Showing posts with label Hilliard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hilliard. Show all posts

24 July 2025

Sunshine Scandals of a Little Town



A View of the Town
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1954
269 pages


There is no town of Inverness on Nova Scotia's mainland. That I wasn't sure says as much of my shaky knowledge of the Maritimes as it does the author's talent. Her Inverness seems real. At first, I thought it might have been inspired by an actual town – as Southport in Hilliard's Miranda (1960) is modeled on Yarmouth – but I've since come to realize that it is based on no one town, rather seventy or eighty of them.

The history of Inverness is important to the plot. It was on 15 May 1781 that Captain Joshua Ward of Virginia landed on Nova Scotia's western shore, taking possession of five hundred acres of virgin soil he'd been awarded for his loyalty to the Crown. Two months later, the immigrant ship Holly arrived from Scotland bearing the Mackays, Fifes, Camerons, Loves, Leckeys, and Macdonalds. The leader of the expedition, Fergus Mackay, who'd spent much of the voyage below deck "guarding" the scotch, emerged in time to yell "I name thee Inverness!"


A View of the Town is not a historical novel, it takes place in 1930 as the sesquicentenary of Inverness approaches. Simon Ward is troubled. Pioneer Day, which celebrates the arrive of great-great-grandfather Joshua, has long been in the shadow of the Holly Day celebration of the Highlanders' arrival. This is easily understandable, after all, the Scottish ship brought the Mackays, Fifes, Camerons, Loves, Leckeys, and Macdonalds, whereas Joshua Ward brought only his family, crew, and a dozen slaves:
"The Wards, who had a weakness for begetting females, were outnumbered in no time."
Simon himself has two offspring, both female. Primrose, named for her late mother, is the eldest. An unmarried innocent of twenty-six, she
spends her days indoors caring for her skin and reading Ruth Fielding novels. Helen, Prim's younger sister, is the more grounded of the two, though recent history suggests otherwise. Wed at nineteen to Denis Cameron, son of the wealthy foundry-owning Camerons, she was abandoned a year later. Her estranged husband is thought to be in California trying to paint. 

Simon is trying to write. He has spent the past two decades working on a history of Inverness in a small octagonal room perched atop the otherwise three-storey Ward family home. The only intrusion he allows comes in late afternoon when the women of the house bring tea. Prim and Helen take their turns, as do Simon's sister-in-law Marlow, and housekeeper Katharine Macdonald (known to all as Katie Wee Duncan):
Nobody had ever caught him actually seated at his desk writing. He might be found taking a nap or reading a book, looking at something in the town, or simply waiting.
Simon means to set things right. Great-great-grandfather Joshua is the true founder of Inverness. It was the Ward family that built the foundation of this proud Nova Scotia town. Neighbour Mary Mackay, president of the Inverness Argus Society, wouldn't dare challenge Simon on this view – she's far too savvy. The play between the two in the months leading to the Pioneer and Holly Day sesquicentennial celebrations is something to see, but there's so much more.

There's Helen's failed marriage, of course. But what of spinster aunt Marlow, who lives in the Ward home next door to the fiancé who threw her over? That old beau went on to father Ian Cameron, Helen's missing husband. Unmarried Katie Wee Duncan, the Ward's housekeeper and cook, is the mother of Rose, who is Mary Mackay's unacknowledged granddaughter. Newly arrived lawyer Percy Mattheson divides his attention between Mary's daughter Florence and Prim Ward until the former runs off with her sister's husband. 

Capping it all off is a climactic scene clearly inspired by "The Sinking of the Mariposa Belle" (aka "The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias"). Harmless fun, A View of the Town is the most gentle of Hilliard's five novels in that no one dies and there are several happy endings. The black humour, very much present in the others, is here pale grey. This 23 October 1954 Globe & Mail ad is the very example of truth in advertizing:


Trivia I:
Inverness, Nova Scotia is located on the western shore of Cape Breton. The Inverness of A View of the Town is described as being on the mainland, some one hundred miles north of Halifax. 

Trivia II: Prim's Ruth Fielding novels are just the beginning! Early in the novel, much to her horror, Marlow discovers a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover hidden under the mattress of Helen's bed. Confronting her niece, Marlow threatens to burn it, but puts the marches away when Helen tells her that it belongs to Mary Mackay's daughter Florence.

About the author:


Sadly, the author would never write or illustrate a travel book.

Object and Access: A green/grey hardcover, split-run with American publishing house Abelard-Schulman (for whom the author worked as a fiction editor). The jacket illustration is credited to George Thompson about whom I know nothing. I bought my copy in early 2024 from a southern Ontario bookseller. Price: $15. I purchased a signed Abelard-Schulman edition early this year. Price: US$30. It is guaranteed to place on my 2025 list of best book buys.


You too can own a signed copy! As of this writing a Calgary bookseller is offering not one but two at $40 apiece!

Get 'em while you can!


20 March 2025

Dusty CanLit Winter Reviews


Blogs. 

They were done in by social media, right?

In my own small way I helped hasten the decline. Back in 2011, after years of reluctance, I was encouraged to set up a Facebook account so as to promote A Gentleman of Pleasure, my biography of John Glassco. Did the effort sell a copy or two? Perhaps, though I very much doubt it sold three.

I quit Facebook in January after watching Mark Zuckerberg at Trump's second inauguration. If interested, you can now find me here on Bluesky.

I've been reading blogs for thirty years now. Most of my favourites are no longer, but not necessarily for want of effort. The blog I miss the most is Ron Scheer's Buddies in the Saddle, devoted to the "frontier West in history, myth, film, and popular fiction." Next month marks the tenth anniversary of Ron's death. We never met, but he taught me a great deal through his posts and in the comments he left to my own. Though an American, he wrote a lot about the history, myth, film, and popular fiction of Western Canada.

This is all to say that I've found blogs richer and more fulfilling than any found on a social media platform. So, this year, in appreciation of other bloggers I'll be sharing seasonal roundups of links to reviews of old Canadian books from favourite blogs.

Now in its eighteenth year, Jean-Louis Lessard's Laurentiana, is the very best online source for information on French-language Canadian literature. This winter saw ten titles added to the nine hundred reviewed thus far:

Leaves & Pages has long been a favourite, and not only because of a shared interest in the works of William C. Heine, author of The Last Canadian and The Swordsman [aka The Sea Lord]. The Leaves & Pages review of Anne Cameron's South of an Unnamed Creek always raises a smile. 



Back in 2005, Olman Feelyus set himself the goal of of reading at least fifty books per annum. Some years he succeeds, some he does not, but lately he's been on a real tear... which means more reviews! He's up to fourteen already, three of which are Canadian. His review of the old NCL edition of Roughing It in the Bush ranks amongst my faves. Happy twentieth anniversary to Olman's Fifty!
The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada - Benjamin Drew
The Luck of Ginger Coffey - Brian Moore 

The Pulp and Paperback Fiction Reader has a real talent for finding CanLit obscurities. Consider its most recent post, which looks at the 25 April 1933 edition of Short Stories. The issue features an H. Bedford-Jones short story and a novella, 'The Trained Cow Kills,' by Saskatchewan newspaperman Geoffrey Hewelcke (aka "Hugh Jeffries"). As far as actual books go, we have a review this uncommon title:
Riders of the Badlands - Thomas P. Kelley 

Moving south of the border, The Invisible Event shared a recent discovery of the Screech Owls series. Given the review, I'm feeling confident that there will be more Screech Owls reviews to come.

Murder at Hockey Camp - Roy MacGregor 

Mystery*File echoed Leaves & Pages' appreciation of Ross Macdonald:


Paperback Warrior was so brave as to take on the third of New Brunswick boy W.E.D. Ross's thirty-eight Dark Shadows novels. Last autumn, I tackled number nineteen. 


In January, J F Norris of Pretty Sinister returned after a year's hiatus with a 2024 recap of his reading. It includes a positive review of Ontario boy Hopkins Moorhouse's second novel The Gauntlet of Alceste, a 1921 mystery set in New York.


Vintage Pop Fictions reviewed Buccaneer Blood, the twelfth title in the sixteen-volume H. Bedford-Jones Library from American publisher Altus Press:

Returning home, I would be remiss in not recognizing Fly-By-Night. No reviews, but the research it has shared on Canadian paperbacks of the 'forties and 'fifties these past sixteen years has proven invaluable:

For the record, I wrote only five reviews of old Canadian books this past season, all of which were posted on this blog:
More this spring!

Keep 'em coming!

Herbert Joseph Moorhouse
24 April 1882, Kincardine Township, Ontario
9 January 1960, Vancouver, BC

RIP

Related posts:

26 December 2024

The Very Best Reads of 2024: Hilliard's Hat-Trick


With five days left in 2024, there's little chance I'll read and review another neglected book before the calendar turns... and so, the summary!

This was an unusual year for the Dusty Bookcase in that nearly half the books covered – twelve of the twenty-five – were published over a century ago. I don't know that I've reached half that number in the past. This years titles span 173 years, from Major John Richardson's Hardscrabble; Or, The Fall of Chicago (1850) to Richardson biographer David Richard Beasley's Canadian Authors You Should Know (2023). The former is the earliest paperback in my collection; Mark Breslin's Son of a Meech: The Best Brian Mulroney Jokes (1991), also read this year, is the ugliest in both appearance and content.


The best-looking book I've read in the past twelve months is the 1875 Lee & Sheppard edition of The Lily and the Cross by James De Mille. Coincidentally, De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder was the most beautiful read last year.

To tweak the early Chapters slogan, great looks are just the beginning. The Dusty Bookcase has always been more about content than appearance. I write this, despite the near certainty that the jackets for this year's list of the three books most deserving of reissue were illustrated by the author herself:

The Jameson Girls
Jan Hilliard
   [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster &
   Scott, 1956

The first of the Nova Scotian's books to be set in Ontario, this one concerns four women brought together by the imminent death of their father, once a successful rumrunner. It's about them, not him. 

Miranda
Jan Hilliard
   [Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard-Schulman,
   1960

This was the very best novel I read this year. The titular character is the focal point, though her story is told through her daughter Rose. An servant in London, in Canada Miranda tweaks her past and takes on airs, while Rose grows to see through it all.

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

Her fifth in ten years, this is the author's final novel. Though Hillard lived a further three decades, she wrote only three more books; all were non-fiction, all were published in the 'sixties.



Sadly, of all the books covered, only one is in print today:


Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, Jane Brierley's Governor General's Award-winning 1990 translation of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé's posthumous Divers (1893). Copies can be purchased directly from publisher Véhicule Press through this link.


I was tempted to include The Missing Chums (1928), the fourth Hardy Boys book penned by Ontario boy Leslie McFarlane, but that would've been cheating. The edition being flogged today was rewritten in 1962 by James Buechler. As I understand, all that's left of the original is the title. 

This year, I was involved in the publication of only one book, the Ricochet rerelease of Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street with new cover and revised introduction by Will Straw.


Next year will see a Ricochet reissue of a 1952 Canadian pulp novel that was deemed to spicy for the American market.

I'll say no more.

As for New Year's resolutions, I have but one. I resolve to read more humour. Given the racket from south of the border, I have a feeling I'll be in need of a good laugh every now and then. 

As always, keep kicking against the pricks! Do Johnny Cash and John Metcalf proud.

Bonne année!

Related posts:


09 December 2024

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2024... and many gifts!


What a year! On day two, while returning from a grocery run in nearby Brockville, I stopped at a thrift store and found first editions of Gilbert Parker's The Judgement House and Pardon My Parka by Joan Walker. They set me back all of four dollars.

The Judgement House had been on my radar only two months, but I'd been looking for Pardon My Parka well before my 2022 tear through Walker's East of Temple Bar, Murder By AccidentRepent at Leisure, and the condensed Repent at Leisure. It completes my collection of her works. 

I arrived home from Brockville to find this gift from my friend James Calhoun my mailbox:


More on that below.

The strangest book buying experience occurred during a May visit from our daughter. She'd just moved to her first flat and was looking for inexpensive pots and pans, so the family set out for a favourite thrift store in Smiths Falls. During the drive I began talking about Jan Hilliard whose novel Miranda I'd set down to make the trip. I went on about her background, her rascal of a father, her art school education, what a good writer she was, and how unfair it is that she's so forgotten. When we got to the store, mother and daughter went off hunting kitchenware. I made for the books, where I found – within seconds – a first edition of Hilliard's The Salt-Box. I'd never before seen any of her books in a store. The copy doesn't have a dust jacket and is a library discard, but at 66 cents I shan't complain. It completes my collection of her works. 

That Judgement House, Pardon My Parka, and The Salt-Box didn't make this year's list gives some idea as to how good 2024 was in terms of book purchases.

This years top ten were bought from booksellers in Canada, Austria, England, Scotland, and the United States:

A Fair Affair

Paul Champagne
Winnipeg: Greywood, 1967

"A chilling mystery with a James Bond-Simon Templar flavour, and devilish spoof on Canadian politicians," says the cover copy.

We'll see.

Set around Expo '67, this was purchased after reading the disappointing So Long at the Fair.

The Woman Who Didn't

Victoria Cross
   [Annie Sophie Currie]
London: Lane, 1909

An 1895 novel written in response to Grant Allen's scandalous The Woman Who Did. I like Allen's novel, but understand that Victoria Cross was highly critical. 

I'm ready to hear her out.

Harsh Evidence

Pamela Fry
London: Wingate, 1953

Reviewed here in July, Fry's debut did not disappoint; I'd read The Watching Cat (1960), her second and last novel, so expectations were low.

This one is a murder mystery set amongst well-paid people working in Toronto's lucrative magazine industry. Different times. I grew jealous.

The Conquering Hero
John Murray Gibbon
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, [c. 1921]

Judging a book by its cover, I'm not sure this is for me. Still, Gibbon wrote Pagan Love (1922), which is easily the most unconventional and challenging Canadian novel of last century's 'twenties.

When I found this Gibbon book – signed – I leapt.

Three Weeks

Elinor Glyn
New York: Macaulay,
   [c. 1924]

A novel that would've appealed as a very young man. Don't know why I didn't buy it then, but I have it now... and in a photoplay edition!

It says everything about my reaction that I bought two other Glyns after reading it.

A View of the Town

Jan Hilliard
Toronto: Nelson, Foster &
   Scott, 1954

It's difficult to pace oneself with Jan Hilliard; she wrote only five novels. I'm saving A View of the Town, the only one I've not read, for next year. Seventy-year-old reviews suggest it is her funniest. By now, I feel I know Hilliard; much of that humour will be black.

Miranda

Jan Hilliard
New York: Abelard-
   Schuman, 1960

My favourite read of 2024!

Given that I read two other Hilliard novels this year it was not an easy choice.



Morgan's Castle

Jan Hilliard
New York: Abelard-
   Schulman, 1964

The author's biggest selling novel – there was a Dell paperback edition – and I can see why. Where previous novels could get very dark indeed, Morgan's Castle is the only in which murder figures.

And more than one! 


Chipmunk

Len Peterson
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1949

I once read a very enthusiastic review of this novel, but where?

I have no idea who wrote it or what was said, but it was so positive that I've kept an eye out ever since.


In the Village of Viger
Duncan Campbell Scott
Toronto: Ryerson, 1945

A controversial choice, perhaps, given the author, this is a more attractive edition than the very rare 1896 American first. The Ryerson edition didn't do a whole lot better, but this hasn't prevented certain critics from holding the collection aloft as highly influential. John Metcalf has proven otherwise.


This year saw a good many gifts to the Dusty Bookcase, beginning with the book that arrived on the second day in January:

The Winter of Time
Raymond Holmes
   [Raymond Souster]
Toronto: News Stand
   Library, 1949

Raymond Souster's third book and first novel, the poet drew something from his wartime experience in the writing, but it is no way autobiographical.

Thank God.

A gift from James Calhoun.

Late Spring

Peter Donovan
Toronto: Macmillan, 1930


A novel set in the Toronto art world by a Montrealer better known as "P O'D." Robertson Davies was an admirer, describing Donovan as "knowingly and intentionally and pointedly funny."

Another gift from James Calhoun, this is sure to be read in 2025.

Michelle Remembers
Michelle Smith and
   Lawrence Pazder
New York: Pocket, 1981

After I'd expressed frustration in being unable to find an affordable copy copy of this Satanic Panic classic, Brad Middleton of My Bloody Obsession sent two copies my way. This one is a first printing of the July 1981 first Pocket books edition.

The Gorilla's Daughter

Thomas P. Kelley
Toronto: News Stand
   Library, 1950

A book I will likely never own, but a book I've now read thanks to bowdler of Fly-by-Night who kindly sent scans and photocopies my way.

A tragic love story.



Finally, I received two large boxes of books from the West Coast sent by my friend Karyn Huenemann containing books by L. Adams Beck, Frances Brooke, Ralph Connor, Muriel Denison, Norman Duncan, Sara Jeanette Duncan, Muriel Elwood, F.T. Flahiff, Grey Owl, Nellie McClung, Frederick Niven, Frank L. Packard, George L. Parker, Gilbert Parker, Charles G.D. Roberts, and Duncan Campbell Scott.

Again, what a year! 

Related posts:

16 September 2024

As He Lay Dying



The Jameson Girls
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1956
240 pages

King Jameson is dying and his daughters have gathered for the occasion. Isobel has flown in from New York, where she lives with third husband Eric. Mildred too lives in New York, but with her first husband. She arrived by train.

Isobel and Mildred don't talk.

Fanny, the eldest sister, didn't have travel at all; she lives at the family home with Lily, the fourth and youngest Jameson girl. Meanwhile, King lies semi-coherent in an upstairs bedroom facing framed photographs of his two dead wives.

Hawkrest is a grand house located on a wooded crag overlooking the Niagara River. King bought it not long after the Great War, then moved his family from New York. Before the war, the Jamesons had lived in Chicago, in which King's British immigrant parents had settled.

Hawkrest was ideal for King's burgeoning business as a rumrunner. As the years passed, he began pretending that the house had been in the family for generations. King would point to its antique furnishings, collected by the former owner, describing them as objects ancestral.

The true Jameson family history is slowly revealed. The most solacious details belong to King and his second wife, though Isabel and her many marriages provide competition. In stark contrast, Fanny, the eldest Jameson girl, settled into contented spinsterhood as a child. Mildred, the third Jameson girl, obsesses over marital fidelity, while Lily...

Well, what of Lily? The baby of the family, she's the daughter of King's sexy second wife Hazel, who died behind the wheel. Lily was in the passenger seat. She barely survived and hasn't been "right" since.

The Jameson Girls
is backward looking, with the real drama existing only in memory. The reader has arrived too late, and so relies on fleeting references to past events. The present, lighter and more comical, takes place under a gathering cloud. It has two stars, the most recent being American Theodore Fairfield, who is summering in the mansion-cum-B&B across the road. A bigamist gold digger who presents himself as a son of Boston's well-to-do, he sets his sites first on Fanny, then quickly shifts to Lily. She's so pretty, so doll like, so innocent, so malleable, he's afraid he's falling in love.

The second star is  Mrs Pringle, who has taken offense in being referenced as "the maid" by King Jameson's night nurse. She is not "the maid," rather "a family friend" who just happens to have taken care of the house daily, for pay, these past thirty or so years. Fanny is so fearful the insulted, indignant Mrs Pringle will leave that she has taken over most housekeeping duties.

It's not all light, of course. Let's remember there is a man dying upstairs. Of this, Mrs Pringle is well aware:
In a burst of optimism on Saturday she had bought a black hat for the funeral: I hope I haven’t gone and wasted my good money, she thought as she ran water into the sink.
Like most Kirkus reviews, its take on The Jameson Girls (1 September 1956) is very short, yet somehow manages to give away too much. I'll share only the final sentence: "For women only, a more credible than charitable chronicle - and this prying, gossipping [sic], niggling world has its authenticity as well as human curiosity."

My interest in this quote relates to an ongoing discussion with friends regarding the "target audience," and how zeroing in on a specific reader, invariably the one most likely to purchase, can alienate others.

Canadian Forum, December 1956
Nelson, Foster and Scott's promotion was gender neutral. Would the Kirkus "For women only" have brought more sales?

Who knows?

What I can say for certain is that this man is all in on a prying, gossiping, niggling world that has authenticity and human curiosity.

You will be, too.

Not quite a bloomer: This passage, in which Fanny reacts to the revelation that sister Isobel, twice divorced, is having an affair, gives some idea of Jan Hilliard's talent:


The critics rave: For all my searching, I've yet to find an unfavourable review of any Jan Hilliard novel. Vancouver Sun critic Elmore Philpott champions The Jameson Girls in his 4 January 1954 review: "It is a witty, genial, sparking satire about the three daughters of the ex-king of the Niagara river rum runners [emphasis mine]."


Did he read it?

Object and Access: One of just two Nelson, Foster & Scott titles in my collection, the other being Jan Hilliard's A View of the Town (1954), The Jameson Girls is a solid hardcover with brown boards and uncredited jacket illustration. All evidence suggests that it was a split-run with Abelard-Schulman, printed and bound in England. Neither edition was reprinted.

There has never been another.


As I write, one copy of the Nelson, Foster & Scott edition is listed online at US$19.00.

In very good condition with dust jacket, it's a steal at twice the price.