A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic

Morgan's Castle
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard & Schulman, 1964
188 pages

An uncredited dust jacket of mysterious design, whatever does it mean? The rear image provides no clue.

The covers of Jan Hilliard's other novels are much more straight-forward. Consider this:

A View of the Town, is "A NOVEL OF SMALL TOWN LIFE IN NOVA SCOTIA," as are most of her novels. Morgan's Castle stands with Dove Cottage as one of two set outside her home province. Dove Cottage has a heavier, darker tone than her Nova Scotia novels, while Morgan's Castle is the heaviest and darkest by far. This is not to suggest that the humour, which runs through all her fiction, is entirely black.

Jan Hilliard's career as a novelist lasted just ten years. One wonders why it wasn't longer. Her novels garnered uniformly positive reviews – I've yet to find an exception – yet Morgan's Castle is the only one to have been reissued in paperback. "A spellbinding novel of romance and suspense in the Du Maurier [sic] tradition," the tagline reads. I was reminded more of Muriel Spark and Margaret Millar, but this may be because I'm more familiar with their respective works.

The heroine of Morgan's Castle is Laura Dean. The youngest member of the Dean family, she lives with her widowed artist father Sidney in a ramshackle house located somewhere in the countryside between lakes Ontario and Erie. Amy Scott, sister of Laura's late mother, isn't at all happy with her niece's situation. Nature can have such a bad influence on a maturing girl. And then there's Sidney, who Amy considers a "rural Dion Juan." For goodness sake, the man gets around on a bicycle! 

Aunt Amy has sent Laura money for a train ticket to the town of Greenwood, where she lives and breeds spaniels. There is a husband, Uncle James, but he is as irrelevant to the story as he is to Aunt Amy. The focus of her life is Charlotte Morgan, depicted here by Reint de Jonge on the cover of the Dutch translation, Spel met de dood (Haarlem: Staarnrstad, 1966).

Charlotte may just be the most beautiful, most refined, most elegant woman in Greenwood; that she is the wealthiest is not up for debate. The widow of Robert Morgan, heir to a vast Niagara winery, she lives with her twenty-eight-year-old son Robbie and various servants at Hilltop House, known to the locals as "Morgan's Castle." It is located on a bluff above and away from the town and is described as looking something like a castle, though the artist for the Ace edition imagines it as a large Anglican church. 

Aunt Amy sent her niece train fare on the pretence of wanting to give the girl a birthday party. Laura's four brothers and their wives will be there, but not the patriarch. Amy is well aware that Sidney won't be able to afford a ticket.

Because she's turning sixteen, Laura's siblings are concerned about shouldering the cost of further education. Is it not enough that their wives provide her with their castoffs? Sure, those old dresses have frayed hems and missing buttons, but Laura knows knows how to sew. They need not worry. Aunt Amy has a plan – and it has nothing to do with tuition.

Over the past year, Charlotte has taken a shining to the girl. Once so skinny and boyish, Laura is becoming a woman. This, um, development hasn't escaped Aunt Amy's attention either. She criticizes her niece's white dress as being too revealing, even though it's an old thing that once belonged to a brother's wife.

Aunt Amy's attraction to Charlotte is nuanced while Charlotte's attraction to Laura is simple. She would like the girl to marry her son Robbie, produce offspring, and secure the line of succession in the family business. Never mind the age difference, the time is right. It's almost as if the fates had brought them together. Just a few months ago, not long after Laura's last visit to Greenwood, Robbie's childless wife Phyllis died suddenly after having sprinkled arsenic, which she thought was sugar, on a bowl of strawberries.

In his 1995 anthology Investigating Women, David Skene-Melvin describes Laura as a detective.

She is not.

Laura has a handle on her ne'er-do-well father, but is nowhere near so savvy or keen-eyed when it comes to others. There's no surprise here. Despite having had to deal with Sidney's fabrication and deceit, her innocence is such that she believes these traits are unique to Sidney.

Morgan's Castle is in no way a detective novel, nor is it a mystery novel, though there are two murders (and many more in the backstory). The first murderer is obvious. The second murderer is a little less so, though one anticipates the act. 

So much of what happens escapes Laura's attention. Does the girl's innocence have something to do with the rural environment Aunt Amy so disparages?

Could be.

Object: Yellow boards in an uncredited dust jacket. I've mentioned the uncredited bit before, I know, but it is relevant here because Hilliard, who worked for Abelard-Schulman, provided her own covers. The only one I have seen credited is Dove Cottage, which features this illustration by son of Scotland William McLaren:

Access: As with the author's four other novels, the first edition of Morgan's Castle enjoyed one lone printing. What sets it apart is a mass market paperback published three years later by Ace featured above, making it the biggest selling of the author's nine books.

The Toronto Star Weekly published Morgan's Castle in two parts over two issues (July 11-18, 1964). I've consulted various pals about the Ace cover, but have no definitive answer as to who should be credited with the illustration. What I can say is that it is accurate in its depiction of Laura.

As I write, two copies of the Abelard-Schulman edition are being offered online. Both ex-library copies, they're listed at US$5.06 and US$64.67. Take your pick. Two copies of the Ace edition are also listed. The cheaper, at US$7.12, has a cocked spine. The other, which "can have notes/highlighting," is being sold by Thrift Books for US$50.06.

The less said about Thrift Books the better.

Staarnrstad's aforementioned Spel met de dood was republished at some point. Judging by the dress, I'm guessing the second appeared in the 'seventies.

Related posts:

A Crooked Cousin in a Cunning Cottage

Growing up with Mother

Growing up with Mother

Miranda
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard -Schuman, 1960
247 pages 

Miranda is the mother of two daughters, the younger being Rose, the narrator of this novel. Rose calls her mother Miranda, as encouraged by Miranda because Miranda would rather be taken for an older sister.

Miranda has aspirations. She married Alfie Arnold with the expectation that he would raise her above the class into which she'd been born. They are a good match – he loves her dearly, she really loves him –except that Alfie is content with living a modest life on his aunt's small Sussex farm. Miranda will have none of it. At her urging, the family is uprooted, trading Aunt Eliza's farm for a much larger one in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. The Arnolds are able to do this only with the financial assistance of a Government of Canada program designed to bring agricultural labourers to the country. This is not to suggest that Miranda herself has any intention of working herself. She had her fill during the Great War, when she's served as a Park Lane parlourmaid. Again, Miranda has aspirations:

The Arnolds spend three years in Cheswick, living in a small house on the farm of Mr and Mrs Saunders. Alfie, a cheerful soul by nature, is happier than he's ever been. Not so Miranda. In Canada, she'd expected her family would "stand out like a pearl among the stones," but the locals take no particular notice. The farming couple's warmth and friendliness, so appreciated by Alfie and the girls, only serves to irritate. One particular Sunday road trip to Grande Pré, complete with the recitation of select lines from Evangeline and an account of the Acadian Expulsion, was almost too much for Miranda to bear. And then came Mrs Saunders' offer, filled "with such enthusiasm and goodwill," to teach Miranda Canadian ways and customs:

"Why should I learn their damned customs?" Miranda demanded as soon as she got my father home. The story of Evangeline had not gone over too well with her. She suspected Mrs. Saunders was being anti-British. "What's the matter with English customs?
   "She was only trying to help," Alfie said in a placating voice.
   "Saying she'd make real Canadians out of us in no time! I never heard of anything so insulting. I didn't come to the colonies to be one of them."

Miranda avoids Mrs Saunders, but does enjoy the company Dan Murphy, District Representative of veterinary supply firm B.F. Whitney. Whether the salesman sees Miranda as a pearl among the stones is debatable, but he does drop by from time to time, always when Alfie is in the fields. Dan strokes her amour propre, but nothing more. Through the salesman, Miranda gets the idea that Alfie himself might find a district representative position with B.F. Whitney. She prods, eventually applying to the company on her husband's behalf and Alfie is quickly hired. At about the same time his Aunt Eliza kicks the washtub, leaving an inheritance of £200 (roughly $16,000 today). 

"'My husband has fallen heir to his aunt's estate in Sussex,'" Rose hears Miranda tell Mrs Saunders. "She made poor old Great-aunt Eliza, who used to wear men's boots indoors and out and took her baths standing up at the sink in the scullery, sound like an offshoot of royalty."

The family relocates to Yarmouth – "which I shall call Southport" – the biggest town in Alfie's district. This raised concern in this reader, who well-remembers grade six geography class.

Southport is much more to Miranda's liking. She now lives one block from Main Street in a once grand rented house (a deal, owing to it being across the street from the jail yard), and so has frequent opportunity to show herself off. Her flapper dress is thin, and her heels too narrow to be practical, but she really cuts a figure next to the heavy coated, rubber booted fishermen's wives negotiating the slush of Main Street.

Herein lies the problem. There's not much call for veterinary supplies in an area so reliant on fishing. The land is poor and the farms hardscrabble. Alfie is miserable, casting about for customers, as his inheritance evaporates. Miranda tries to help by working part-time at Betty's Beauty Parlor, but all too quickly Alfie's position at The B.F. Whitney Company quite literally kills him.  

Miranda is devastated – again, she really did love Alfie – yet has the strength to rally. She takes in roomers and increases her hours at Betty's.* The job feeds her ego. After all, who better to work in a beauty salon than the town beauty? Without Alfie to rely upon, she reveals herself as a very clever woman, adding layer after layer to her facade, never being caught out on one of her many, many fabrications.

The Calgary Herald, 11 May 1961

This is, of course, Miranda's story, but only as seen by her youngest. As she grows into womanhood, Rose gradually comes to see – and then comes to terms – with not only her mother's imperfections, but how she is perceived, fairly or not, by others.

Reviews of Miranda were without exception enthusiastic; Walter O'Hearne raved in The New York Times (16 April 1961), as did fellow Leacock winner Joan Walker in The Globe & Mail (1 July 1961). Not that any of this meant anything in the long run.

Sadly, unfairly, Miranda is yet another novel that was printed once and then never again. In this respect, it is very much a pearl among the stones.

Will a publisher please pick it up.

*The 1931 census, records the author, age 20, as working as a hairdresser

and living in a Yarmouth rooming house.

About the author:

Object and Access: A butter-coloured cloth hardcover with violet type. I'm guessing that the jacket illustration is the author's own doing, though I could be wrong.

I'm pleased to see that Yarmouth's Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Library has copies of all the author's books.

As of this writing, I see just one copy listed for sale online. Near Fine, at US$9.25, it's a steal. The seller is located in Greenwood, Nova Scotia, which I shall call Cheswick.

Related post:

A Crooked Cousin in a Country Cottage

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2023!

With sadness, I report that 2023 was another year in which all my favourite acquisitions were purchased online. This is not to suggest that every transaction was a good one. In March, I won a lot of twelve Marilyn Ross Dark Shadows books, three of which bear the signature of their true author, New Brunswick's W.E.D. Ross. 

My lengthy victory dance came to an abrupt end when they arrived loose in a recycled Amazon box. Most were in poor condition, some featured stamps from used bookstores, and one had a previous owner's name written on its cover. Added to all this was the shipping charge, which far exceeded the amount paid for the books themselves, and was several times greater than what Canada Post had charged the seller.

Had all gone well, this copy of Barnabas, Quentin and the Frightened Bride (New York: Paperback Library, 1970) would've surely made the cut.

Enough negativity! It was a good year!

What follows is 2023's top ten:

In Nature's Workshop
Grant Allen
London: Newnes, 1901

I bought three Grant Allen books this year – the novels This Mortal Coil (1888) and At Market Value (1895) being the others – but this is the one I like the most. The posthumously published second edition, it features over one hundred illustrations by English naturalist Frederick Enock (1845-1916).

Hot Freeze
Martin Brett [Douglas

   Sanderson]

London: Reinhardt, 1954

For years I've been going on about Hot Freeze being the very best of post-war Canadian noir; it was one of the first novels reissued as a Ricochet Book. I was aware that there had been a UK edition, but couldn't find a copy with dust jacket.

Found it!

Hilary Randall: The Story

   of The Town
Horace Brown

Toronto: Voyageur, [n.d.]

While working to return Brown's 1947 novel Whispering City to print, I learned that Saturday Night editor B.K. Sandwell had thought Hilary Randall just might be the great Canadian novel. Self-published roughly four decades after its composition, my copy is inscribed!

Wedded for a Week; or, The

   Unseen Bridegroom
May Agnes Fleming

London: Milner, [n.d.]

As with Grant Allen, I can't let a year go by without adding more Fleming to my collection. The Actress' Daughter was the first, but I much prefer this 1881 novel, if only for its two titles.

Writing this I realize that I haven't read a Fleming in 2023. 

A Self-Made Thief
Hulbert Footner

London: Literary Press,

   [n.d.]

As my old review of 1930's The Mystery of the Folded Paper suggests, I'm not much of a Footner fan, Still, at £4, this last-minute addition to a large order placed with a UK bookseller seemed a bargain. The dust jacket illustration, which I hadn't seen, is unique to this edition.

Pagan Love
John Murray Gibbon
Toronto: McClelland &

   Stewart, 1922

Had I not read this novel, it's unlikely this wouldn't have made the list. Pagan Love entertained at every turn as a take-down of the burgeoning self-help industry and corporate propaganda. Odd for a man who spent most of his working life writing copy for the CPR.

Dove Cottage
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay

   Grant]

London: Abelard-Schulman,

   1958

There are books that grow on you. Reviewing Dove Cottage this past March I likened it to an enjoyable afternoon of community theatre, but it has remained with me in a way that the local real estate agent's performance as George Gibbs has not.

Three Dozen Sonnets &

   Fast Drawings

Bob McGee
Montreal: Véhicule, 1973

This year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Véhicule Press. Three Dozen Sonnets & Fast Drawings was the press's very first book. A pristine copy with errata slip, it appeared to have been unread.

No longer.

Awful Disclosures of Maria

   Monk
Maria Monk

New York: Howe & Bates,

   1836

A first edition copy of the text that launched an industry. Not in the best condition, but after 187 years, much of it being pawed over by anti-papist zealots, what can one expect.

My work on the Maria Monk hoax continues. 

Crimes: or, I'm Sorry Sir,

   But We Do Not Sell

   Handguns to Junkies
Vicar Vicars [Ted Mann]

Vancouver: Pulp, 1973

As far as I know, Crimes is Ted Mann's only book. When published, he was an editor at National Lampoon. The Bombardier Guide to Canadian Authors was in his future, as were NYPD Blue, Deadwood. and Homeland.

What to expect next year? More Allen and Fleming, I'm betting.  Basil King seems likely.

Related posts:

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2022 (plus gifts!)
The Ten Best Book Buys of 2021... and much more!
Ten Best Book Buys of 2021 (& Three Great Gifts)
The Twenty Best Book Buys of 2019
Best Book Buys of 2018 (four of which were gifts)
Ten Best Book Buys of 2017 (one of which was a gift)

The Ten Best Book Buys of a Very Bad Year (2016)

Ten of the Best; Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015

Done With Buying Books (2014)

Cheese! What a Story!

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Self-Improvement

A Crooked Cousin in a Cunning Cottage

Maria Monk's Immortal Book

B is for the Bombardier Guide to Canadian Authors

Of Sex and Drugs and Montreal

A Crooked Cousin in a Cunning Cottage

Dove Cottage
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]

London: Abelard-Schulman, 1958
192 pages

Jan Hilliard's third novel, its curtain rises on the cramped three-room flat shared by underpaid, middle-aged bank clerk Homer Flynn, wife Dolly, and mother-in-law Mrs Bigelow. Sister-in-law Grace, a secretary at an advertising agency, lives across the hall. Grace's husband, Raymond, lost a foot in the Second World War, and with it the will to do much of anything. Mrs Bigelow thinks the world of Raymond, and very little of Homer.

Not long ago, Homer suffered the loss of Aunt Harriet, his late mother's sister. In absence of a will, solicitors Ramsey, Claxton and Stone have advised that he may be next of kin. Aunt Harriet was a widow. Her only child, Claude, ran away at sixteen, taking with him a fair amount of cash and jewellery belonging to his mother and her boarders. This crime was followed, years later, by newspaper accounts of Claude's ill-fated attempt to conquer Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Mrs Bigelow dreams that Claude's inheritance might provide just enough money to purchase a donut-making machine. She wants to start a business called "Granny's Greaseless Donuts." Dolly dares hope for $5000, all the while telling her husband that his expectations of $10,000 are far too high, and that he will only be disappointed. As it turns out, Homer inherits $250,000, roughly three million in today's dollars. Add this amount to the sale of Aunt Harriett's large Victorian house, bathed in the red lights of Lavinia Street. Mrs Bigelow is quick to question the source of the dead woman's wealth:

"I aways thought there was something funny about those boarders of hers. Her young ladies, she used to call them. 'What do they do?' I asked her, that time I went to see her. 'They're secretaries,' she said. 'Then why are they at home today?' I asked. 'It's their day off,' she told me. In the middle of the week."

Mrs Bagelow catches herself, demonstrating momentary restraint in recognition that, of a sudden, Homer has the upper hand in their relationship. She wants her son-in-law to move the family to the Riviera, but having spent a career in banking he is far too practical. Instead, Homer purchases a large country cottage for his wife and mother-in-law. Homer, who had always wanted to grow his own vegetables, fruits, and flowers, tends to his gardens with hired hand Mr Newby. Mrs Bigelow, who was never really interested in selling donuts, embraces the opportunity offered to become a landscape painter. In doing so, she attracts the romantic attention from neighbour George, an amiable wealthy widower who made his money selling fish. Dolly, the novel's least defined character, is just happy that her mother and husband are happy.

It's all very pleasant until the evening their cottage receives an unexpected, unkempt visitor. The man claims to be Aunt Harriett's son Claude, but is he? Homer, who hasn't seen his cousin in decades, is convinced. Claude – at least, the man calling himself Claude – lays claim to Aunt Harriett's riches, all the while admitting that there is a catch:

"I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I'm going to lay my cards on the table. The minute I prove I'm Claude Jeffries, the police will move in, I'd spend the next twenty years behind bars. However," he raised his voice as Homer was about to say something, "there's no law saying a man can't inherit money because he happens to be in jail. You know of any such law?" 
   "I know very little about such things."
   "Take it from me, there's no such law. Now, the way I look at it Homer, we're both in a spot."
   "You're in a spot," Mrs. Bigelow said, but in a small voice. 
   "So here's what we'll do. I'll stay on here with you folks, share my inheritance with you. In return, you'll protect me, keep my true identity secret."

And so, Cousin Claude becomes "Claude Richards," Homer's childhood friend, back from adventures in Africa. Claude Richards is a travel writer, which serves to explain why Grace and Raymond, who are not in on the secret, had never before met the man. Because Claude believes the police are on his trail, he lies low under the pretence that he is recovering from "jungle fever." This, combined with Homer, Dolly, and Mrs Bigelow's understandable reluctance to discuss Claude only serves to make him a more intriguing figure, firing interest and desire in Grace and hired girl Eloise:

Knowing the value of first impressions, she did not want to be seen by him until tomorrow, when, her hair washed and set, she would be wearing her pink jersey sweater over her new brassière with the pointed cups.

Abelard-Schuman sold Dove Cottage as a "thoroughly delightful, completely comic and utterly frivolous novel." And it is. Enjoyable light entertainment, it reminded me of nothing so much as an afternoon attending local community theatre.

A good time was had by all.

About the author:

Object: A hardcover with Kelly green boards. The jacket illustration, depicting Claude, is by the talented William McLaren. Purchased in February from an Oxfordshire bookseller – price: £18.50 – it looks to have been a review copy.

Access: All evidence suggests that Dove Cottage enjoyed no more than one printing. Very Good copies can be found online for as little as US$15.

The year after publication, the novel reappeared as a "new story of suspense" in the Star Weekly Magazine.

Star Weekly Magazine, 22 August 1959

Other than a 1960 Dutch translation, De charmante bezoeker, there have been no paperback editions.