The Lady Vanishes (again and again)

Wedded for a Week; or, The Unseen Bridegroom

May Agnes Fleming

London: Milner, [n.d.]
248 pages

We begin on a dark and stormy November night at a ball hosted by Mrs Walraven, matriarch of the New York Walravens, at her Fifth Avenue mansion. Prodigal son Carl is in attendance, having recently returned from two decades spent in parts unknown. A greying thirty-nine-year-old, he still attracts the ladies, and not only because he is sole heir to the Walraven fortune. This Gilded Age-adjacent evening with its alabaster lamps and belles in silk, pearls, and diamonds – so many diamonds – is nearly spoiled by the appearance of a haggard woman dressed in rags, soaked with rain, who insists on speaking with the son of the hostess.

Carl Walraven knows better than to turn her away. This woman, Miriam, whom he'd believed long dead, holds something over him, but what exactly? The more Miriam speaks, the further the mystery grows. This line is key:

"Mary Dane's daughter lives not twenty miles from where we stand. Justice to the dead is beyond the power of even the wealthy Carl Walraven. Justice to the living can yet be rendered, and shall be to the uttermost farthing."

The haggard figure – is "hag" inappropriate? – demands that Carl bring the girl into his home, "educate her, dress her, and treat as your own child."

The second chapter – "Cricket" – finds the Walraven heir seated in a smelly provincial theatre for a performance of Fanchon the Cricket, the lead being played by "distinguished and beautiful young English actress, Miss Mollie Dane."

Carl, who one assumes has been around and has seen a thing or two, finds the sixteen-year-old golden haired actress enchanting:

The stars in the frosty November sky without were not brighter than her dark, bright eyes; no silvery music that the heir of all the Walravens had ever heard was clearer or sweeter than her free, girlish laugh; no golden sunburst ever more beautiful than the waving banner of wild, yellow hair. Mollie Dane stood before him a beauty born.

Mollie Dane's talent and good looks make it all the easier to do as Miriam instructed and treat the girl as his own. Carl pays off theatre manager Mr Harkner, takes her home, and introduces the young actress to his mother: "'Here’s a granddaughter for you, mother,' said Mr. Walraven – 'a companion to cheer and brighten your future life. My adopted daughter – Mollie Dane.'”

The matriarch is pleased. Weeks earlier, she'd been a lonely, old widow; now her newly returned bachelor son has adopted a daughter. No need to ask questions. Besides, young Mollie Dane is so very, very pretty. 

Mollie Dane is also quite the coquette. Be be it on the stage or in the dining room, she really knows how to captivate an audience. Her debut in New York society takes the form of a dinner party at the Fifth Avenue mansion with physician Guy Orleander, the artist Hugh Ingelow, and "eminent young lawyer" Joseph Sardonyx.

Just how young is Joseph Sardonyx? I'd wager he has several more years than Mollie's sixteen.

While male guests fixate on the girl, Carl Walraven has eyes only for Blanche Orleander, the doctor's cousin.

And Blanche Orleander?

All night long, her dark eyes cast daggers at Mollie Dane. 

Is Carl Walraven in love with Blanche? I wasn't convinced, though I understood the attraction. A statuesque, elegant woman, she moves through the novel in the finest silk and satin gowns, and with the greatest poise.

Carl proposes, Blanche accepts, and the two marry quickly in a ceremony marred by the sudden appearance of apparition-like Miriam:

“I forbid the marriage!” exclaimed Miriam. “Clergyman, on your peril you unite those two!”

As it turns out, Miriam had mistakenly thought that Mollie was the bride. Once corrected, the hag apologizes and makes her departure, but not before checking in with Mollie, who assures that "guardy," Carl Walraven, is treateing her like a queen.

Sadly, the marriage between Carl and Blanche never achieves a firm footing. The first misstep belongs to the groom for insisting that his adopted daughter come along on the honeymoon. And so, the trio set out for Washington, DC:

Mr. Walraven had had a surfeit of Europe, and Washington, this sparkling winter weather, was at its gayest and best. The Walraven party, with plethoric purses, plunged into the midst of the gayety at once.

Now, I wouldn't have thought that Washington was all that, but to hear Mollie go on about it New York can't compete:

"I like this sort of thing," said Mollie to her guardian; "the theater, and the opera, and a ball, and two or three parties every night. I like dancing until broad daylight, and going to bed at six in the morning, and getting up to breakfast at one. I like matinees at three in the afternoon, and dinners with seventeen courses, and going to the White House, and shaking hands with the President, and sailing around the East Room, and having people point me out as the beauty of the season. It's new and it's nice, and I never get tired, or pale, or limpy, like most of the girls. I never enjoyed myself so much in my life, and you would say the same thing, guardy, only you're in your honey-moon, and not capable of enjoying anything."

Carl, Blanche, and Mollie are invited to a presidential ball also attended by Sir Roger Trajeuna, a Welsh baronet "worth nobody knows how many millions, and with castles by the dozen in his own land of mountains.”

Sexagenarian Sir Roger is smitten with the sixteen-year-old; so smitten that despite "asthmatic and rheumatic afflictions," he proposes marriage. Mollie is so smitten with the idea of becoming Lady Trajeuna and living in a Welsh castle that she accepts. She then has her hoary-haired fiancé promise to keep the engagement a secret for the time being:

Miss Dane returned to New York "engaged," and with the fact known to none save herself and the enraptured Welshman:
   “There is no need to be in a hurry,” the young lady said to her elderly adorer; “and I want to be safely at home before I overwhelm them with the news. There is always such fussing and talking made over engagements, and an engagement is dreadfully humdrum and dowdyish anyhow.”

   That was what Miss Dane said. What she thought was entirely another matter."

   "I do want Doctor Oleander and Mr. Sardonyx to propose; and if they discover I've accepted the baronet, they won't. I am dying to see the wry faces they will make over 'No, thanks!' Then there is Hugh lngelow–”

The thought of Hugh brings an expression of remorse to Mollie's dark blue eyes: "Ah! what a pity all the nice men, and the handsome men, must be poor!"

Mollie achieves her objective and more on the first evening the  newlywed couple are "at home" in the Fifth Avenue mansion. Blanche is "superb in her bridal robes," but is shown up by Mollie "in shimmering silk that blushed as she walked, and clusters of water-lilies drooping from her tinseled curls."  Before the evening is out, Mollie receives three marriage proposals, the first being from Orleander, then Sardonyx, and then Ingelow. The last is unexpected. Mollie mentions nothing about her betrothal to Sir Roger, instead leads them on, telling each to visit the next morning for her answer. They arrive apart and wait in separate rooms, each unaware that his was not the only marriage proposal. Eventually, the men are ushered into the dining room, where they are surprised to see each other, old Sir Roger, and Mollie. The girl delights in revealing that she'd already agreed to take wealthy Welshman's aged hand in marriage.

The wedding day arrives nearly as quickly as it had for Carl and Blanche. Bridesmaids abound and the reverend and groom await. Mollie is completing her toilette when she receives a letter from an unknown person who offers to reveal the mystery of her origins. All the girl has to do is leave immediately and accompany the mysterious woman who had served as courier. This she does.

At last, we'll know the secret of Mollie Dane and why Carl Walraven adopted her!

Wedded for a Week being my sixth May Agnes Fleming read, this being chapter six of twenty-nine, I knew better than to expect the answer to that mystery in chapter seven. Mrs Fleming's plots are nowhere near so simple. That said, what happened next was entirely unexpected, plunging the story into a deeper hole.

A woman escorts Mollie to a carriage in which sits a man in disguise. The girl is bound, blindfolded, gagged, and whisked off on a nightmarish journey that leads to a silk padded room. Along the way, the disguised man – black mask, faux beard, flowing wig – explains:

"Why this  deception – this abduction? Who am I? Where are you being taken? When are you to be restored to your friends? This is what you would ask, is it not? Very well; now to answer you. What does this mean? Why, it means that you have made an enemy, by your atrocious flirting, of one whom you cruelly and shamefully jilted, who has vowed vengeance, and who knows how to keep that vow. Why this deception – this abduction? Well, without deception it was impossible to get you away, and we know just enough about you to serve our purpose. Miriam never sent that note; but Miriam exists. Who am I? Why, I am that enemy – if one can be your enemy who loves you to madness – a man you cruelly taught to love you, and then scornfully refused. Where are you being taken? To a safe place, my charming Mollie – safe as 'that deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat’ which you have read of. When are you to be restored to your friends? When you have been my wife one week – not an instant sooner.”

Mollie rejects the condition, of course, standing firm until the seventh day, on which the abducted bride and disguised groom are married by an abducted clergyman. A week later, the girl reappears at the Walraven mansion.

The Unseen Bridegroom; or, Wedded for a Week
May Agnes Fleming
Chicago: Donahue, 1895 

Mollie will disappear again through her longing for the man who abducted her. Absurd, I know, but I found it plausible. This may have something to do with having bought and read The Strange Case of Patty Heart as an eleven-year-old.

The Strange Case of Patty Hearst
John Pascal and Francine Pascal
New York: Signet, 1974

Lest you think that the story ends there – or thereabouts –  I rush to add that Mollie's second disappearance too is an abduction. This time out the abductor disguises himself as the original disguised man. We've now reached midpoint. I don't spoil the plot in revealing that a disguised woman will soon be introduced. Miriam will tell a fantastic story of drunkenness, adultery, and murder that is worthy of a novel itself. One marriage will end in bitterness and betrayal, while another will begin anew. Oh, and Mollie will disappear a third time. Such is the author's talent that the reader gets caught up in it all. The world she creates is real, so real that I finished the book worried for Hugh Ingelow.

Three days later, my concerns remain.

Favourite passage:

Mrs. Walraven descended to breakfast at half past ten, and announced her intention of spending the remainder of the morning shopping.

   Mollie, in a charming demi-toilet, and looking as fresh as though she had not danced incessantly the whole night before, heard the announcement with secret satisfaction.

   “Are you going, too, Mollie?” asked her guardian.

   “No,” said Mollie; “I’m going to stay at home and entertain Sir Roger Trajenna. He is coming to luncheon.”

 “Seems to me, Cricket,” said Mr. Walraven, “Sir Roger Trajenna hangs after you like your shadow. What does it mean?”

   “It means — making your charming ward Lady Trajenna; if he can, of course.”

   “But he’s as old as the hills, Mollie.”

   “Then I’ll be a fascinating young widow all the sooner.”

   “Disgusting!” exclaimed Mrs. Carl Walraven. “You are perfectly heartless, Mollie Dane!”

Trivia I: In my copy, Hugh Ingelow mentions the year as being "eighteen hundred and sixty," yet in the text of the 1895 Donahue edition available here at the Internet Archive and here at Project Gutenberg. Hugh states that the year is "eighteen hundred and ninety." 

The original year suggests the presidential ball attended by Carl Walraven, Blanche Walraven, Mollie Dane, Guy Orleander, Hugh Ingelow, Joseph Sardonyx, and Sir Roger Trajeuna would have been hosted by James Buchanan.

Gee, if only there'd been a White House ballroom.

Trivia II: A second honeymoon is mentioned in the novel, this on the next to last paragraph of he novel. Unlike Carl Walraven and Blanche Orleander, these newlyweds are very much in love. This second couple – no names as I don't want to spoil – take their honeymoon in "the Canadas," a reference to Canada East and Canada West.

Trivia III: Fanchon, the Cricket, the play in which Mollie stars was a real thing. Based on George Sand's 1849 novel Le Petite Fadette, the novel has been adapted to the English-language stage at least three times, once by way of a German adaptation. Hollywood took it on in 1915 with a feature starring Toronto girl Mary Pickford. Of her 245 films, Fanchon, the Cricket was Pickford's favourite as the only one feature her siblings Lottie and Jack. A lost film at the time of her death in 1979, it has since been found and restored. 

Object and Access: An attractive book bound in brown boards. The novel itself is followed by eight pages of Milner's other offerings, including May Agnes Fleming's Heir of Charlton and The Midnight Queen. Also included: Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk. My copy was purchased three year ago from a UK bookseller. Price: £19.00.

It once belonged to Edith Smith of 16 Asylum Street, Leicester. The street has since been renamed Gateway. Her home has since been razed. Though I did go down a bit of a rabbit hole, the only concrete thing I have to add is that the head of the household in 1899 was a man named John Smith.

Sarah Dorwald's invaluable 'Working Bibliography of Texts by May Agnes Fleming' has it that the novel was first published in 1869 as The Unseen Bridegroom; Or, Wedded for a Week by New York publisher Munro. It would seem that American readers knew it only by this title. I expect this Street and Smith undated early twentieth-century paperback edition was the last.

A UK bookseller has a Fair copy of the Milner edition listed online at £20.00. A New York State bookseller is offering a 1895 American edition, this one published by Donahue, priced at US$28.00. A Street and Smith copy is listed on eBay at US$19.95.

Wouldn't you prefer an attractive19th-century copy to a 21st-century print-on-demand monstrosity like this?

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Darkness on the Edge of Town

Barnabas, Quentin and the Crystal Coffin
Marilyn Ross [W.E.D. Ross]
New York: Paperback Library, 1970
157 pages

The back cover poses a question: 

Knowing nothing about Betty Ward, I was stumped. What's more, I wasn't at all sure about Collinwood and its evil forces. Dark Shadows, the gothic soap that spawned this novel, was cancelled when I was eight. All I knew about the series came from a Gold Key comic bought when I was nine:

The featured story is titled "The Thirteenth Star." I remember it as my introduction to the Golem. After that, I thought no more about Dark Shadows for a half-century. My interest as an adult has to do with the discovery that Dan Ross, who penned Barnabas, Quentin and the Crystal Coffin and the thirty-one other Dark Shadows novels, was a son of St John, New Brunswick.

My childhood memories of Collinwood being in Collinsport Bay, Maine proved correct. It's the family home of the Collins family, Barnabas Collins being the oldest member. As a vampire, I suppose he might be considered one of the house's "EVIL FORCES," though he proves every bit the gentleman when accompanying pretty blonde Carolyn Stoddard. One of Barnabas's youngest relatives, Carolyn is keen on visiting the ruins of Frene Castle, located on the vast Collinwood estate bordering the town of Collinsport Bay.

Carolyn Stoddard (Nancy Barrett) and Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) in Dark Shadows episode #351, broadcast 30 October 1967.

"Tell me about Frene Castle and the Frenes," says Carolyn. Barnabas begins, is interrupted by six asterisks, and then an omniscient narrator takes over.
      

Aptly named London orphan Betty Ward is at the centre of the story. She and twin sister Georgette have been under the care of Reverend Prit since their parents died. Bumbling and ineffective, he hasn't been the best of guardians. Prit's opposition to Georgette's desire to study art in Paris was easily overcome and he's heard little from the girl since. Betty, who is more on the ball than the clergyman, gleams through letters home that her sister is falling in love with American sculptor Jeremy Frene; still, their elopement takes her by surprise.

Georgette and Jeremy set sail for his home at Frene Castle. Meanwhile, Betty makes for Paris because she wants to investigate whatever went on before the newlyweds departed. The fact-finding mission doesn't make much sense, though it does bring the very best scenes of the novel. My favourite has to do with an artistic dwarf named Dulez who has been commissioned to create a wax sculpture of Georgette for wealthy French Count Lissay, whom she had rebuffed.

Dulez imprisons Betty because a warm, living, flesh and blood likeness of Georgette is much better than a waxwork, right? Won't the Count Lissay be pleased!

Betty is rescued by Quentin Collins of the Collinsport Bay Collinses. He's the novel's most physically attractive male, though as anyone familiar with the television series will tell you, Quentin is both a bad boy and a werewolf.

For reasons unknown, Quentin does his best to dissuade Betty from setting out for the New World and Collinsport Bay. Failing this, he books a passage on the very same ship, then begins terrorizing his fellow passengers.  

Writing propels the plot with sentence structures that would have not passed muster in my high school English classes:

She didn't refer to it again. But when she was back in her own cabin doing the last of her packing she did think of that bandaged hand. And an odd thought flashed through her mind. The sailor on deck claimed he had shot the werewolf in the front right paw. She stood frowning into space for a moment. And this morning Quentin appeared with a bandaged right hand? Could there be any connection between the two things?

     She at once decided there couldn't.

Barnabas, Quentin and the Crystal Coffin is one of thirteen – thirteen! – "Marilyn Ross" Dark Shadows novels published in 1970. That not one is based on the soap's storylines makes the accomplishment all the more impressive.

Betty Ward wasn't a character in the television series. She exists only in this novel, making the question posed on as the back cover a bit unfair.

Carolyn Stoddard, of course, was a character in the television series. She was born and raised raised at Collinwood, yet in this novel had not so much as seen the ruin of Frene Castle. And so, I have a question of my own:

JUST HOW LARGE IS THE COLLINWOOD ESTATE?

Object: A mass market paperback. The novel itself is followed by three pages of adverts for "Other Great Gothics By Marilyn Ross," along with My Life With Jacqueline Kennedy by Mary Barelli Gallagher. My signed copy was purchased last year as part of a lot of twelve Marilyn Ross Dark Shadows paperbacks.

Access: The Popular Library edition enjoyed a single printing. As of this writing, fifteen copies are listed for sale online ranging in price from US$5.00 to US$24.50.

Condition is not a factor.

This collector, who suffered gouging in the purchase of the aforementioned lot of Dark Shadows paperbacks, notes:

• A California bookseller is charging US$50.00 to ship his US$13.41 copy to Canada. 
• A Texas bookseller is charging US$13.01, then asks US$100.00 for shipping.

USPS First-Class International Package Service from their addresses to mine is US$17.00.

Caveat emptor!

Read for Kaggsy and Simon's 1970 Club.

Other titles from 1970 I've reviewed here over the years:

Cry Hallelujah! - Kenneth Orvis

Re-entry - John Wesley White

The Sin Sniper - Hugh Garner

The Sleeping Bomb - James Moffatt

Stephen Leacock - Robertson Davies

Strength Down Centre - Hugh Hood

The Temple of Pederasty - John Glassco

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The Witch is Back; or, Cousin Cousine Cousine

A Daughter of Witches: A Romance

Joanna E. Wood
[n.p.]: Luminosity, [n.d.]
241 pages

Of all the books read these past twelve months, not one haunts so much as Joanna E. Wood's 1894 debut novel The Untempered Wind. It tells the story of Myron Holder, an unwed mother who dares raise a child in Jamestown, a provincial village located somewhere in the Niagara Region. To this reader, it is earliest example of Southern Ontario Gothic, holding every characteristic of the sub-genre; Protestant morality and hypocrisy are paramount.

Types of Canadian Women
Henry J. Morgan, ed.
Toronto: William Briggs, 1903

A Daughter of Witches, is Wood's third novel. It's set south of the border in the New England community of Dole, but make no mistake, this is Wood Country. The accents may differ, but the townsfolk of Dole are every bit as narrow-minded-minded and judgemental as those of Jamestown.

Dole is something akin to a closed community. Its families go back generations, stay put, and generally keep to themselves (see below). From time to time, someone will leave the village and strike out for Boston, the most recent being young Len Simpson.

And now he's dead... so there you go.

Old Lansing has this to say:

"Yes the buryin's to-morrow, and it seems Len was terrible well thought of amongst the play-actin' folk, and they've sent up a hull load of flowers along with the body, and there's a depitation comin' to-morrow to the buryin' and they say there's considerable money comin' to Len and of course his father'll get it. I don't know if he'll buy that spring medder of Mr. Ellis, or if he'll pay the mortgage on the old place, but anyhow it'll be a big lift to him."

No one in Dole is the least bit curious as to how Len acquired such wealth. The general consensus is that he was a disgrace to his family. It's whispered that he drank. 

News of Len Simpson's death coincides with the arrival of Sidney Martin, son of Sid Martin. Decades earlier, Sid left Dole to make a life for himself in Boston. He did something there, no one knows just what, but it is known that he married a woman from a moneyed family.

Sidney Martin's mother and father are now dead. Frail and pale, their son isn't looking too good himself. His countenance and weak physique contrast with raven-haired Vashti Lansing, whose Amazonian beauty and strength – she's first seen wrestling a runaway horse – captures the young man's heart.

The Canadian Bookseller, August 1900

Sidney falls hard for Vashti, but Vashti is in love with her cousin Lansing "Lanty" Lansing. Lanty loves another cousin, fair Mabella Lansing. Cousin Mabella returns his love.

The author passes no judgement on this bizarre love triangle, though she does torture Vashti in having her witness the moment in which her two cousins declare their love for one another.

Vashti is the central character in this romance, yet she is one of least realized characters. I believe this is intentional. Wood describes Vashti as acting on instinct; her will is not entirely her own:

Long ago they had burned one of her forbears as a witch-woman. They said she caused her spirit to enter into her victims and commit crimes, crimes which were naively calculated to tend to the worldly advantage of the witch. Vashti thought of her martyred ancestress often; she herself sometimes felt a weird sensation as of illimitable will power, as of an intelligence apart from her normal mind, an intelligence which wormed out the secrets of those about her, and made the fixed regard of her large full eyes terrible.  

Sidney Martin is so smitten, yet so blind, that he proposes marriage to Vashti on the very same spot Lanty and Mabella become engaged. Vashti's acceptance, which came as something of a surprise to this reader, comes with two conditions, the first being that once married they will live in Dole. The second condition, odd in the extreme, is that Sidney, an agnostic, will become an ordained minister so as to take over from old Mr Didymus, the village pastor.

What is Vashti up to? She does not know herself.

Sidney leaves Dole to study theology in Boston, returning years later as Didymus is dying. The elderly preacher's final act is to marry fiancé and fiancée. 

As the bride had long intended, the newlyweds move into the parsonage and Sidney takes over the ministry. If anything, he is more popular than his predecessor. Sidney's sermons, focusing on the majesty of the natural world, go over well in what is essentially a farming community. This is not to suggest that Sidney and Vashti are immune to town gossip.

As the preacher's wife, Vashti draws resentment in lording over the local ladies, attending their weekly sewing circle in gowns made in Boston. Then there's cousin Lanty – secret object of her affection – who has fallen into drink. Harsh words are spoken of Ann Serrup. "Left at thirteen the only sister among four drunken brothers much older than herself," like Myron Holder in The Untempered Wind, Ann is an unwed mother. Might Lanty be the father?

All this poisonous talk exhausts the patience of Temperance Tribbey, Old Lansing's housekeeper. In one of the novel's many memorable scenes, she takes down Mrs Abiron Ranger:

Temperance spoke with a knowledge of her subject which gave play to all the eloquence she was capable of; she discussed and disposed of Mrs. Ranger's forbears even to the third generation, and when she allowed herself finally to speak of Mrs. Ranger in person, she expressed herself with a freedom and decision which could only have been the result of settled opinion.
     "As for your tongue, Mrs. Ranger, to my mind, it's a deal like a snake's tail it will keep on moving after the rest of you is dead."

Vashti's instinct brings what I believe is intended as the climax. My uncertainty has to do with the scene being nowhere near as memorable as others. It should haunt, but it does not haunt. 

And so, the spoiler:

One Sunday morning, Sidney takes to the pulpit and delivers a sermon unlike any other. More brimstone than pastural, he admonishes his parishioners, pointing out their duplicity, dishonesty, deceit, and deception. Sidney repeats town gossip going back decades, but his words are not his own; they belong to Vashti, a daughter of witches. 

Not a spoiler: 

Vashti's fate is not deserved, nor is Wood's fate as a forgotten novelist.

Bloomer:

"Lanty will take it terribly hard," said the old man musingly. "He and Len Simpson ran together always till Len went off, and Lanty never took up with anyone else like he did with Len." 

Object and Access: A Daughter of Witches first appeared serialized in the Canadian Magazine (November 1898 - October 1899). In 1900, Gage (Canada) and Hurst & Blackett (England) published the novel in book form. I've yet to find a copy of either edition for sale, and so bought this print-on-demand edition.

The Gage edition can be read online here at the Internet Archive.

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A Romance of Toronto: CanLit Most Verbose

A Romance of Toronto (Founded on Fact)

Mrs Annie G. Savigny
Toronto: William Briggs, 1888
229 pages

The first chapter, 'Toronto a Fair Matron,' begins:

Two gentlemen friends saunter arm in arm up and down the deck of the palace steamer Chicora as she enters our beautiful Lake Ontario from the picturesque Niagara River, on a perfect day in delightful September, when the blue canopy of the heavens seems so far away, one wonders that the mirrored surface of the lake can reflect its color.

Dale and Buckingham are the two gentlemen friends. In their sauntering, the former teases the latter for being a bachelor. Dale brags that he has not only wed, but has managed to father a child, whilst friend Buckingham prefers the company of his gentleman's club.

I describe this opening scene because it suggests an intriguing read.

Sadly, A Romance of Toronto is not.

Buckingham has joined Dale, Mrs Dale, their child, and pretty governess Miss Crew on a voyage from New York to Toronto. His presence aboard the Chicora is something of a mystery, but then the same might be said of the Dales and young Miss Crew. All may or may not involve a certain Mrs Gower, who has put to pen "a letter descriptive of Toronto." Dale reads it aloud as the palace steamer approaches Ontario's capitol. Four pages are consumed, these being the middle two:

Cliquez pour agrandir.

A Romance of Toronto is not a long novel but it demands a good amount of time and a great deal of concentration and patience. The reader may feel lost in the early chapters, but will eventually come upon a path. That same path will split in two, and then come together in the final pages.

In her introductory note, Mrs Savigny describes A Romance of Toronto as a novel consisting of two plots.

Dale and Buckingham have nothing to do with either.

The first involves young Charles Babbington-Cole. He knows Mrs Gower through his father, Hugh Babbington-Cole. A widower in frail health, Babbington-Cole père was once engaged to a wealthy Englishwoman. Tragically, the union was prevented through conniving and lies told the bride-elect by the sister of his late wife. The Englishwoman instead married her guardian with whom she had a daughter. When the sister-in-law's malfeasance was exposed Hugh Babbington-Cole and the Englishwoman – identified only as "Pearl" – vow that their offspring will one day wed and together inherit her riches.

And so, Charles Babbington-Cole bids Mrs Gower adieu, embarking for England and a storyline that reads like a very bad imitation of May Agnes Fleming; kidnapping, false identity, forced marriage, and a gothic manor house will figure.

The second plot – much more absurd, yet somehow less interesting – concerns Mrs Gower herself. A woman who has has twice worn the black robes of widowhood, she is cornered into accepting a marriage proposal from Mr Cobbe, by far the most repellent of her social set. Mrs Gower tells Mrs Drew how this came to be in 'The Oath in the Tower of Toronto University,' the novel's sixteenth chapter. This is its beginning:

Cliquez pour agrandir.

Several more pages pass in Mrs Gower's telling, but it comes down to this: Cobbe, who has been pestering Mrs Gower to marry him, fools her into believing that they've become locked in the tower overnight. Fearing scandal, Mrs Gower promises to marry Cobbe if he can only find a way out of their situation. The two descend only to find that the tower door isn't locked, and yet she holds herself to the oath.

Is Mrs Gower doomed to marry Cobbe? Is there not a means through which she can be released from her promise? Might the mysterious woman who has been haunting the grounds of Mrs Gower's home hold the key? The situation is made all the more dire when she meets and falls in love with Alexander Blair, a barrister newly arrived from Scotland.

Nothing is spoiled in reporting that all ends happily; the first of the novel's two epigraphs suggests as much.

Mrs Savigny's note makes it plain that A Romance of Toronto (Founded on Fact) is a roman à clef. but who are its models? Her two plots – "one of which was told to me by an actor therein; the other I have myself watched" – are "living facts." Who are the originals?  

A Montrealer, I hope to hear the answer from one of Toronto's fair children.

Trivia: The epigraph attributed to Charles Darwin – "I would like the Government to forbid the publication of all novels that did not end well." – is a false quote. Sleuthing led to the December 3, 1887 number of The Illustrated London News, which cites "Darwin's delightful biography [sic]" as the source. In The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1887), the naturalist writes of the pleasure he receives from novels, adding: "A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily—against which a law ought to be passed."

Mrs Savigny attributes her second epigraph – "What would the world do without story-books" – to Charles Dickens. I've not been able to find this quote or anything resembling it outside the pages of her novel.

Trivia II: The University of Toronto is referred to only once as such; "Toronto University" is used throughout the rest of the novel. I asked Amy Lavender Harris, author of Imagining Toronto, about this. She suggests that "Toronto University" might have been used to connote familiarity.

Bloomers: There are two, both expressed by Mrs Gower. The first is upon learning of Charles Babbington-Cole's departure for England:

"Don't you think, Lilian, that the opposite sex is usually chosen to lend an ear?" she said, carelessly, to conceal a feeling of sadness at the out-going of her friend; for she is aware that the old friendly intercourse is broken, now that he has gone to his wedding.

In the second, Mrs Gower is speaking of the man she loves:

"I am so glad he has come into my life: I feel lonely at times; and he is so companionable, I know. What dependent creatures we are, after all—houses and lands, robes a la mode, even, don't suffice. Intercourse we must have."

Object and Access: A deceptively slim hardcover. Fifty years after publication, my copy was added to the library of the Department of the Secretary of State. One wonders why. Might it have something to do with the suggestion that A Romance of Toronto is a roman à clef? I'm guessing not, but like to imagine otherwise. 

I don't know what to make of the binding, which is markedly different than Harvard University's copy:

I purchased A Romance of Toronto three years ago. As I write this just two copies are listed for sale online. The least expensive – $65 – is "good only." At $247, the alternative is "very fine." Take your pick.

A Romance of Toronto was reprinted in 1973 by the University of Toronto. If anything, that edition is even more rare. Long in the public domain, it continues to be picked over by print on demand vultures. This cover is my favourite by far:

Related post:

Susanna Moodie's Bloomers

Dope. Danger. One Doll.

Lost House
Frances Shelley Wees
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949
192 pages

Frances Shelley Wees runs hot and cold with me. I liked The Keys of My Prison so much that I selected it for reissue as a Ricochet Book. I did the same with M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty, but disliked No Pattern for Life, This Necessary Murder, and Where Is Jenny Now?*

So, Lost House? Hot or cold?

The prologue is frozen solid. This takes the form of a brief conversation between the head of  Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigations Department and one of his detectives. Apparently, a man known as "the Angel" is up to something in a place known as "Lost House." The detective is dispatched to see what's what:

He rose. "Very well, sir, I'll have a go at it."

Action shifts to British Columbia, where newly-minted physician David Ayelsworth is exploring "the forest primeval" astride his horse Delilah. What David finds is a half-submerged body by the shore of a lake. The doctor's attention is then drawn to the sound of a young woman chasing a dog. She falls, twists her ankle, and he comes to her aid. The injured young woman is Pamela Leighton, who lives at nearby Lost House.

Harlequin's cover reminds me of nothing so much as Garnett Weston's Legacy of Fear (New York: W S Mill/William Morrow, 1950), which also features a grand house in a remote corner British Columbia.

Interesting to note, I think, that both pre-date Psycho.

The mysterious D. Rickard is credited with Harlequin's cover art. I make a thing of his rendition because Rickard's Lost House isn't at all as described in the novel. Wees's Lost House rests on a walled island linked to the mainland by causeway and drawbridge. An immense structure, an exact replica of an English country manor, it was built by an eccentric Englishman who sought to further his wealth through a local silver mine. The mine proved a dud, the Englishman died, and all was inherited by Pamela Leighton's mother. Improbably, Mrs Leighton manages to maintain the estate by taking in paying guests during the summer months. This year, they include:

• James Herrod Payne, novelist;
• Shane Meredith, tenor;
• Archdeacon Branscombe, archdeacon;
• Lord Geoffrey Revel, lord.

There's a fifth male guest, an unknown who is being cared for by Mayhew, the resident doctor. The patient was brought in one night after having taken ill on a train stopped at Dark Forest, the closest community.

(That Lost House has an infirmary speaks to its immensity. That Lost House staff and guests are close in number speaks to Mrs Leighton's financial difficulties.)

There are also four female guests, Lord Geoffrey's mother being one, but it's the males that command our scrutiny; after all, we know the Angel to be a man.

Which is the Angel? Which is the Scotland Yard detective? It's impossible to tell. The focus is so much on David and Pamela, and to a lesser extent Mrs Leighton and Dr Mayhew, that the guests are little more than ghosts. The reader encounters them from time to time, but as characters they barely exist. Lost House fails as a mystery for the simple reason that Wees provides no clues. The Angel could be any one of the male guests. Indeed – and here I spoil things – much of the drama in the climax comes when he passes himself off as the Scotland Yard detective. And why not? There's nothing that might lead the reader or the other characters to suspect otherwise.

As the novel approaches mid-point, Pamela apologies to David. "I've dragged you into a dreadful mess," she says. "I've spoiled your holiday..."

This isn't true; David's involvement has nothing to do with her. He's at Lost House because the body he found by the lake turns out to be that of a missing Lost House staff member.

Lost House is a dreadful mess. The novel's disorder may have something to do with the fact that it first appeared serialized in Argosy (Aug 27 - Oct 1, 1938). Its fabric is woven with several threads that are subsequently dropped, the most intriguing involving Verve. A new brand of cigarette. Verve is a frequent topic of conversation, as in this early exchange between Pamela and David:  

"You've been smoking a tremendous lot." Her eyes were on the big ash tray before her.

   "Yes."
   "I like Verves," she decided, looking at the tray. "Not as much as you do, apparently... I don't smoke very much though. But when one is a bit tired, a Verve seems to give one exhilaration. Doesn't it?"
   "Yes," David said after a moment, "I... think it does."

   "You say that very strangely."
   "Do I ?" He shifted in his chair. "perhaps I'm a little lightheaded. I've sat here and smoked twenty of them in a row, and they do give one exhilaration. That's... the way they're advertised, of course. But other cigarettes, other things, have been advertised that way, too. Only... this time... and the whole world is smoking Verves. They've caught on extremely well. The whole world."

   She said, troubled, "You are queer."

   "Sorry." He crushed out the cigarette carefully and locked his hands together.

More follows, including a suggestion that the cigarettes have some sort of additive, but the subject is dropped in the first half of the novel. In the latter half, it's revealed that the Angel is using Lost House to store marijuana bound for the United States and United Kingdom. It seems a very lucrative trade. Might the drug have something to with Verve? The question is asked, but never answered.

Lost House was the second ever Harlequin, but the publishers pushed it like old pros.

Dope? Sure.

Danger? Ditto.

Dolls? Well, Pamela is described as attractive in the way prospective a mother-in-law might approve. Wees makes something of her playing around with "the soft pink ruffles of her skirt" when speaking to David in the final chapter. That's sexy, I guess. But Pamela's just one doll. The female guests at Lost House include a sad middle-aged widow who has yet to throw off her weeds, elderly Lady Riley, and two older spinster sister twins who live for knitting. 

Pamela's mother often appears in a lacy negligee, though only before her daughter. Is Mrs Leighton the the other doll?

Back cover copy continues the hard sell:

Pamela does not "land at David's feet, showing more in the process than a nice girl would normally show to a strange male." She wears a heavy skirt that approaches the length of a nun's habit. I add that she has sensible walking shoes.

Lost House is not "a fashionable British Columbia retreat for wealthy guests from all over the world;" it is nowhere so exotic, attracting only the dullest the English have to offer.

At end of it all, I found Lost House neither hot nor cold. It's lukewarm at best, despite Mrs Leighton's negligees.

*In fairness, as a romance novel, No Pattern for Life doesn't fit the Ricochet series. I recommend it as a strange romance.

Trivia I: In the preface to the anthology Investigating Women: Female Detectives by Canadian Writers (Toronto: Dundurn, 1995), David Skene-Melvin writes that the novel's royalties helped finance "Lost House," Wees's home in Stouffville, Ontario.

Trivia II: Like Wees, David is a graduate of the University of Alberta. He and his father practice medicine at the University Hospital, Edmonton. 

University Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta, c. 1938

Object: A very early Harlequin, my copy is a fragile thing. The publisher used the same cover in 1954 when reissuing Lost House as book #245, marking the last time the novel saw print. 

Access: Lost House was first published as a book in 1938 by Philadelphia's Macrae-Smith. The following year, Hurst & Blackett published the only UK edition. In 1940, the novel appeared as a Philadelphia Record supplement.

As of this writing, one jacketless copy of the Macrae-Smith edition is being offered online. Price: US$50.00. I'm not sure it's worth it, but do note that the image provided by the bookseller features boards with yellow writing. I believe orange/red (above) to be more common.

The Whitchurch-Stouffville Public Library doesn't hold a single edition of Frances Shelley Wees's twenty-four books.

Related posts:

A Rival for Margaret Millar?

The Return of Frances Shelley Wees
Domestic Suspense in Small Town Ontario
M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty: Title, Cover, Confession

This Necessary Read
Where is Jenny Now?
Fumbling Towards Legacy