Don't Kill the Dog

The Heart of the Ancient Wood

Charles G.D. Roberts
New York: Wessels, 1906
276 pages

A bestseller in its day, a college text in mine, I read The Heart of the Ancient Wood for my very first CanLit course.

Last week I read it again.

Because I remembered liking the novel, I was really taken aback. The lengthy, gentle, gassy scenic opening is just the sort of thing that sets this sexagenarian's surprisingly healthy teeth on edge.

Your tastes may differ, but I think we can agree that "Not indolently soft, like that which sifts in green shadow through the leafage of a summer garden, but tense, alertly and mysteriously expectant, was the silence of the forest," is not a captivating first sentence.

The Heart of the Ancient Wood unfolds so very, very slowly with descriptions of the wood, its creatures, their sounds, their scents, their habits, their habitats, the trees, the sky, and the air until a "grey man figure" appears. The cock-partridge, the nuthatch, the bear, the wild-cat, and the weasel all react differently. The wood-mice quiver with fear, while the hare looks on with "aversion, not unmixed with scorn" while noting the man's lumbering gait:

“Never,” thought the hare, disdainfully, "would he be able to escape from his enemies!”

Eventually, the man figure reaches a clearing, pushes through blackberry and raspberry canes, then picks his way between the burned stumps of a desolate pasture, before at long last reaching "the loneliest cabin he had ever chanced to see."

The man figure's name is David "Old Dave" Titus. He has come to prepare the cabin. But for what purpose?

The answer comes in the third chapter, "The Exiles from the Settlement," with the arrival of Kirstie Craig (née MacAlister) and her young daughter Miranda, as announced by "the dull tanky tank, a-tonk, tank of cowbells." The pace picks up with Kirstie's backstory. A "tall, erect, strong-stepping, long-limbed woman," she'd lived her entire life in a place identified only as "the Settlement." Some seven years earlier Kirstie had chanced to be in a store when in walked a man unlike any other she had ever seen. This was Frank Craig, dilettante, musician, poet, and artist ("when the mood seized him strongly enough"). A prime specimen of a fish out of water, Frank had been advised to forgo city life for the restorative nature of country air. 

Before he had breathed it a month he had won Kirstie MacAlister, to whom he seemed little less than a god. To him, on her part, she was a splendid mystery. Even her peculiarities of grammar and accent did no more than lend a piquancy to her strangeness. They appealed as a rough, fresh flavour to his wearied senses.

They soon married. Kirstie gave birth to a daughter, Miranda, within the year.

Theirs seemed an ideal marriage, and maybe it was, but there came a time when Frank became restless. He talked about business in "the city" (also unidentified) that needed attending to. Kirstie saw her husband off on a rattling mail-wagon. The next paragraph is my favourite in the entire novel:

But – he never came back. The months rolled by, and no word came of him; and Kirstie gnawed her heart out in proud anguish. Inquiry throughout the cities of the coast brought no hint of him. Then, as the months climbed into years, that tender humanity which resents misfortune as a crime started a rumour that Kirstie had been fooled. Perhaps there had been no marriage, went the whisper at first. “Served her right, with her airs, thinkin’ she could ketch a gentleman!” – was the next development of it. Kirstie, with her superior air, had never been popular at best; and after her marriage the sufficiency and exclusiveness of her joy, coupled with the comparative fineness of speech which she adopted, made her the object of jealous criticism through all the country-side. When the temple of her soaring happiness came down about her ears, then was the time for her chastening, and the gossips of the Settlement took a hand in it with right good-will. Nothing else worth talking about happened in that neighbourhood during the next few years, so the little rumour was cherished and nourished. Presently it grew to a great scandal, and the gossips came to persuade themselves that things had not been as they should be. Kirstie, they said, was being very properly punished by Providence, and it was well to show that they, chaste souls, stood on the side of Providence. If Providence threw a stone, it was surely their place to throw three.  

This, I thought, was the reason my younger self liked the novel. Stories of gossip, jealousy, and their consequences appealed to me back then, just as they do today. Here's another favourite passage:

Some one else had heard from some one else of some one having seen Frank Craig in the city. There was at first a difference of opinion as to what city; but that little discrepancy was soon smoothed out. Then a woman was suggested, and forthwith it appeared that he had been seen driving with a handsome woman, behind a spanking pair, with liveried coachman and footman on the box.

Sadly, these elements and all their intrigue vanish completely, leaving the reader with more purple prose and a near absence of plot.

So as to escape bitter tongues, Kirstie makes a home for herself and little Miranda in the cabin. It's a rather idyllic if modest existence with remarkably few challenges. Good ol' Old Dave, Kirstie's only friend, drops by on occasion; otherwise the only human contact mother and daughter have is with each other. Miranda becomes an object of curiosity to the woodland creatures and is curious in return. The girl's main focus is a female bear, "far the most human of all the furry woodfolk," that her young mind identifies as a "nice, big dog." There is a chance encounter early in the novel, after which Kirstie insists the girl stay within sight of the cabin.

I remember The Heart of the Ancient Wood being included in the syllabus as an introduction to the "realistic animal story." We students were told the genre was originated in Canada by Roberts and his rival Ernest Thompson Seton... or some such thing. As a proud Canadian, this too may have appealed. As a city boy, its likely that I found the depictions of the furry woodfolk interesting, even as I recognized the anthropomorphism. And so, I suppose my memory could be right about liking the novel at the time.

Now, I very much dislike it.

A brief summary of the major plot points, right to the end, follows. 

Kirstie and Miranda survive their first winter at the cabin without difficulty, aided in part by an early spring. The bear emerges from hibernation and a few days later gives birth to a male cub. He's so very weak, but under his mother's care the cub becomes the most playful, curious, and cute of little guys before being crushed by a hunter's trap. That same awful day, the grieving she-bear comes upon Miranda as the girl is about to be set upon by a panther. The bear saves the girl and escorts her back to the cabin. Kirstie is rightfully wary, yet comes recognize the bear, Kroof, as a protector and companion. As Miranda grows into adulthood, she becomes at one with the creatures of the ancient wood, and they in turn grow to both trust her and accept her as their superior. This includes the panther.

One afternoon, Miranda comes upon a young man sleeping beneath a tree. In an echo of the scene years earlier involving Kroof, a panther is about to spring. As a student of Kroof, Miranda manages to order it away. The young man turns out to be Young Dave, son of Old Dave. The two haven't seen each other since the day Craig mother and daughter left the Settlement. Young Dave is immediately taken with the mature Miranda and soon becomes a frequent visitor. Kirstie likes Young Dave, but her daughter runs lukewarm and cold. Her reaction has something to do with the fact that the young man is a hunter, where she and her mother are vegetarians. I'd suggest it also has something to do with Miranda being unaccustomed to people, never mind a man who is more or less her own age. 

Young Dave pitches woo, but to no avail. He goes so far as to take Miranda on an excursion away from the cabin, deftly navigating dangerous rapids in order to deliver much needed medicine to a young mother and her ailing son. If anything, the visit pushes Miranda farther away, though this has to do with the older woman's assumption that the girl is Dave's fiancée.

A fair percentage of the closing chapters involves play between the two with Young Dave doing his best to ingratiate himself and making a bit of progress only to be pushed away.

Will they or won't they?

As with sitcoms, the question is increasingly tiring with each passing year. The resolution was not one I saw coming. You'd think I would've remembered. 

What happens is that Young Dave is walking through the ancient wood one day on yet another visit to the cabin when he chances upon a small male bear cub. He kills the cub with a shot to the head, skins it, cuts out the choicest portions, and continues on his merry way.

The reader already knows that the cub was Kroof's. Did Dave?

To this point, Young Dave has been portrayed as quick and intelligent. He's met Kroof many a time with Miranda over the years, is aware of the unusual relationship they share, and knows there are no other bears in the area. And yet, and yet, and yet, he kills without so much as a thought that the cub just might be the Kroof's.

Kroof finds what's left of her son, a red carcass "hideously affronting the sunlight, "walks around it twice, and then sets off on Dave's trail:

She was not blinded by her fury. Rather was she coolly and deliberately set upon a sufficing vengeance. She moderated her pace, and went softly; and soon she caught sight of her quarry some way ahead, striding swiftly down the brown-shadowed vistas. There was no other bear in all the forests so shrewd as Kroof.

She catches up with Dave as he's washing in a small steam so as to make himself presentable to Kirstie and Miranda. The hunter makes for a beech tree and begins climbing with the bear following. Miranda arrives on the scene and tries to call Kroof off. In desperation, she picks up Dave's rifle and fires:

The bear’s body heaved convulsively for a moment, then seemed to fall together on the branch, clutching at it. A second later and it rolled off, with a leisurely motion, and came plunging downward, soft, massive, enormous. It struck the ground with a sobbing thud. Miranda gave a low cry at the sound, turned away, and leaned against the trunk of the hemlock. Her face was toward the tree, and hidden in the bend of her arm.

Have we had enough?

The very next sentence is the worst:

Dave knew now that all he had hoped for was his.

I will not be reading this novel a third time.

Personal note: In the midst of reading The Heart of the Ancient Wood, I stumbled upon this beautiful poster. 

Good thing I put off the purchase for a couple of days. Knowing her fate, how could I put that image of Kroof on my wall.

Object and Access: A later edition, my copy was purchased for $2.50 sometime in the early 'eighties at Montreal's Russell Books. It's title page makes a big deal of it being illustrated, but the only illustration appears on the frontispiece. The first edition, published in 1900 by Silver, Burdett & Co, features a total of six, including the one found in my Wessels edition. All are by English-born James Weston (1841-1922), a man remembered more for his landscapes than his book illustrations. Looking at those he provided for this novel, I can see why, though I am partial to this:

The Heart of the Ancient Wood first appeared – in its entirety – in the April 1900 issue of Lippincott's Magazine. The novel has enjoyed numerous editions through the decades and as number 110 was once a New Canadian Library staple. It's currently available only as part of the Formac Fiction Treasures series.  

The novel has enjoyed a Polish translation (Vsrdci pralesa, 1925).

Black panthers are not native to Canada.

As always, print on demand vultures are to be avoided. That said, I was tempted to purchase this, if only because the cover features a detail Gustav Kimt's 'Church in Unterach on Lake Attersee.'

Related posts:

Blue Plaque Special: Maritime Edition
Portrait of a Former Mistress

Magic Mushrooms and Bad, Bad Boys

Acadian Driftwood

The Lily and the Cross: A Tale of Acadia
Prof. James De Mille
Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1875
264 pages

Like De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, reviewed here last January, The Lily and the Cross opens with a vessel adrift on a calm sea. The Rev. Amos Adams (known affectionately as the "Parson") is a New England schooner belonging to Zion Awake Cox (known affectionally as "Zac"). It has been chartered by his friend Claude Motier to voyage from Boston to Louisbourg. Père Michel, a newly-met Catholic priest, is along for the ride. Because the year is 1743, Zac is understandably anxious, considering the French as his natural enemies. 

"O, there’s no danger,” said Claude, cheerily. There’s peace now, you know — as yet.”
   Zac shook his head.
   "No,” said he, “ that ain’t so. There ain’t never real peace out here. There’s on’y a kin’ o’ partial peace in the old country. Out here, we fight, an’ we’ve got to go on fightin’, till one or the other goes down. An’ as to peace, ’tain’t goin’ to last long, even in the old country, ’cordin’ to all accounts. There’s fightin’ already off in Germany, or somewhars, they say.”

The plan had been to make quick, deposit Claude and Père Michel onshore not too far from Louisbourg, then hightail it back to New England. But the wind stopped blowing and a dense fog had moved in, making Zac all the more antsy. Who knows what's out there?

What's out there is a small portion of either a round-house or poop deck – De Mille is only so specific – upon which seven survivors of the shipwrecked French frigate Arathuse stand, sit, and kneel. As three of the seven belong to the French aristocracy, it can't be said that the group is representative of their home country. There's the Comte de Laborde, who isn't much more than a ghost. The sensitive reader will give the author a pass as the character is close to death. Laborde's gorgeous daughter Mimi is far stronger; from the moment of her introduction, we know that she will play a key role in what is to transpire. The other count, the Comte de Cazeneau, just happens to be new governor of Louisbourg. One would think he would be forever in gratitude to his rescuers, but Claude, Zac, and the crew of the "Parson" soon find themselves in imprisoned.

Might the incarcerations have something to do with the comte having eavesdropped on an intimate conversation between Claude and the gorgeous Mimi; the tête-à-tête in which he shared his recent discovery that Jean Motier was not his real father, rather the Comte de Montressor?

Describing The Lily and the Cross in further detail would invite spoilers, but not confusion. The web is tangled, but not so much that the reader cannot foresee the directions and intersections of every thread.

This is not a criticism.

De Mille deserves credit for his ability to keep things straight. The Lily and the Cross is one of those historical novels in which nearly all primary and secondary characters are connected by backstory, spoon-fed over the course of its twenty-six chapters.

The Comte de Laborde and the Comte de Montressor were close friends until they became romantic rivals vying for the hand of the same woman. That woman would become the Comtesse de Montressor, who would in turn give birth to the young man introduced to the reader as Claude Motier. She and her husband fled France for New France, victims of a conspiracy orchestrated by the Comte de Cazeneau, but known to the Comte de Laborde. The latter did nothing to expose the malfeasance, not even after the villain Cazeneau seized Montressor's property for himself. Shortly after the ruined couple's arrival in Quebec, the Comtesse de Montressor died. Her grief-stricken husband wandered off into the wilderness, never to be heard from again. It is presumed he died. The Comte de Laborde's purpose in crossing to the New World had to do with finding the son of the Comte and Comtesse de Montressor so as to make amends. I'll add that the commandant of Louisbourg is an old acquaintance of the Comte de Montressor. As for Père Michel, père is enough to break that code.

C'mon, you knew. You can't say that was a spoiler.

The Lily and the Cross is interesting enough, but nowhere near so much as A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, the novel for which De Mille is best remembered. As a historical romance it is somewhat unusual in that its hero, Claude, is so often reliant on others, namely Zac and Père Michel. At the novel's climax, his execution is thwarted and his freedom gained through the chance arrival of a ship from France.

Okay, that was a spoiler.

At the end of the novel's 246 pages, what strikes most about The Lily and the Cross is De Mille's pandering to the American market. Its subtitle, A Tale of Acadia, echoing Longfellow's Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847), is the least of it. Throughout the novel, France is invariably described as corrupt (which it was), while New England is depicted as pure (which it was not). Old England receives no mention and is therefore spared judgement.

Claude had hired Zac's schooner in an effort reconnect with his French heritage and return to the country of his mother and father, but in the final pages Père Michel, his surviving parent, advises against it (emphasis mine):

"What can France give you that can be equal to what you have in New England? She can give you simply honors, but with these the deadly poison of her own corruption, and a future full of awful peril. But in New England you have a virgin country. There all men are free. There you have no nobility. There are no down-trodden peasants, but free farmers. Every man has his own rights, and knows how to maintain them. You have been brought up to be the free citizen of a free country. Enough. Why wish to be a noble in a nation of slaves? Take your name of Montresor, if you wish. It is yours now, and free from stain. Remember, also, if you wish, the glory of your ancestors, and let that memory inspire you to noble actions. But remain in New England, and cast in your lot with the citizens of your own free, adopted land.”

Cut to the Rev. Amos Adams – the Parson – on which we find Jericho, very much a minor character:

He was a slave of Zac’s, but, like many domestic slaves in those days, he seemed to regard himself as part of his master’s family, — in fact, a sort of respected relative. He rejoiced in the name of Jericho, which was often shortened to Jerry, though the aged African considered the shorter name as a species of familiarity which was only to be tolerated on the part of his master. 

Would he? Would Jericho have regarded himself as part of the family? His master's family? Zac isn't shown to have a family, and does not treat Jericho as a brother.

I will say this for Zac. He was right about the fighting in Germany.

Object and Access: The novel first appeared in Oliver Optic's Magazine (January-June 1874), a Lee & Shepard publication.

Is my copy a second printing? A third? I ask because I've seen some bound in green boards. Mine features six illustrations credited to John Andrews & Son, a Boston firm that produced work for Lee & Shepard.

As far as I can determine, the novel enjoyed two further editions in the nineteenth century before falling out of print. It was revived in the twenty-first century – 2010 to be precise – as a Formac Fiction Treasures title. It benefits from an introduction by Michael Peterman. Copies can be purchased through this link. At $16.95, they're a steal.

The edition I own can be read online here courtesy of the Internet Archive. I much prefer the green.

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A Very Acadian Scandal

A Very Acadian Scandal

Quietly My Captain Waits
Evelyn Eaton
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, [c. 1943]
355 pages

I first learned of Louise de Freneuse last autumn during a visit to Nova Scotia. A historic plaque outlining her life served as my introduction. Something I came upon during an early evening stroll through Annapolis Royal, the story it told beggared belief. Her entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography will explain my reaction.

There is little wonder that Louise de Freneuse inspired a historical novel. This description of the lady comes from original publisher Harper & Bros:

As courageous as she was captivating, she defied every convention and all the wilderness in a gallant fight for love and happiness.

New York Times, 8 September 1940

Quietly My Captain Waits was a critical and commercial success; comparisons were drawn to Gone With the Wind and Hollywood came calling:

Boxoffice Barometer, 22 February 1941 

Here I note that Evelyn Eaton's novel is set well before the "French and Indian Wars [sic]" and the capture of Quebec. It's likely that Louise de Freneuse's death pre-dates the Battle of the Plains of Abraham by more than four decades.

Quietly My Captain Waits begins on an early evening in 1691 with young Raoul de Perrichet's return to his family home in the French commune of Draguigan. Not twenty-four hours earlier, he'd caught serial adulterer Vanina in the arms of the Compte de Callian, "old enough to be her father and Raoul's grandfather, Bigre!" Sixteen-year-old Raoul had wanted her for himself – he'd enjoyed Vanina's delights in the past – and in anger and frustration molests petite Marie "who had always loved him."

Raoul now finds himself under threat of imprisonment; not for the molestation, you understand, rather for what he witnessed in Vanina’s bedchamber. The Comte, who has the King’s ear, cannot entrust his reputation to a boy’s discretion. Raoul finds a saviour in his dashing uncle, Pierre de Bonaventure, captain of the Soleil d’Afrique – “the fastest vessel in the world!” – who enlists his nephew in the navy and sets sail for New France.

Armed Services Edition, 1945

Raoul doesn’t prove much of a seaman, but de Bonaventure is happy to have him aboard for games of bezique and to share the occasional bottle. One drunken evening, l’Oncle Pierre tells a tale about a raven-haired beauty. All occurred seven years earlier in New France; she was the sixteen-year-old daughter of an important man while de Bonaventure was then a twenty-six-year-old nothing. When the important man learned of the relationship, he sent the girl to a convent. She escaped, cut her hair, dressed as a boy, and made for her lover’s ship as it was about to set sail for France. Her idea was that they could marry in the Old World, but de Bonaventure turned her away.

In Quebec City, Raoul meets the raven-haired beauty, and falls in love with her himself. This is, of course, Louise de Freneuse, the girl his uncle loved – and still loves – who is now a twice-married woman with children. De Bonaventure does all he can not to avoid her, but fails. When the Soleil d’Afrique is tasked with transporting the Madam de Freneuse to her second husband’s Acadian home, the two old flames come together and things become very hot.

De Bonaventure is so ignorant of his Raoul’s love for Louise that he hands over the nephew who is so ill-suited to life at sea. Raoul arrives at the settlement built by Louise’s husband, Mathieu de Freneuse, and is tasked with tutoring her children. 

Mathieu de Freneuse is a force to be reckoned with, matrimonial bedroom excepted. His passion for Louise is equal to de Bonaventure’s, but the poor man has long recognised that her own passion lies in the memory of an old love (see: Simon-Pierre Denys de Bonaventure). A Frenchman who has come to be accepted as a member of the local “Micmacs,” Mathieu finds sexual outlet amongst the tribe’s women. He encourages the teenaged tutor to undergo the same initiation he endured, and then enjoy the same benefits.

This Raoul does, but only to prove his love for Louise.

It’s complicated.

Remarkably – improbably – Raoul grows to become a great Micmac leader, but not before Mathieu de Freneuse and his settlement are destroyed by Iroquois warriors. Mathieu expires in the arms of the miller’s daughter, with whom, it turns out, he’d been having an affair.

New York: Permabooks, 1951

Quietly, the reader turns eighty pages, awaiting Captain de Bonaventure's return.

In her Author’s Note, Evelyn Eaton writes of the research she put into writing Quietly My Captain Waits.

Let us consider the nameless miller's daughter, who enters and exits the novel during Mathieu de Freneuse's final minutes. Gervais Tibault's existence spans no more pages. In the author's fiction, he is a favoured child, the first-born of her first marriage. A sensitive soul, better suited for the salons of Paris than the backwoods of Acadia,  Gervais Tibault is killed by Iroquois arrows. Eaton places characters she created – those not based on historical figures – as if they are all of equal weight, and yet the actions of the fictitious Raoul de Perrichet are far more consequential than those of Louise and Pierre.

Eaton uses the “fragments” from which she wove her novel to good effect, but she does not tie them to fact. It is true that, Louise did in fact cross the Bay of Fundy in open canoe in winter, but it was not to meet de Bonaventure in a remote inlet, as in the novel. In reality – sans conjecture – Louise made for English-occupied Annapolis Royal. At the time, de Bonaventure was dead and buried in France.

At its heart, Quietly My Captain Waits is a love story inspired by scandale. Louise's very public relationship with the married de Bonaventure produced a son. We have avocat Mathieu de Goutins to thank for documenting their relationship. A pathetic figure in Eaton’s novel, he sent several letters to Paris complaining of the lovers’ conduct. De Goutins' puritanical outrage was shared twenty-three decades later by an anonymous reviewer in St Petersburg Times (30 June 1940):

You will soon be hearing a great deal about this book but take this reviewer’s advice if you are thinking of buying or renting it – save your money. Wait until you can see the movie version of it that will have to be censored.
     It is said that Hollywood paid $40,000 for it before it appeared in print – only a paltry $10,000 less than was paid for “Gone With the Wind.” It is a type of book that is this reviewers particular bete noir.
     We review few novels for the present trend is toward a particularly disgusting realism that seems to be increasing.

René Baudry, who wrote Louise de Freneuse's entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, had other issues. He makes no mention of Quietly My Captain Waits by title,  rather concludes with a veiled reference:

An American novelist has written a questionable novel about Mme de Freneuse. What need is there of adding imaginary episodes to the ardent and courageous life of this woman, the heroine of a true romance filled with adventure and passion?

The late M Baudry is mistaken. Evelyn Eaton was not an American novelist, although she did apply for citizenship in her forties. Eaton was born in 1902 to Canadian parents in Montreux, Switzerland, and lived much of her early life in New Brunswick. After the death of her father at Vimy Ridge, the family moved to England. She studied at Heathfield School and the Sorbonne. While at the latter, Eaton became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Therese, whom she raised. Eaton married a Polish count, fled the Nazis, made her way to the United States, and wrote for the New Yorker. She published more than thirty books, encompassing novels, poetry, non-fiction, and biography. Her name doesn’t feature the Canadian Encyclopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, or the Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature, but she does have a highly informative entry at the Canada’s Early Women Writers.

Returning to René Baudry's comment, I remind that Quietly My Captain Waits is a historical novel.

Historical novels are works of fiction.

Works of fiction feature imaginary episodes.

Quietly My Captain Waits is a hell of a story.

Hollywood could not have done better.

Bloomer:

At first he thought the ship was sinking, and that the two snoring men with whom he had gone to bed had left him there to die.

Trivia:  Hollywood has yet to adapt of the novel. Consensus is that another war intruded. Eaton used money from the sale to build a summer home on the Bay of Fundy.

Object: For the life of me, I cannot remember when and where I bought this book. What I can say for certain is that I paid no more than a dollar. I may have paid nothing. It once belonged to Cicely and Scottie Mitchell, a couple who lived at 12 Elmwood Avenue, Senneville, Quebec. If the notation on the frontispiece is accurate, it was added to their library on 18 March 1943. I found this postcard within its pages.

I'm happy to report that the Mitchells' house still stands. It's quite beautiful.

Access: The novel was first published in 1940 by Harper (New York) and Cassell (London). The Grosset & Dunlop followed a Literary Guild of America edition. In 1945, American GIs were treated to an Armed Services edition. In 1951, Permabooks' published the second paperback edition. Fifteen years later, Pyramid published a the first of its two mass market paperback editions.

The novel is currently in print from Formac as one of its Fiction Treasures titles. First editions, Armed Services copies, and vintage paperbacks are always tempting, but I recommend the Formac for its introduction by Barry M. Moody. It can be purchased through this link.

Surprisingly, there is no French translation, though there is a Portuguese: Até um dia, meu capitão!

Quietly My Captain Waits was read for the 1940 Club.

Related post:
Blue Plaque Special: Maritime Edition

A Dog's Life and Then Some

Beautiful Joe: The Autobiography of a Dog
     [New and Revised Edition]
Marshall Saunders
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, n.d.
266 pages

Like The Woman Who Did, I thought I knew this novel.

I did not.

My wife didn't want to hear me talk about Beautiful Joe because she thought too she knew the novel and would find it upsetting. The inspiration for this "autobiography" has a park named in his honour in Meaford, Ontario. Because we've found his story so disturbing, we've never visited.

There are disturbing things in Beautiful Joe – many, many things – but they don't always concern its hero. The worst of it comes in the earliest pages. A nameless cur, he enters this world as one of a litter of seven. His owner, a brute of a dairy farmer named Jenkins, lives in near poverty because he is too lazy to attend to his cows. One of his own children falls ill from his contaminated product, and one of his customers dies, but neither event causes Jenkins to change his ways. Then comes a passage that is not for the sensitive reader:

One rainy day, when we were eight weeks old, Jenkins, followed by two or three of his ragged, dirty children, came into the stable and looked at us. Then he began to swear because we were so ugly, and said if we had been good-looking, he might have sold some of us. Mother watched him anxiously, and fearing some danger to her puppies, ran and jumped in the middle of us, and looked pleadingly up at him.
     It only made him swear the more. He took one pup after another, and right there, before his children and my poor distracted mother, put an end to their lives. Some of them he seized by the legs and knocked against the stalls, till their brains were dashed out, others he killed with a fork. It was very terrible. My mother ran up and down the stable, screaming with pain, and I lay weak and trembling, and expecting every instant that my turn would come next. I don't know why he spared me. I was the only one left.

Nothing prepared me for that hellish scene, but I knew enough about the novel to brace myself for more blood and violence.

Beautiful Joe with his mother, brothers, and sisters,
as depicted by John Nicholson in the Jerrold's edition (c. 1907).

The grieving mother never recovers from the loss of her pups. Though only four years old, poor nutrition has worn her down and made her weak. Beautiful Joe brings his mother scraps, but she only turns them over with her nose... until one day, she licks him gently, wags her tale, and dies:

As I sat by her, feeling lonely and miserable, Jenkins came into the stable. I could not bear to look at him. He had killed my mother. There she lay, a little, gaunt, scarred creature, starved and worried to death by him. Her mouth was half open, her eyes were staring. She would never again look kindly at me, or curl up to me at night to keep me warm.

The milkman gives Beautiful Joe a kick. When the dog fights back, Jenkins calls for an axe:

He laid my head on the log and pressed one hand on my struggling body. I was now a year old and a full-sized dog. There was a quick, dreadful pain, and he had cut off my ear, not in the way they cut puppies' ears, but close to my head, so close that he cut off some of the skin beyond it. Then he cut of the other ear, and, turning me swiftly round, cut off my tail close to my body.
     Then he let me go and stood looking at me as I rolled on the ground and yelped in agony.

A cyclist hears the dog's cries, comes upon the scene, and beats Jenkins to a pulp. This passerby, Harry, takes the maimed creature to the home of his uncle and aunt, Rev and Mrs Morris, where he is slowly nursed back to health.

To be frank, I wasn't sure I could take too much more, but then I didn't know Beautiful Joe. I had thought it was the story of a maimed dog, who after a near lifetime of trials, tribulations, and adventure finally finds a loving home. I did not expect the manse be that home. An enlightened couple with five children, Rev and Mrs Morris believe that care for the lower creation teaches kindness, generosity, empathy, selflessness, and all sorts of other good things. Our hero joins a menagerie, consisting of rabbits, canaries, goldfish, pigeons, bantams, a guinea pig, a cat, and another dog. He's given the name Beautiful Joe because he's so ugly.

In many ways, Beautiful Joe's story ends in the third of the novel's thirty-five chapters, with his arrival at the Morris home. While he does experience a few moments of adventure – a train derailment, the rescue of abandoned farm animals, an encounter with a burglar (who turns out to be Jenkins!) – the great dramas of his life are in the past. The dog leads a quiet, uneventful life, largely in the company of Miss Laura Morris, devoting the bulk of his autobiography to relaying conversations he's heard regarding the proper and improper treatment of animals.

Beautiful Joe is at its heart a work of propaganda, written with the hope of winning an 1893 contest sponsored by the American Humane Education Society. In this Saunders was successful. I wonder whether this dedication would've featured had the novel lost:

As old novels go, Beautiful Joe offers the twenty-first-century reader a particularly focused glimpse of another time. I'll take away some knowledge of Bands of Mercy, organizations that were entirely new to me. I'll also remember the distaste shown fox hunting.

(I have a hard time these days listening to "Slave to Love.")

The novel ends abruptly with Beautiful Joe as an old dog: "I thought when I began to write, that I would put down the events of each year of my life, but I fear that would make my story too long, and neither Miss Laura nor any boys and girls would care to read it." The last adventure Beautiful Joe describes begins when he hears an amusing account of a man named Bellini and his performing animals. Curious, he visits the troupe – monkeys, dogs, ponies, goats – who are penned in a stable adjacent the town's hotel. Beautiful Joe is on his way home when he learns of a fire at that same hotel. He runs back:

In front of me I heard such a wailing, piercing noise, that it made me shudder and stand still. The Italian's animals were going to be burned up, and they were calling to their master to come and let them out. Their voices sounded like the voices of children in mortal pain. I could not stand it. I was seized with such an awful horror of the fire, that I turned and ran, feeling so thankful that I was not in it.

The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature informs that the version I read was revised so as to make it less violent.

I don't have the fortitude of an nineteenth-century child.

Object and Access: One of the biggest selling Canadian novels of all time, there are over eight million copies out there. Mine was obtained in 2017 through a small donation to the St Marys Public Library (a two hour and fifteen minute drive from Meaford's Beautiful Joe Park). Most of the twenty-two uncredited illustrations have been coloured in by a previous owner. Might it be Georgie, who in 1944 received it as a Christmas gift?

Beautiful Joe entered the public domain decades ago, and the print on demand vultures have moved in. Formac publishes the only one of the few editions coming from a real publisher. Part of its Fiction Treasures series, it features an introduction and notes by Gwendolyn Davies. Price: $16.95.

Prices for used copies of Beautiful Joe are all over the place. Three booksellers are offering true first edition, published in 1894 by the American Baptist Publication Society, beginning at US$250; of these, at US$500, the one to buy is a copy inscribed by Saunders to "a fellow Nova Scotian."

The most expensive copy is a print-on-demand edition offered by a crooked Texas bookseller at US$1207.17.

Addendum: Karyn Huenemann of Canada's Early Women Writers points out that Broadview publishes an illustrated edition edited with an introduction by Keridiana Chez. Price: $18.95. The cover suggests Beautiful Joe before Jenkins reached for that axe.

Related post:

Beautiful Joe: Now with 30% Less Violence
Getting to Know the Woman Who Did

If the rain comes...

In a long, hot summer of precious little precious rain, Seth's cover for the new Canadian Notes & Queries reminds booklovers to always be at the ready. Whether walking your dog, enjoying a pleasant read in the park, or both, the plastic bag is an essential item. Books are never to be used to protect one's do.

My copy arrived in the mail – a small miracle – on Friday, bringing art, articles and reviews by Kamal Al-Solaylee, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Nicole Dixon, Charles Foran, Alex Good, David Helwig, Jim Johnstone, Jason Kieffer, Rachel Lebowitz, David Mason and, um, Max Beerbohm. Jason Dickson interviews my friends Adrian and Brendan King-Edwards of The Word bookstore in Montreal. The issue is further blessed with three poems by Nyla Matuk and a new short story from Tamas Dobozy.

My contribution – The Dusty Bookcase on paper – is an interview with Gwendolyn Davies, Series Editor of Formac Fiction Treasures. Now celebrating its tenth year, the series has worked to revive forgotten works by mostly-forgotten Maritime writers. I'm right now reading its most recent title, A Changed Heart by May Agnes Fleming, Victorian Gothic set in St John, New Brunswick. Anyone who remembers my review of Fleming's The Midnight Queen will understand the attraction.

Enjoy!

And pick up after your damn dog!

Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries can be purchased here.