Between Exhaustion and Expression

Shackles
Madge Macbeth
New York: Waterson, 1927
282 pages

The first three pages of Shackles take the form of a letter written by the author to her friend Aimée. Do not read it before the novel itself! It contains a doozy of a spoiler.

Shackles is the sixth of Madge Macbeth's thirteen novels and has a novelist as its main character. This was almost enough for me to set it aside.

Are novelists really so common?

The novelist at the centre of Shackles is Naomi Lennox. She lives in a fairly comfortable house with barrister husband Arthur and semi-invalid relation Uncle Toby. There are no children, which given Arthur's nocturnal expectations is something of a miracle. 

Uncle Toby has recently returned from a trip south where he was surprised and extremely pleased to encounter people who new his niece's writing. He was even asked for an interview with one of the local papers! Arthur is not so impressed – in fact, is not impressed at all. A selfish, petulant, and stubborn man, Arthur resents the fleeting minutes his wife finds to steal away to her desk and is dismissive of the results.  

Shireen Dey is Naomi's closest friend. She too is a novelist – a very successful one. Her home life is quite different. Husband David, who she calls "Doolydear," not only takes care of the house but manages her career. He has recently sold the rights of one of her novels to the motion picture people. Lively, full of life, and aware of her limitations as a writer, I quite liked Shireen until she exposed herself as a racist. This occurs in an exchange which pretty much encapsulates Arnold's views of his wife's writing. Arnold speaks first:

"Man’s sphere throughout the ages seems to me to have been one of protection, provision. My simple philosophy is expressed in the idea of service. So far as I can see it, men have served their women faithfully – even to paying the supreme sacrifice in times of war. Is it too much to expect – say fifty per cent service in return?”

   “I admit,” Shireen answered, “that there are too many women in whom the commutual sense, the reciprocal sense, is lacking. They want to eat their cake and have it, too. Like the slaves in the South, they achieved freedom too suddenly. They don’t know how to use it. Mentally, physically, economically, they are parasites. They will not last. Think of the others, however; of the women whose mental development and chosen sphere of endeavour – whose creative ability – justifies them in demanding the identical type of freedom that is accorded men. What of the woman artist, musician, decorator, physician, lawyer? Suppose, to drive home my argument more clearly, you were a novelist, would you not claim the independence necessary to pursue your vocation?”

   Arnold observed that unless he were one of the great masters of literature, he could not imagine himself engrossed with the business of writing, at all. Comparatively few men, he ventured, devoted themselves exclusively to literature of that sort.

   “In other words,” Shireen cut in, “you mean to imply that they do something useful as a regular profession and scribble as a hobby or a pastime?”

   “That expresses pretty closely what I mean."

Would it surprise you to learn that Naomi has a lover? She's been seeing Hugo Main. A man of strong opinions on all sorts of things, he's really quite a bore. The best that can be said of Hugo is that he admires Naomi's intellect. Whether there is more to the attraction is uncertain; the two never share anything more than a kiss and an embrace. Hugo pressures Naomi to run away with him to New York, promising to be her own Doolydear.

Can she do it? Will she do it? What Naomi wants most is the freedom to work on The Book of the Hour, her second novel. She takes a bold first step one night remaining at her desk when Arnold expects her in bed. The second step comes in engaging a maid. What with the money brought in through her writing they can afford it. Besides, her hire, Jennie McQuaig, will free up time to be more productive and bring in more money.

It is impossible to read Shackles today without thinking of A Room of One's Own (1929). Is it not remarkable that the novel was published three years earlier? How has it escaped Virago's notice?

Macbeth writes in the book's opening letter:

Woman is passing through a cultural transition. Instinctively, she is bound to the old order of things; intellectually, she clamours for the new. And vacillating, she stands between them.

That doozy of a spoiler concerns the ending. Were it not for the letter I wouldn't have seen it coming. 

See if you don't agree.

Trivia: In the January of last year, I put together a list of the very best Canadian novels of the 1920s. I held it to nine because I'd yet to read Douglas Durkin's The Magpie (1923) and Barney Allen's They Have Bodies (1929); one of the two was sure to make the cut. I've since read The Magpie. Sure enough it made the list, rounding out the top ten. Shackles too deserves a spot. In adding it, I'm bumping Madge Macbeth's pseudonymous roman à clef The Land of Afternoon (1924).

The list as it now stands (in chronological order):

The Thread of Flame - Basil King

The Empty Sack - Basil King

The Wine of Life - Arthur Stringer

The Hidden Places - Bertrand W. Sinclair

Pagan Love - John Murray Gibbon

The Magpie - Douglas Durkin

"Cattle" - Edith Eaton

Shackes - Madge Macbeth

Blencarrow - Isabel Mackay

All Else is Folly - Peregrine Acland

I'm certain there'll be more changes. Despite my decades-old interest in Allen – see my reviews of The Toronto Doctor (1949) and The Gynocologist (1969) – I still haven't read They Have Bodies.

Object and Access: Yellowing pages bound in tan cloth, I purchased my copy in 2019 as part of a lot. It once belonged to Emma Bailey, but which Emma Bailey? The 1921 Canadian census records thirty Emma Baileys living in Canada. The 1931 census features twenty-seven, which narrows the field very slightly. 

As my copy is the first American edition, there is a possibility that Emma Bailey may not have been living in Canada. The true first edition was published in Ottawa in 1926 by Graphic. A Toronto bookseller has two copies for sale online, both with dust jackets, both at $250. So as to encourage a sale, I'm sharing an image of the one I'd choose.

My birthday is in twenty-four days.

The least expensive jacketless copy is listed at US$41.50. As I write, just one Waterson copy is listed for sale online. At US$72, it too lacks a dust jacket. 

Shackles returned to print in 2005 as part of the Tecumseh Press Early Canadian Women Writers Series. Twelve years later, Invisible Publishing followed with its own edition. Both are still available, meaning that after many decades out of print today's reader has two editions from which to choose.

Shackles can be read online here thanks to the good folks at the faded page.

Related posts:

The Nine Best Canadian Novels of the 1920s
The Great War and Its Discontents

Our Strangest Novel?
Still Strange (if a little less so)

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

For the month, the fifth of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

To think I once worked to celebrate this horrible man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SAD END OF A NOTED POLITICIAN

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

Now the joys that attend all his honours must end,

And his long night of sorrow commences.

As he hears the decree, he determines to flee

To the gate of the dwelling of glory,

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

Although sad to his party the story.

Thus insultingly used, thus disowned and refused,

He goes on in another direction;

At that medium place, where the Papists have grace,

He asks humbly for rest and protection.

But in vain as before for thgat rest to implore—

He must follow his downward gradation;

With the devil despite he soon meets at the gate,

And there follows this sort of conversation:—

 

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

                 And my relatives all at a distance,

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

                 And to ask your paternal assistance.

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

                 And will grant you coveted pittance;

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

                 You will gain to my dwelling admittance.

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

                You must think I'm a Papist or Paddy;

                As a Child if you prize the retailer of lies,

                I can certainly claim you for daddy.

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

                 On your noble and worthy exertions;

                 For I oft shall mistake if I venture to take

                 Every wandering stranger's assertions.

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

                You will find them a recommendation;

                     They will prove beyond doubt that I laboured throughout

                 In extending your own dominion.

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

                 And to have one more prudent would rather,

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

                 You have brought disgrace on your father.

                 For to win the applause some men for my cause

                 Some discretion and caution are needed;

                 But, regardless of this, you have acted amiss,

                 And my wise inspirations unheeded.

                 But your failings I feel have resulted from zeal

                 To encourage your partners in evil;

                 So forgetting your sin, you may quietly come in

                 But you must be exceedingly civil.

Related posts:

The Murder of George Brown: He Died With Grit

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

Mean Mister MacDonald Attacks a Prime Minister

Words of Hate for Maria Monk

A Prudish Poet's Struggle with Stays

The St Marys James

Local Poet!

A Local Poet is Recognized

Unpleasant Verse for New Year's Day

McIntyre's Mammoth Ode

Unpleasant Verse for New Year's Day

THE SCATTERED FAMILY ON NEW YEAR'S DAY

Though mountains and forests and waters divide us,

Where fate and ill-fortune have led us to stray;

Though infidel strangers are living beside us,

Our hearts will together be dwelling to-day.

Aglow with affection, with vivid love burning,

In fancy, dear parents, to you we will flee;

From North, from the West, from above, where no mourning

Embitters the joys of the blest and free.

We hasten, dear parents, our homage to render,

Our hearts as our treasure lay at your feet,

And proofs to convince of our reverence tender,

To beg for your blessings at home's sweet retreat;

To think of the scenes of our innocent childhood,

Where, happy, contented, not dreamed to care,

We roamed through the valleys, the meadows and wildwood,

To view the fair blossoms then flourished there.

'Tis true that our hearts often linger around you,

From morn until evening when bound by sleep' schain,

Then dream of the cords of love to us that bound you,

And sigh to return when it frees them again.

To-day shall they linger more constant than ever,

Around our loved parents, around our loved home;

No thoughts of the world for a moment shall sever

Our hearts from that spot, or from there make them roam.

What prospect to children, to parents more pleasing,

Than that we this union might share!

In filial love be united unceasing,

No matter what fate or our foes may prepare.

'Tis true not on earth, for we'll soon be dismembered:

Shall death in the good love of others destroy

Can bliss then be reining and home unremembered?

Away with such motions of heavenly joy.

from Poems and Essays

John J. MacDonald

Ottawa: Ru-Mi-Lou, 1928

Related posts:

'Welcoming the New Year' by Arthur Weir

'A January Morning' by Archibald Lampman

Agnes Maule Machar's New Year's Wish (& mine)

'The New Year comes white-winged, unstained, a star...'

A Poet Laureate's 'Prayer for the New Year'
Decades-Old Verse for the New Year by E.J. Pratt

Temperance Verse for New Year's Day

An Old Poem for the New Year by Arthur Stringer

Immature Verse for the New Year

A New Year

Madge Macbeth's Great Gold Rush Hoax

The Long Day: Reminiscences of the Yukon

W.S. Dill [pseud Madge Macbeth]

Ottawa: Laurentian Press Syndicate, [c. 1926]

245 pages

I can't claim to have read every book by Madge Macbeth – her history The Lady Stanley Institute for Trained Nurses (Ottawa: Lady Stanley Institute Alumnae Association, 1959), isn't anywhere near the top of my TBR pile – but of those I've tackled The Land of Afternoon (Ottawa: Graphic, 1925) is by far my favourite. A scandalous political roman a clèf published in the midst of a federal election, she kept herself well hidden under the pseudonym "Gilbert Knox." Conservative MP Alfred Ernest Fripp did his best to hunt down the author's true identity, as did Parliamentary Librarian Martin Burrell, but it wasn't until after Macbeth's death, four decades in the future, that all was revealed.

I expect Madge Macbeth didn't feel the need to be so cautious with "W.S. Dill."

The Long Day presents itself as a reminiscence of the Yukon Gold Rush as written by a man who witnessed it all. Dill didn't exist, Macbeth didn't visit, and yet this reader, steeped in Gold Rush lore owing to a great-grandfather who served in Skagway as a customs inspector, found little by way of fabrication. The author draws frequently and liberally from those who were there. Four pages come from boxer Frank "Paddy" Slavin's 1926 autobiography The Sydney Cornstalk. Another boxer, Jack Kearns is quoted at length from a wire service piece published in the 6 July 1926 edition of the Ottawa Journal. 

Macbeth finds her richest vein in William Ogilvie's Early Days on the Yukon (Toronto: Bell & Cockburn, 1913), retelling Ogilvie's stories in a way that verges on plagiarism. Consider this passage from The Long Day:

During the winter of '96-7, disturbing news—Queen Victoria was critically ill—Pope Leo the Thirteenth lay at the point of death—War between England and Russia was imminent, and, perhaps more agitated than all of these to the camp was the prospect of a prize fight between James J. Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons, scheduled for the spring.

Now, here's Early Days on the Yukon:

During the winter the last arrival from the outside who brought any newspapers, brought dire intelligence indeed. According to the papers, Queen Victoria was critically ill; Pope Leo XIII was at the point of death; war was imminent between England and Russia; and, more exciting to the camp, a fight for the championship of the world was coming off some time in the spring between the star pugilists, James J. Corbett and Robert FitzSimmons [sic].

Tracking Macbeth's sources is good fun, but it does distract. After a bit, I abandoned the chase and settled back to enjoy the stories she'd chosen to tell. My favourite involves Charles Carbonneau — Macbeth has his Christian name as "Jules" — a Montreal barber who reinvented himself as M le Comte Carbonneau, representative of French wine merchants Messieurs Pierre Legros, Freres et Cie. A rogue of the highest order, he woos trouser-wearing miner Belinda Mulrooney, "the richest woman in the Klondike," marries her, builds a chateau in France, and then makes off with her younger sister.

The Baltimore Sun, 17 September 1906

It's a sad and sordid tale, told in such detail that you'd think W.S. Dill had borne witness to the courtship, attended the wedding, and had had a glass or two at the celebration that followed. In taking on the persona of her creation, she adopts a voice and writing style that is nothing like her previous books.

The first readers saw of W.S. Dill — as "Willard S. Dill" — came in 'Over the Chilkoot to Eldorado,' published in the 15 September 1926 issue of Maclean's. That initial article, the first in a series of three, brought considerable response, as relayed by editor H. Nigel Moore:

I have no idea whether Moore was in on the hoax. What I can say is that The Long Day was well-received. "Mr. Dill has produced an interesting book and one that will be appreciated by those who knew the gold country in the early days," said the Kingston Whig-Standard (14 February 1927). The 15 January 1927 edition of the Montreal Gazette describes it as "most interesting and instructive," concluding "the book is well worth reading. Anyone who has ever been to the Klondike should not miss it."

I recommend it myself, even to those who have never been to the Klondike. Macbeth has an eye for entertaining tales and a talent for telling them. I finish my own review with the observation that no critic noted this: W.S. Dill doesn't once feature in his book of reminiscences.

Trivia: Madge Macbeth's own reminiscences, Boulevard Career (Toronto: Brunswick, 1957), lists The Long Day as one of her titles. The Land of Afternoon remains hidden, despite Fripp and Burrell being long dead.

Object: A strange-looking thing, isn't it? The raised images and lettering reminds me of nothing so much as old university annuals.

The Long Day was first published in 1926 by Ottawa's legendary Graphic Press. In  his essay "Graphic Press and the Bibliographer" (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada XVIII), David B. Kotin describes the Laurentian Press Syndicate as an imprint, which applied fresh title pages to sheets used in the Graphic-branded edition. The last pages of my copy list other Graphic titles, including Macbeth's The Day of Afternoon and Shackles.

My copy once belonged to Dr Bertram Reid MacKay (1885-1981), who served over four decades with the Geographical Survey of Canada. 

Doctor MacKay's Carling Avenue house is said to have begun sinking, such was the weight of his immense library. Sadly, for a man who was an early advocate for the preservation Ottawa's heritage buildings, that house was eventually razed. This architectural marvel stands in its place.

Access: Nine copies of the novel are currently listed for sale by online booksellers, none of whom recognize its true author. They range in price from US$20.00 to US$69.00. All are Graphic Press editions. Of those, the one you'll want to buy — price: US$40.56 — is offered with dust jacket by an Ottawa bookseller. 

Twenty-six Canadian libraries hold copies. Yukon Public Libraries does not have a copy.

Related post:

A Very Canadian Succès de scandale

10 Best Book Buys of 2017 (one of which was a gift)

Last year was meant to be one of great austerity. By rights, the 2017 edition of this annual list should be the weakest yet. There were few trips to used bookstores, and mere minutes – not hours – were spent panning for gold at outdoor dollar carts. And yet, comparing the year's haul to those of  2014, 2015, and 2016, I think 2017 was the best ever. The riches were such that the copy of Frank L. Packard's The Big Shot above failed to make the cut. Hell, I couldn't even settle on the list until after the the year was over. Here be the shiniest nuggets:

The Shapes that Creep
Margerie Bonner
New York: Scribners,
   1946

The debut novel by Hollywood actress and BC beach squatter Mrs Malcolm Lowry. The jacket describes it as a "combination of murder, astrology, hidden-treasure, and cryptography – with the wild and romantic coast of Vancouver as its colourful background."

The House of Temptation
Veros Carleton [pseud.
   Amy Cox]
Ottawa: Graphic, 1931

A roman à clef set amongst Ottawa's wealthy and powerful. If it is anything like Madge Macbeth's The Land of Afternoon, also published by Graphic, I'm in for a real treat.

A Social Departure
Sara Jeanette Duncan
New York: Appleton,
   1903

It says nothing good about this country that I was able to buy a Very Fine first edition of this novel for $12.50.

The Cannon's Mouth
Wilfred Heighington
Toronto: Forward, 1943

One of the few Canadian Great War novels by a veteran of the conflict.  This was a birthday gift from my friend James Calhoun, the foremost historian of Canadian military literature, I didn't know The Cannon's Mouth existed until it arrived in the post.

Maria Chapdelaine
Louis Hémon [trans.
   W.H. Blake]
New York: Macmillan,
   1929

My fifth copy of Hémon's big book, I uncovered this on one of Attic Books' dollar carts. Inscribed by American college prof Carl Y. Connor, who provided an intro and notes, it serves as a reminder of the popularity this novel once enjoyed south of the border.
.

Wives and Lovers
Margaret Millar
New York: Random
   House, 1954

I'd long been interested in Millar non-mysteries, but could never afford them. Syndicate Books' Complete Millar finally granted me access. Wives and Lovers ended up being the best novel I read in 2017. Researching my review, I stumbled upon this first edition offered online at US$3.98.

A Voice is Calling
Eric Cecil Morris
Montreal: B.D. Simpson,
   1945

A clerk living a mundane life in mid-20th-century Gaspé finds himself transported through time and space when playing the organ of his local church. J.S. Bach serves as tour guide to 18th-century Leipzig!

Lust Planet
Olin Ross [pseud. W.E.D.
     Ross]
Hollywood: International
     Publications, 1962

Canada's most prolific novelist, Ross made most of his money writing romances and Dark Shadows TV tie-ins. Lust Planet is his second and last "adults only" novel. Ribald, it's the subject of my column in the next issue of Canadian Notes & Queries.

Hot Star
Robert W. Tracy [pseud.
   Alvin Schwartz]
New York: Arco, 1952

Following Touchable, further titillation from a writer who seems destined to be remembered as the creator of Bizarro Superman. I'm guessing Hot Star wouldn't have passed the Comics Code Authority.

Undine
Phyllis Brett Young
London: W.H. Allen, 1964

I've been meaning to read Phyllis Brett Young for some time, and everything I know about this novel tells me that it is the place to start. "The jacket reminds me of Hitchcock," says my wife. I agree.

Note: Author of Psyche, not Psycho.



A year of austerity? Who am I kidding? That edition of Packard's The Big Shot was the second of two bought in 2017.

Related posts:

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)

A Very Canadian Succès de scandale

The Parliamentary Librarian chased after "Gilbert Knox". Conservative MP Alfred Fripp joined in the hunt, intent on having the author deported to who knows where. The clergy condemned, Ottawa echoed with talk of lawsuits, an election was fought. and a government fell. In the midst of it all, the woman behind the pseudonym suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent away to a Toronto nursing home…

So begins my latest Canadian Notes & Queries Dusty Bookcase column. The rest is found in the new issue, number 92, sharing pages with writing by Michel Basilières, Laura Bast, Darryl Joel Berger, Kerry Clare, Michael Darling, Marc di Saverio, Jennifer A. Franssen, Kaper Hartman, Melanie Janisse, Lydia Kwa, Nick Maandag, David Mason, John McFetridge, Shane Neilson, Patricia Robertson, Rebecca Rosenblum, Mark Sampson, Russell Smith, JC Sutcliffe, Nicholas Zacharewicz and, of course, Seth.

Fellow contributors will understand my singling out Alex Good's "Shackled to a Corpse: The Long, Long Shadow" and Stephen Henighan's "Jimmy the Crossdresser, Mother of Mavis Gallant" as being particularly worthy of attention.

My own contribution, much more modest, concerns The Land of Afternoon, a very good, yet forgotten roman à clef published in 1925 under the name "Gilbert Knox". Madge Macbeth (right) was its true author, which is something not even her publisher knew. The author took the secret to her grave, leaving behind a bright white paper trail for all to follow.

Few have.

Go back ninety years and we'd all be talking about The Land of Afternoon. The first book to come out of Ottawa's Graphic Publishers, it landed in the midst of the federal election fought between Arthur Meighen's Conservatives and the Liberals of William Lyon Mackenzie King. The latter doesn't figure, but Meighen served as a model for protagonist Raymond Dillings, Member of Parliament for Pinto Plains. Wife Isabel inspired Marjorie Dillings… and on it goes.

Again, you'll find more in the new CNQ.

For now, a couple of pieces of trivia that didn't make it into the piece:

1. In February 1936, a scene from the novel was dramatized by Toronto's Canadian Literature Club.
2. Macbeth's good friend Lawrence Burpee once appeared in disguise at a Canadian Authors Association event as "Gilbert Knox".

Burpee, not Knox, May 1926

Subscriptions to CNQ are available through this link.

A Second 'To Jas. McIntyre'

from William Arthur Deacon's The Four Jameses (Ottawa: Graphic, 1927)

TO JAS. MCINTYRE

A man of mighty mark,

Who crossed the ocean dark

To win some glory;

Resolved to carve his name

High in Canadian fame,

And live in story.

And this methinks will be,

For friend and foe agree

Rare is his talent;

And as much diversified

As our world is wide.

Hail Scotia's gallant!

He racy is, and witty,

As shown by many a ditty

In humourous vein;

And some say wit's his forte,

His muse all turns to sport,

He eschews pain.

But we who know him best

'Gainst this view must protest

He's oft pathetic;

And with his pen so wise,

Can bring tears to the eyes

Of each ascetic.

Related post: Don't Answer the Door!

Local Poet!

The Four Jameses

William Arthur Deacon

Toronto: Macmillan, 1974

A bit of a risk acknowledging National Poetry Month on a day when people are looking-out for hoaxes and practical jokes. I double the hazard by focusing on this book, with its lousy cover and cheap sales pitch. The whole thing looks a bit fake - but, as George Fetherling (then Doug) notes, Deacon's book is 'that rare thing in Canadian literature: an underground classic.' As is often the fate of titles that fall into this category, The Four Jameses has had an unusual history. First issued as a hardcover in 1927, its publisher, Graphic, was felled by the Depression. After a period in limbo, unbound sheets were bought and issued in paper wraps. In 1953, Ryerson published a revised edition, which was followed, a little over two decades later, by this Macmillan paperback. With one publisher done in by hard times, and the others victims of manifest destiny, you'd almost think that The Four Jameses was cursed. Still, I keep it on my shelves.

Deacon's book centres on James Gay, James McIntyre, James D. Gillis and James MacRae, four poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They are, as Fetherling points out, united by Christian name, nationality and sheer lack of talent. That said, I'm quick to express my doubts that they are 'Canada's Four Worst - And Funniest - Poets', as claimed on the cover. True, their work can raise a smile or two, but I've read much worse.

Of the four, I prefer James MacRae (né John James MacDonald), who published his first book of verse, Poems written by J. J. MacDonald, a Native of Glengarry, in or about 1877. Deacon is good enough to provide several lines from this extremely rare book, including:

How oft thus lay the secret way

In which the game is played:-

A shapely mass, by name a lass,

Is artfully arrayed.

Is neatly bound with metal round

And trimmings wisely made,

And padded o'er with worthless store

To cover unbetrayed

The sad defects, which one detects

When nature is displayed.

Forty-six years elapsed between the poet's debut and his second book, An Ideal Courtship. Published in 1923 under the nom de plume James MacRae, it is described by Deacon as the poet's magnum opus. An Ideal Courtship is a long narrative poem telling of the company kept between Mary Campbell, formed by her parents as a chaste 'model for the public to admire', and William Chisholm, a stick-in-the-mud farmer from the Maritimes. There doesn't appear to be much amour or ardor in this poem. In MacRae's world, an ideal courtship ends not at the altar, but the grave:

Mary suddenly took sick, and human skill could find no relief

Render her in her distress, which made the tragic struggle brief.

But, wait, a few days later the grief-stricken William is found dead, lying on his fiancée's grave:

Though so often disappointed by events beyond their power.

They were finally reunited at their own appointed hour.

But so well their lives were ended, and so holy was their love,

We may hope that they were married at the altar steps above.

MacRae didn't let another 46 years pass before publishing his next book. A septuagenarian, how could he? His Poems and Essays was published in 1930.

Sadly, The Four Jameses provides little biographical information about MacRae. Deacon tells us that the poet was born in 1849 in what was then Alexandria, roughly 40 kilometres north of Cornwall, Ontario. In 1875 he arrived in St Marys, Ontario, and was living in the town when his first volume was published. It seems MacRae stayed in St Marys for about a decade, before settling out to farm in parts unknown. According to Deacon, in 1918 the poet returned to St Marys, 'where he spent a pleasant old age, and where the Public Library was an unfailing source of enjoyment... Among the townspeople he was reported to be mildly eccentric, which probably means nothing more than a strongly marked personality intensified by a touch of the artistic temperament, without which no poet is properly equipped.'

Here I admit that my preference for MacRae is influenced by my move to this pretty little town last year. I, too, have found the library to be an 'unfailing source of enjoyment' - though, I regret to report, it contains not a single volume of MacRae's verse. Nor does it have a copy of The Four Jameses.

St Marys Public Library

Object: We all live on a yellow hunk of cheese... I can't imagine how many people were turned away by the cover. Fairly typical of Macmillan's paperbacks, at 35 it's holding up quite well.

Access: The Four Jameses is readily available in our larger public libraries, most often in the Macmillan edition. The Graphic Publishers first is by far the most attractive, and includes illustrations and photos not found in the others. Nice copies of the cloth and paper editions can be found for under C$30. The Ryerson edition, the least desirable, can be had for C$20. Macmillan's 1974 edition benefits from Fetherling's informative Introduction. Curiously, it's the least common of the three - only two copies are currently listed online: one going for US$11, the other at US$59.85 (on offer from an optimistic bookseller in Little Elm, Texas).