Showing posts with label Eaton (Winnifred). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eaton (Winnifred). Show all posts

27 August 2025

A Japanese Nightingale on Stage and Screen



On 19 November 1903, A Japanese Nightingale, dramatist William Young's stage adaptation of the Otono Watanna novel of the same name opened at Broadway's Daly's Theatre. Critics were indifferent. A Japanese Nightingale managed only forty-six performances before closing on 30 December.

The New York Times, 20 November 1903

Of those I've read, the New York Times review is both the most unreliable and the most informative. The unreliable being limited to this paragraph:

To those who read the story there was something appealing in the simple, childish sweetness of the little maid Yuki, who, betrothed to a powerful man of her own people, weds instead the youthful and impetuous wooer from over the seas. In the dramatic version something of this same quality is reserved to the character of Yuki, and her love affair, Yuki's subsequent suffering, and her determination to leave the world and become a priestess in the temple that the man she loved may be spared suffering and persecution from her enemies and his, is likely to make an appeal to unsophisticated and sympathetic playgoers.
By "story," the unnamed reviewer refers to the novel on which the play is based. In that story, Yuki is betrothed to no one, never mind "a powerful man of her own people."

Illinois native Margaret Illington (née Young), who portrayed Yuki. 
The anonymous pen continues:
William Young, who made the adaptation for stage purposes, has used a familiar bag of tricks. The expedients utilized for stage climaxes are of the most ordinary and commonplace kind. One has at least the right to expect some ingenuity in matters of this sort, and here the dramatizer has failed signally.
   For example. The ultimate conflict in this play is due to the fact that Jack Bigelow, a young American, has married Yuki, the Japanese Nightingale. A record of the marriage has been filed with the United States Consul at Tokio. Bigelow's enemies kill the Consul and steal the book containing the record of the marriage. At the very time that Bigelow hears of the murder of the Consul he gives Yuki their marriage license, telling her never to part with it. Immediately thereafter she places it in a little box, the arch conspirator enters, she shows it to him, and he purloins it. When, a little later, Yuki's brother appears on the scene and refuses to believe that Bigelow has married the girl regularly, the box is opened for the proof that is to convince him. Lo! the paper is gone. Tableau and mutterings of vengeance.
   And so it goes throughout. Mr. Harker of California, who, with the assistance of Mr. Bobby Newcome, Ensign, U.S.A., eventually sets everything right, shows his daughter a revolver. She takes it from him and puts it in the drawer of a table. Later Mr. Harker tells the villain that he is going to detain him for a little confidential chat, and the pair sit down on opposite sides of the table. The Jap draws a knife and Harker whips out the gun and covers him. Another tableau that flashes in the pan.
Assuming the Times review is accurate, Young introduced several elements to A Japanese Nightingale, including:
  • a record of marriage;
  • a United States Consul;
  • a murder;
  • a marriage license;
  • a theft;
  • a man named Harker;
  • a United States ensign named Newcome;
  • a daughter of a United States ensign named Newcome;
  • a knife;
  • a gun.
Given early Hollywood's eagerness to adapt popular novels, it's surprising that A Japanese Nightingale did not appear on screens until 1918, seventeen years after publication.


"Written by William Long from the book by Onoto Watanna" – so sayss the poster – it was the work Ouida Bergère and Jules Furthman. The latter is known for Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Nightmare Alley (1947), and Rio Bravo (1959), while the former is remembered for, well, her forty-one year marriage to Basil Rathbone.

Reviews suggest that Bergère and Furthman relied on Long's play, then added something in introducing a new character, Baron Nekko, as Yuki's fiancé. 

The Winnipeg Tribune, 28 December 1918
This time out Yuki, not yet twenty in the novel, was portrayed by 47-year-old Fannie Ward of St Louis, Missouri, an actress renowned for her youthful appearance and ability to portray women decades her junior. Brooklyn boy W.E. Lawrence, age 22, played Jack Bigelow, Yuki's husband.


Happily, A Japanese Nightingale is one of the small percentage of silents that has survived. Unhappily, it has never been made available in Beta, VHS or DVD, nor is it streaming. And so, I rely again on reviews to provide a synopsis. The best I've found was published in the 30 August 1918 edition of Variety:
Yuki is a little Japanese girl of good family whom a heartless stepmother wishes to marry to a vicious old man of wealth and position. So Yuki runs away and becomes a Geisha girl and here meets a young American who falls in love with her. When an agent of the would-be bridegroom seeks to spirit Yuki away the American whose name is John Bigelow, takes things into his own hands and marries her. Thenthere are plots and counterplots. The consul, who has charge of the marriage records, is murdered and the records disappear, worthless papers being substituted. And at this time Yuki’s brother, who turns out to have been a friend of Bigelow’s at an American university, returns home and is made to believe that his erstwhile friend has wronged the girl. To save her husband from her brother’s vengeance Yuki flies to a temple, where she prepares to marry the old man of her mother’s choice. But the wedding records turn in the nick of time, and the brother is reconciled to the marriage.
The critic goes on to add: "Miss Ward, while she does not make up to look like a Japanese girl, is of a beauty sufficiently delicate and flowerlike to fit appropriately into the miniature gardens and cherry groves through which she wanders."


The December 1918 edition of Picture-Play Magazine, from which  the last two images are drawn, features an eight-page short story by American Fannie Kilbourne (1890-1961) that is "written from the Pathé picture play based on the story by Onoto Watanna." Available here courtesy of the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress, it may just provide the most accurate description of what we've been missing.


As always, I recommend the novel.

A Bonus:

The New York Times, 23 November 1903.

21 August 2025

A 'Japanese' Nightingale: Winnifred Eaton at 150



A Japanese Nightingale
Onoto Watanna [Winnifred Eaton]
New York: Harper, 1901
226 pages

Onoto Watanna was her own creation. She was not a Japanese princess; she was not Japanese at all. Onoto Watanna was Winnifred Eaton, a Montrealer born to a former Chinese circus performer and an Englishman who struggled to support his family through painting and people smuggling.

Winnifred made a better life for herself. She sold her first short story as a teenager. Dozens more followed, as did thirteen novels. There were stage and film adaptations. Winnifred spent six years working as a scriptwriter in Hollywood.

A Japanese Nightingale was Winnifred Eaton's second novel and first big commercial success. She claimed it had sold 200,000 copies.

I don't doubt it.

The novel landed at the height of the Japanese Craze; the very same craze that encouraged Winnifred Eaton to cast herself variously as "Kitishima Taka Hasche," "Kitishina Taka Hasche," or "Tacki Hashi,"a young woman from Yokohama writing under the nom de plume "Onoto Watanna."

It's all a bit confusing. 

A Japanese Nightingale itself is not at all confusing. A simple tale, at its centre is Jack Bigelow, son of American wealth, newly graduated from an unnamed university, who is whiling away his time on the outskirts of Tokyo. What drew him to the far east isn't clear, though it likely has something to do with his English-Japanese college chum Taro Burton. Looks like they were going to have a time together in Tokyo, but then Taro begged off. That Jack went off without him seems odd.

Never mind, the important thing is that Taro had warned him not to take a Japanese wife:
Taro Burton was almost a monomaniac on this subject, and denounced both the foreigners who took to themselves and deserted Japanese wives, and the native Japanese, who made such a practice possible. He himself was a half-caste, being the product of a marriage between an Englishman and a Japanese woman. In this case, however, the husband had proved faithful to his wife and children up to death...
From his earliest days in Tokyo, Jack had been visited by Ido, a nakōdo (read: matchmaker), who'd brought prospective wives for consideration. The wealthy American had found the efforts entertaining. One afternoon, Ido offers a young woman whom Jack had recently seen perform on a pleasure island in Tokyo Bay. 


Jack toys with Yuki cruelly before sending her away, just as he had Ido's other proposed brides. However, the heart will out. The American is haunted by the encounter. He starts on a quest to find the woman he'd rejected. Once found, he marries her.

Because the plot is so simple – twist included  it would spoil things to describe much more. It is important to the plot that, like Eaton herself, Yuki is "half-caste" – much is made of her blue eyes – and so is looked down upon by her fellow Japanese. More impactful to the plot is the clash of cultures, particularly as it concerns Oriental and Occidental understandings of marriage (here I employ the terms of the time). Reading in 2025, one hundred and fourteen years after publication I found interest in the married couple's reluctance to be open and share with one another.

In this one way, A Japanese Nightingale is a contemporary novel.


I finished 
A Japanese Nightingale last night. Today marks the sesquicentennial Winnifred Eaton's birth, which most likely took place in the family's rented row house on rue d'Iberville.

Once a bestseller, she has become Montreal's most neglected novelist.

Lillie Winnifred Eaton (née Winifred Lily Eaton)
21 August 1875 - 8 April 1954
RIP
Trivia: Adapted by Broadway and Hollywood, both subjects of the next post.

Object:
A beautiful hardcover, issued without dust jacket with illustrations credited to Genjiro Yeto. The books features three colour plates and subtle illustrations on each of its pages. It is one of the most beautiful volumes in my collection.


Access: Easily found, the least expensive copy listed online is Constable's UK first. Price: £8.00. The Harper first edition can be had for under twenty-five dollars. 

The edition I read can be enjoyed online through this link to the Internet Archive.


The novel has been translated into Swedish (En japansk näktergal, 1904). German (Japanische Nachtigall, 1920), and Polish (Słowiczek japoński, 1922).


02 January 2025

The Nine Best Canadian Novels of the 1920s


In my twenties, the 'twenties – by which I mean the 1920s – seemed the height of art, film, decadence, glamour, and romance.

I'm not sure I was wrong.

The decade also saw the the height of the novel, though perhaps not in Canada. My CanLit profs assigned works by Mazo de la Roche, Frederick Philip Grove and Martha Ostenso. How they paled beside Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Forster, Hemingway, Joyce, Wharton, and Woolf! But then, what might one expect from a country of a mere nine million?

Time has passed, during which I've come to recognize that the keepers of the canon have messed up in so very many ways. 

As we're now half-way through the 2020s, I present this list of the nine best Canadian novels of the 1920s. Not one of the authors received so much as a passing mention in my CanLit courses.

By no means definitive, I've limited the list to nine titles because I've yet to read Douglas Durkin's The Magpie (1923) and They Have Bodies (1929) by Barney Allen (Sol Allen). From what I know of the two, it's likely that at least one would round out a top ten. I'll be making a point of reading both this year and will keep you informed. But for now:

The Thread of Flame
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1920

In the aughts and tens of the last century, King topped American bestseller lists with The Inner Shrine, The Wild Olive, and The Street Called Straight, though his two best books date from the twenties. This one involves a man who lost his memory whilst fighting in the Great War, but don't let that put you off.

The Empty Sack
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1921

The best King novel of the nine I've read, this involves the Folletts, transplanted Nova Scotians living comfortably in New York City until the aging patriarch is let go by his employer. The drama that unfolds has less to do with the economic devastation than it does the struggles in adapting to a post-Great War world.
The Wine of Life
Arthur Stringer
New York: Knopf, 1921

In his time, Stringer was dismissed as a writer with an eye on the market. This work, an outlier, was inspired by his ill-fated marriage to statuesque Gibson Girl Jobyna Howland. It's Stringer's most literary novel as evidenced by the fact that it was rejected by his usual publisher Bobbs-Merrill only to be picked up by Alfred Knopf. 

The Hidden Places
Bertand W. Sinclair
Toronto: Ryerson, 1922

A novel about a veteran of the Great War written by a man who never served, The Hidden Places can seem absurd at times, and relies too much on coincidence, but it is interesting for its damning indictment of the treatment of men who returned from the conflict scared and disfigured.
Pagan Love
John Murray Gibbon
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1922

The most cutting Canadian novel of the decade, it has three targets: the self-help industry, corporate culture, and gender norms. Criticisms of the first two bring insight, but that of the last makes Pagan Love one of the most intriguing Canadian novels of the twentieth century. 

"Cattle"
Winnifred Eaton
New York: Watt, 1924

A late career novel written by a Montrealer of Chinese and English parents who'd achieved fame by passing herself off as a Japanese princess. Eaton's final years were spent on an Alberta ranch belonging to her husband, inspiring this violent, disturbing novel set in cattle country.

The Land of Afternoon
Gilbert Knox [Madge
   Macbeth]
Ottawa: Graphic, 1924


Scandalous in its day, something of a head-scratcher in ours, The Land of Afternoon provides further evidence that romans à clef tend to age poorly. There are biting satirical sketches, but who are the models? Even then, I expect few outside Ottawa had a clue. 
Blencarrow
Isabel MacKay
Toronto: Allen, 1926

The last novel from a writer who never shied away from unpleasant topics: drug addiction, child abduction, worker exploitation, racism, mental illness. Domestic abuse and its effect on a wife and daughters permeate this one, yet it is not a message novel.  


All Else Is Folly: A Tale of
   War and Passion
Peregrine Acland
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1929

The great Canadian novel of the Great War. Written by one who was there, it is highly autobiographical and would've been banned had the author's father not been so well connected. Praised by Ford Maddox Ford and Frank Harris.

A century later, two are in print. They were not when I first read them. In fact, all nine had been out of print since the early 'thirties. Ten years ago, I played a part in reviving All Else is Folly as part of Dundurn's Voyageur Classics series.


Winnifred Eaton's "Cattle" was reissued in 2023 by Invisible Publishing. It was reviewed at the Dusty Bookcase here back in 2014.


If given the opportunity to bring another back, I'd chose John Murray Gibbon's Pagan Love. It is the most remarkable, unconventional, and challenging Canadian novel of the decade.

Or is that They Have Bodies?

I aim to find out.

24 June 2024

Fifteen Favourite Quebec Novels pour la Fête


For the day, a list of fifteen novels by Quebecers – born and bred – all deserving more attention. In each case, the image presented is the cover of the edition I read. Descriptions are short, but clicking on the links will give a better idea as to why they were selected.

Was 1960 the banner year for Quebec literature? 1962? 1916?

Les Anciens Canadiens
Phillipe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé
1863


The second French-language novel – following son Philippe-Ignace-Francois's L'influence d'un livre (1837) – Les Anciens Canadiens is set in the decades surrounding the fall of New France. Steeped in history, culture, and the supernatural, I've read it twice, but only in translation.    

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
1868

A novel I read in French translation, though it was composted in English. Makes sense in a way because Mme Leprohon was even more popular amongst French readers. Like Les Anciens Canadiens, it leans heavily on what would've then been described as Canadien traditions and culture. A moving tale of love and betrayal.

Albert Laberge
1909

Condemned by Mgr Paul Bruchési, Archbishop of Montreal, as "ignoble pornographie," you can understand the attraction. La Scouine is populated by dislikable, immoral, and hypocritical characters, clergy included. It is, in short, the anti-roman a terre. Sadly, Laberge paid a real price in writing this novel.

The Miracle Man
Frank L. Packard
1911

A gang of thieves and con artists leave New York City for rural Maine so as to get in on the scam pushed by a blind faith-healer, only to find there there is no grift. The 1919 Hollywood adaptation is considered one of the great lost silent films. Since writing my 2011 review twenty-four more seconds have been found. I couldn't be happier.

Similia Similibus
Ulrich Barthe
1916

A Great War nightmare in which Germans invade Quebec City, seize the Legislative Assembly, and slaughter citizens, this novel was almost certainly inspired by propaganda involving supposed atrocities committed in Belgium. Civil servant Barthe's lone novel, it is itself propaganda.

   Model
Winnifred Eaton
1916

No other Montreal family has been so remarkable. Though a novel, Marion provides the most intimate glimpse of the Eatons' struggles against racism and poverty. Winnifed was a successful novelist with a career in early Hollywood. Imagine!

Les Demi-civilisés
Jean-Charles Harvey
1934

Another banned book, the villain this time is Jean-Marie-Rodrigue Villeneuve, Archbishop of Quebec, who condemned it for criticizing religion. It does not. What Les Demi-civilisés does criticize is the Roman Catholic Church. The novel has been translated twice, but John Glassco's is the one to read.

Erres boréales

Faurent Laurin [Armond Grenier]
1944

The craziest Quebec novel I've read thus far, in Erres boréales massive heaters have been placed in the Gulf of St Laurence so as to make Quebec a tropical paradise. A travelogue of sorts, the story follows friends as they explore the province, now an independent country with palm trees.
Roger Lemelin
1948 

Roger Lemelin's first book, for decades Les Plouffe stood second only to Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'occasion as the best known French Canadian novel. The television series it inspired made for essential viewing. So why is Mary Finch's translation not in print? I blame Bertelsmann.

Le Libraire

Gérard Bessette
1960

The story of a washed up man who somehow manages to get a job in a shop selling stationary, religious items, and books. After a time, the proprietor comes to trust him with selling literature banned by the Catholic Church. Le Libraire was first published in France, not Quebec... 'cause, you know, the Church. 
 
The English Governess

Miles Underwood [John Glassco]
1960

First published in Paris by Olympia Press, The English Governess is both this country's finest and best selling work of erotica. That said, I much prefer Harriet Marwood, Governess, the more elegant version of the love story, published fourteen years later. 

Doux-amer

Claire Martin [Claire Montreuil]
1960

A literary editor is presented with a bad manuscript by a good looking woman. He reworks, remakes, and remodels, crafting a work that is both a critical and commercial success. A novel of obsession, it is vaguely Nabokovian – which is always a plus.

John Buell
1962

This writer is far better known for his first novel, The Pyx (1960), but it was the second that caused critic Edmond Wilson to place Buell alongside Marie-Claire Blais as one of Canada's great writers. Of the nineteen novels I've helped return to print, this is my favourite.

The Damned and the Destroyed
Kenneth Orvis
   [Kenneth Lemieux]
1962

Another novel I helped usher back to print, The Damned and the Destroyed is set during the earliest days of Jean Drapeau's first term. Its hero, a Korean War vet, is hired to go after the heroin ring polluting the veins of a rich man's daughter. Lee Child is a massive fan.

Une Chaîne dans le parc
André Langevin
1974

Jack McClelland considered this novel the best to have come out of French Canada since Bonheur d'occasion. Sadly, sales did not in any way match expectations. Alan Brown's 1976 translation received no second printing and has been out of print ever since. The novel is a masterpiece.

Bonne fête!

26 December 2023

The Best Reads of 2023: Publishers Take Note


The season brings a flurry of activity, which explains why I haven't posted one review this month. Still, I did manage to tackle twenty-four neglected Canadian books in 2023, which isn't so small a number. James De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888) was the oldest. Were I judging books by covers it would've been considered the finest. James Moffatt's The Marathon Murder (1972) was the youngest and ugliest. But then, what can one expect of a book that went from proposal to printing press in under seven days.

De Mille's dystopian nightmare is available from McGill-Queen's University Press as the third volume in the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts series.  

I first read the novel back when it was a McClelland & Stewart New Canadian Library mainstay. New Canadian Library is no more; it was killed by Penguin Random House Canada. McClelland & Stewart – "The Canadian Publisher" – has been reduced to an imprint owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, but that hasn't prevented the German conglomerate from trying to make a buck – two bucks to be precise – selling it as an ebook.

Dystopia.

Three other books covered here this year are also in print, but from American publishers:

The Weak-Eyed Bat - Margaret Millar
New York: Doubleday, 1942
New York: Syndicate, 2017
The Cannibal Heart - Margaret Millar
New York: Random House, 1949
New York: Syndicate, 2017

The Heart of Hyacinth - Onoto Watanna [Winnifred Eaton]
New York: Harper, 1903
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000
I'm wrong,  The Heart of Hyacinth is by far the best-looking book read this year; it was also the very best novel I read this year.

Note to Canadian publishers: Winnifred Eaton's novels are all in the public domain. 

What follows is the annual list of the three books most deserving of revival: 

Pagan Love
John Murray Gibbon
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1922

A novel penned by a man who spent his working life writing copy for the CPR,  Pagan Love provides a cynical look at public relations and the self-help industry. Add to these its century-old take on gender bending and you have a work unlike any other.

Dove Cottage
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay
   Grant]
London: Abelard-Schulman,
   1958 

The fourth of the author's six novels, this once centres on a man, his wife, and his mother-in-law, whose lives are elevated by way of an inheritance. Black humour abounds!

The Prairie Wife
Arthur Stringer
London: Hodder & Stoughton, [n.d.]


The first novel in Stringer's Prairie Trilogy. Dick Harrison describes it as the author's "most enduring work," despite the fact that it hasn't seen print in over seven decades. I'd put off reading The Prairie Wife because I have a thing against stories set on "the farm." What a mistake! An unexpected delight!


Last December's list of three featured Grant Allen's Philistea (1884), Stephen Leacock's Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (1915), and Horace Brown's Whispering City (1947). 


Ten months later, Whispering City returned to print as the eighteenth Ricochet Books title. Yours truly provided the introduction. It can be ordered through the usual online booksellers, but why not from the publisher itself? Here's the link.

As for the New Year... well, I'm back to making resolutions:
  • More French books (and not only in translation).
  • More non-fiction (and not only the work of crazies). 
That's it.

Keep kicking against the pricks!

Bonne année!

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