a new novelist, John MacDonald, and the manuscripts of other men in the armed services will presently be in print. Florence Randal Livesay, also, might do another novel to the advantage of all and sundry.

Darkly the River Flows
John MacDonald
New York: Coward-McCann, 1945

Deacon seems unaware that Irene Baird followed up John (1937) and Waste Heritage (1939) with He Rides the Sky (1941)... another book I've never seen. I've had better luck with John MacDonald's Darkly the River Flows. Sadly, the novel-writing days of Florence Randal Livesay, Dorothy's mother, were in the past. Her last novel, Savour of Salt, was published in 1927 by Dent.

We have not had time yet to acquire perspective, but I have no doubt that the fiction of this era will finally be judged to be relatively as fine as the Canadian poetry produced between 1880 and 1920.

W.A.D.

Deacon lived another three decades after writing those words. Did they offer enough perspective to make him realize he'd been wrong? Most of the fiction of that era pales beside Carman and Lampman. You may take issue, but can we at least agree that the absence of a towering genius is not "fortunate"?

Related posts:

Canada's Best 100 Books? 102? 111?
First Ignored, Then Slighted
The Paralysing Success of Gwethalyn Graham

Doing Right by Robert Fontaine

I've never paid much attention to humorist Robert Fontaine, in part because I didn't think of him as Canadian, but a recent query by an old college flatmate has had me exploring the author's work and reconsidering his allegiances.

Fontaine was born on 19 January 1908 in Evanston, Illinois, to a French Canadian father and Scots-Irish mother. At the age of three, he was brought to Ottawa, where his papa found work in vaudeville and, later, as a violinist with the Château Laurier Hotel Orchestra. Though Fontaine returned to the United States as an adult, ending up in Springfield, Massachusetts, he always considered himself to be Canadian, as did the newspapers of the day. His best selling book was The Happy Time, light sketches inspired by that Ottawa childhood. William Arthur Deacon, our leading critic, described it as "the kind of book Mark Twain would have written if he had shared a drop of French blood."

Published in 1945 by Simon and Schuster – I much prefer the 1947 Hamish Hamilton cover above –  The Happy Time was adapted to radio in a weekly CBC series, then turned into a long-running Rogers and Hammerstein-produced (but not penned) Broadway play, starring Johnny Stewart, Kurt Kasznar and Eva Gabor.

Playbill, 24 January 1950

Still greater success came with a 1952 film adaptation directed by Richard Fleischer, starring Charles Boyer, Louis Jourdan, Marsha Hunt and Kurt Kasznar. Bobby Driscoll plays Robert "Bibi" Bonnard (read: Robert Fontaine), while Linda Christian takes on the role of magician's assistant Mignonette, and wins a battle with a bad hairdo to come off as the object of adolescent desire.

My wife described it as Looney Tune Ottawa, with impeccable streets, Model Ts and Victoriana as retro kitsch. I add: more front porches than Celebration, USA.

Though clearly not shot in the nation's capital, I have to give Fleischer and screenwriter Earl Felton credit. I can't think of another Hollywood film that takes place in Ottawa. And how many others mention McGill, the University of Toronto and Queen's and include a lesson on our parliamentary system?

Location is not important. This is a story about awakening sexuality. On this, wise papa Charles Boyer provides his own lessons:

Papa: Now, Bibi, we speak now of love. And where there is love, there is also desire; they go together. Love must have the desire; I don't believe there can be love without it. But, it is possible to have the desire without love, and this is where the world falls apart. For instance, you don't understand why the principal of your school beat you.
Bibi: No, papa.
Papa: Well, it is because he has been brought up to believe that the desire is wrong. And since he himself has the desire, he's even more mixed up than we are! He has been brought up in a world where the desire has been used so badly – so badly, believe me – that it itself is thought to be bad; and this is wrong. This is wrong, Bibi. And you know the reason for this condition? It is because so many people are without love.

There's a good deal of darkness in The Happy Time. Bibi sneaks into Mignonette's room, watches her sleep, then steals a kiss. The next morning he is beaten after the principal finds "a dirty picture from La Gay Paree". The principal soon finds himself confronted by Bibi's papa and two uncles; one, a drunk who walks around with a cooler filled with wine; the other, a travelling salesman who collects garters as trophies:

Maman: Bibi, what have you got on your sleeves?
Bibi: They're too long. Before he left town, Uncle Desmond gave me some garters to hold them up.
Maman: Women's garters! Take them off! Look at them! Off some stranger's legs!
Grandpère: To Desmond she was not a stranger.

Ribald? You bet! How's this:

Maman: Where are you going?
Grandpère: Out.
Maman: You should be in bed!
Grandpère: It is only a matter of time.

How many of these words can be credited to Robert Fontaine I can't say. Our town library doesn't have a copy, nor does that of the next town over, nor the one after that. The author himself is pretty much forgotten. The Canadian Encyclopedia has no Robert Fontaine entry, and he is not so much as mentioned in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature; yet he seems to have had a good run, mining his Ottawa childhood further in My Uncle Louis (1953) and Hello to Springtime (1955).

For now, all I can do is recommend the film:

 

Don't be deceived by the 1968 Broadway musical of the same name. Here Fontaine's material was taken on by a reluctant N. Richard Nash who insisted it be married to his own story about a small-town photographer. "Suggested by the characters in the stories by Robert Fontaine", reads the credits. The author had no say in the matter; Fontaine had died in1965, aged fifty-seven.

It was nominated for ten Tony Awards, making winners out of Robert Goulet (Best Performance of a Leading Actor in a Musical) and Gower Champion (Best Direction of a Musical and Best Choreography). A sample is provided by the awards ceremony broadcast:

I recognize Robert Goulet as a fellow Canadian.

Mr. Steven Against Company Policy

Thanks goes out to Jim B. for helping to identify the artist behind the handsome jacket to Philip Child's Mr. Ames Against Time, the subject of Wednesday's post. He is Arthur Steven, who from 1947 to 1970 served as Art Director of Ryerson Press. Mr Steven's illustration is wider than previously pictured, stretching from the spine to just inside the front flap. Clicking on the cover below will bring a nice-sized image.

Captured is the novel's opening scene:

The court-house clock boomed five times and Mr. Ames performed the rite of taking out his watch. It never failed to give him a small satisfaction to find that his watch was exactly on time, for he was a man who liked things in order: watch in order, clothes however shabby in order, conscience neatly in order.
   A dog chased a cat across Mr. Ames' path...

At the right, we can see the Urania Burlesque Theatre, at which Mr. Ames serves as doorman.

Randall Speller has written a very fine piece on the artist, "Arthur Steven at the Ryerson Press: Designing the Post-War Years (1949-1969)" (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada/Cahiers De La Société Bibliographique Du Canada, Fall/Automne 2003), in which we find this:

In opposition to company policy during these early years, Steven was able to discreetly insert his name or an initial on the occasional dust jacket or illustration, something that appears to have been easier in the early 1950s. The jackets for Philip Child's Mr. Ames against Time [sic] (1949), J.V. McAree's Cabbagetown Store (1953), and William Arthur Deacon's The 4 Jameses (1953), among others, are signed "Steven" in very small letters; Isabelle Hughes' The Wise Brother (1954) and the map endpapers of Marjorie Freeman Campbell's Niagara: Hinge of the Golden Arc (1958) are signed with a very small 'S' in the lower right corner. These "signatures" are the first indicators of a consistent design presence at Ryerson in the post-Thoreau MacDonald years.

This, of course, has sent me running to the bookcase. Sure enough, I found "STEVEN" by the side of the road on the cover of Cabbagetown Store.

On the jacket he produced for Ryerson's The 4 Jameses, a favourite, "STEVEN" can be seen near the bottom right-hand corner.

And, also bottom right, there's that "S" on the cover of The Wise Brother.

I found no other jackets signed "STEVEN" or "S" in my modest collection of Ryerson Press books – just forty-two in all – but that doesn't mean I won't keep looking.

Related post:

Mr. Child's Simple Story of Dramatic Suspense

Canada's 100 Best Books? 102? 111?

Something strange stumbled upon yesterday, this list intended for "people in other countries interested in Canadian literature" from the 1 May 1948 edition of the Ottawa Citizen. Odd and awkward, it was cobbled together at the behest of UNESCO by a committee of eight: E.K. Brown, Philip Child, William Arthur Deacon, F.C. Jennings, Watson Kirkconnell, Lorne Pierce, B.K. Sandwell and W. Stewart Wallace. How anti-commie kook Kirkconnell justified his participation I cannot say.*

The headline in the Citizen is deceiving. Yes, it's meant to be a list of the 100 best, but there are eleven too many. Most of the overrun comes courtesy of Mazo de la Roche's Whiteoak Chronicles, which then numbered ten volumes. The others? Well, one might just be Tom MacInnes' Collected Poems, which doesn't exist.

As I say, odd and awkward. William Osler didn't write The Master Word, but he was the author of The Master-Word in Medicine; Joseph Schull's The Legend of Ghost Lagoon is listed as The Legend of Lost Lagoon; and poor B.K. Sandwell suffers the indignity of being called B.S. Sandwell.

"A list of Canadian books of special merit written in French is also to be compiled by a similar committee", we're told. By whom? Who knows. I find no trace of the committee or its list. What we're to make of the inclusion of Pierre Esprit Radisson's Voyages – recorded as Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson – on the English-language list I cannot say.

Despite the flaws, it's all good fun... for me, at least. So many unfamiliar titles, so many unfamiliar names and so much to explore, the list begins with a forgotten collection of short stories by Will R. Bird:

Sunrise for Peter – Will R. Bird
The Strait of Anian – Earle Birney

Brown Waters – W.H. Blake
North Atlantic Triangle – John Bartlet Brebner
A Dryad in Nanaimo – Audrey Alexandra Brown
James Wilson Morrice – Donald W. Buchanan
The Search for the Western Sea – Lawrence J. Burpee
Now That April's Here – Morley Callaghan
Poetical Works of Wilfred Campbell – Wilfred Campbell
Bliss Carman – James Cappon
Bliss Carman's Poems – Bliss Carman
Klee Wyck – Emily Carr
Jean Racine – A.F.B. Clark
Christianity and Classical Culture – Charles Norris Cochrane
Postscript to Adventure – Ralph Connor
Father on the Farm – Kenneth C. Cragg
Collected Poems of Isabella Valancy Crawford – Isabella Valancy Crawford

Dominion of the North – Donald Creighton

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks – Robertson Davies
The Government of Canada – Robert MacGregor Dawson
Whiteoak Chronicles – Mazo de la Roche
The Law Marches West – Cecil E. Denny
Complete Poems –  William Henry Drummond
Grand River – Mabel Dunham
The Art of the Novel – Pelham Edgar
A Study on Goethe – Barker Fairley
Poems – Robert Finch
Fearful Symmetry – Northrop Frye
Arctic Trader – Philip H. Godsell
Napoleon Tremblay – Angus Graham
Earth and High Heaven – Gwethalyn Graham
Pilgrims of the Wild – Grey Owl
Fruits of the Earth – Frederick Philip Grove
Over Prairie Trails – Frederick Philip Grove
A Search for America – Frederick Philip Grove
Brave Harvest – Kennethe M. Haig
Sam Slick – Thomas Chandler Haliburton
All the Trumpets Sounded – W.G. Hardy
Saul – Charles Heavysege
The Drama of the Forests – Arthur Heming
Father Lacombe – Katherine Hughes
Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada – Anna Brownell Jameson
Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America – Paul Kane
Lord Elgin – W.P.M. Kennedy
The Golden Dog – William Kirby
Bride of Quietness – Alexander Knox
Selected Poems of Archibald Lampman – Archibald Lampman
Lake Huron – Fred Landon

Leacock Roundabout – Stephen Leacock
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town – Stephen Leacock
From Colony to Nation – A.R.M. Lower
Out of the Wilderness – Wilson MacDonald
Collected Poems – Tom MacInnes
The Honourable Company – Douglas MacKay
Barometer Rising – Hugh MacLennan
Tales of the Sea – Archibald MacMechan
Lord Strathcona – John MacNaughton
The Master's Wife – Andrew Macphail
In Pastures Green – Peter McArthur

The Champlain Road – Franklin Davey McDowell
The Unguarded Frontier – Edgar McInnis
Who Has Seen the Wind – W.O. Mitchell
Roughing It in the Bush – Susanna Moodie
Gauntlet to Overlord – Ross Munro
Lord Durham – Chester W. New
Mine Inheritance – Frederick Niven
Pindar – Gilbert Norwood
The Master Word – William Osler
A Book of Canadian Stories – Desmond Pacey
When Valmond Came to Pontiac – Gilbert Parker
The Complete Poems of Marjorie Pickthall – Marjorie Pickthall
Collected Poems – E.J. Pratt
Voyages of Peter [sic] Esprit Radisson – Pierre Esprit Radisson
His Majesty's Yankees – Thomas H. Raddall
Wisdom of the Wilderness – Charles G.D. Roberts
The Leather Bottle – Theodore Goodridge Roberts
The Incomplete Anglers –  J.D. Robins
Toronto During the French Regime –  Percy J. Robinson
As for Me and My House – Sinclair Ross
Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter – Laura Salverson
Flashing Wings –  Richard M. Saunders
Legend of Lost [sic] Lagoon –  Joseph Schull
The Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott –  Duncan Campbell Scott
In the Village of Viger – Duncan Campbell Scott
Wild Animals I Have Known – Ernest Thompson Seton
The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe – Elizabeth Simcoe
Man's Rock –  Bertrand W. Sinclair
Egerton Ryerson –  C.B. Sissons
Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier –  Oscar Douglas Skelton
The Yellow Briar – Patrick Slater

The Book of Canadian Poetry –  A.J.M. Smith
Policing the Arctic – Harwood Steele
Sir Frederick Banting –  Lloyd Stevenson
The Friendly Arctic –  Vihjalmur Stefansson
Under the Northern Lights –  Alan Sullivan
Plowing the Arctic –  G.J. Tranter
Salt, Seas and Sailormen –  Frederick William Wallace
James Wolfe –  W.T. Waugh
The Owl Pen –  Kenneth McNeill Wells
The Birth of Language –  R.A. Wilson
The Canadians –  George M. Wrong
The Rise and Fall of New France –  George M. Wrong

What, no Wacousta?

I've read six.

* "At the close of the Second World War, the Russians took a leading part, along with 'capitalist imperialists,' in organizing another League of Nations, the so-called 'United Nations.' and the Communist Party of the U.S.A. joined in a psalm of praise over the new turn in policy."

–  Watson Kirkconnell, "Communism in Canada and the United States",

Canadian Catholic Historical Association Report 15 (1947-1948)

Author Photo of the Month: William Arthur Deacon

William Arthur Deacon, as pictured on the back cover of the 1953 Ryerson edition of The Four Jameses.

A Mildly Eccentric Man Turns Nasty

Much of this past weekend was spent working on a limited edition chapbook of verse by John J. MacDonald – a modest fundraiser for the St Marys Public Library. MacDonald, better known as James MacRae, one of William Arthur Deacon's unfortunate 'Four Jameses', was a patron. Indeed, Deacon tells us that MacDonald "spent a pleasant old age" in the library, where he poured over "books on controversial subjects like political economy and religion."

In the three years I've lived in this little town, I've done a bit of digging into MacDonald's life, but until last week knew nothing of his verse beyond the few scattered snippets Deacon had chosen to reproduce in The Four Jameses. MacDonald's writing – all self-published – is not exactly easy to find. Poems of J. J. MacDonald, a Native of County Glengarry, the c. 1877 volume from which the chapbook is drawn, has almost vanished. Held by a handful of academic universities, it's much more common in microfiche – which is to say that it isn't common at all.

The exposure to MacDonald's writing has been something of an eye-opener. Nothing in Deacon prepared me for the quantity of venom in MacDonald's verse. Drops are found throughout, even in otherwise innocent and inoffensive poems like "The Scattered Family", a sentimental thing about home, hearth, and momma and papa:

We left our sweet home distant climates to range,

To meet there with nothing but infidels strange,

Who know not our feelings, who know not our hearts;

Such is often the fate who from parents departs.

We left all the pleasures of birthplace and home,
To wander about, for a living to roam,
Cast on the wide world – so unfriendly, so cold
Where honor and virtue mean riches and gold.

How bitter is life, full of sorrow and woe,
When children from father and mother must go!
When brothers must part from the sisterly smile,
To live with the stranger, the wretched and vile.

Now, is that any way to talk about one's neighbours?

MacDonald lived amongst the wretched and vile of St Marys and its environs for over sixty of his nearly eighty-eight years. "Among the townspeople he was reported to be mildly eccentric," writes Deacon, "which probably means nothing more than a strongly marked personality intensified by a touch of the artistic temperament, without which no poet is properly equipped... I like to picture him as he has been described to me – sitting in the Library, lost in a book, and, as the theme grippd him, conducting audibly an animated debate with himself, and finally becoming quite excited as the argument progressed."

What better to argue over than politics, especially when religion, hellfire and damnation are added to the mix:

Epitaph for a Grit Politician

As your victim with Government money has got away,
We Canadians, Satan, would thank you sincerely
If you kindly consent to return to Ottawa,
When you come for the next of the clique you love so dearly.

There's plenty of hate in this poetry, most of which is inflicted upon Charles Chiniquy. The protestant convert and conspiracy theory kook is the focus of "Father Chiniquy’s Prayer", "Lines Written on a Bill Announcing One of Chiniquy’s Lectures" and this poem, in which he imagines the man's death:

For Chiniquy

Here lies the priest who changed his creed
To get what custom calls a wife,
But solemn vows most strongly plead,
He never led a married life.

St. Peter, if your dome he seek,
Refuse to open heaven’s door,
For he would scarcely stay a week,
When for a wife he’d hell explore.

Dear reader, please in mind to bear,
That in the realms of bliss above,
There is no wife permitted there
To Man, however strong his love.

The former Father was a healthy sexagenarian when MacDonald published these poems – he would live for a further two decades. Although Chiniquy isn't mentioned by name, it is clear that he is also the subject of this final fantasy:

For a Fallen Priest

Ye passers by here pause to mourn
Around this melancholy urn,
Where loathsome maggots careless feast
Upon the poor degraded priest.

No more the hungry passions rave;
The appetites no longer crave
Their usual supply of ill,
And all around is solemn still.

The soul – that slave of fear and dread,
Of shame, remorse, and pride – is fled.
Oh! Poor, immortal soul, couldst thou
Reveal what’s thy religion now.

For some time now I've been pushing for recognition of MacDonald in this, my adopted hometown, all the while describing him just as Deacon does: a mildly eccentric man. Now I'm beginning to wonder... is it really so strange that his books aren't found on the shelves of the library in which he "spent a pleasant old age"?

Related posts:

Poet Names Newspaper Editor as Lucifer's Heir

A Prudish Poet's Struggles with Stays