Eight Gifts to Last

In past years I've noted gifts and donations to the Dusty Bookcase at the end of the annual list of Ten Best Book Buys. An exception is made here because of the shear volume, and because I wanted to add a personal note. And We Go On seems an appropriate title with which to start.

And We Go On

Will R. Bird

Toronto: Hunter-Rose, 1930

A memoir of the Great War, this first edition was given to me by military historian James Calhoun, with whom I co-authored the introduction to the 2014 Dundurn edition of Peregrine Acland's All Else Is Folly. Note the dust jacket description:

A story of the War by a Private in

the Canadian Black Watch;

a Story Without Filth

or Favour.

Bird's memoir was inspired in part by his disgust at the portrayal of soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front and Generals Die in Bed. He wouldn't have liked All Else Is Folly. 

 

Outlaw Breed

William Byron Mowery

Calabasas, CA: Cutting Edge, 2023

Novelist Lee Greenwood is doing God's work in reviving neglected novels. He reached out three years ago after I reviewed former Vancouver Sun scribe Tom Ardies' 1971 thriller Their Man in the White House. You'd like it. The novel tells the story of an American president who is beholding to the Russians. Oh, and he has an unusual – I suggest unhealthy – relationship with his blonde daughter. Lee was then in the process of returning all Ardies' novels to print.

Outlaw Breed is not a political thriller. First published in 1936 under the title Black Automatic, it was written by a Buckeye known as the "Zane Grey of the Canadian Northwest." Starring Noel Irving, ex-RCMP, the action begins with a murder in Winnipeg, moves on to Fort McMurray, and then the Northwest Territories.

The Woman's Harvest

Anna Floyd

London: T. Werner Laurie, 1916

An obscure novel by a forgotten English writer, set in England in and around the time of the Great War, The Woman's Harvest has nothing whatsoever to do with Canada, yet I was drawn to it after reading Brad Bigelow's Neglected Books review. I just had to read it, but not a one was listed for sale online. Worse still, the nearest copy is found in the National Library of Scotland. Brad was generous in giving me his. I'll say no more because Brad's review says it all. You'll want to read it, too.
 

Canada Speaks of Britain

and Other Poems of the War

Charles G.D. Roberts
Toronto: Ryerson, 1941

The River St. John and Its Poets

L.M.B. Maxwell

[n.p.]: [n.p], 1946

Two chapbooks donated by my friend Forrest Pass. The earlier, Sir Charles' Canada Speaks of Britain features seven "Poems of the War" (including 'Peace With Dishonour,' which was actually composed in September, 1938), along with three poems from the previous war, and three more poems thrown in for good measure. The longest in the collection is 'Two Rivers':

                     Two rivers are there in hold my heart
                          And neither would I leave.
                     When I would stay with one two long

                          The other tugs my sleeve.

The two rivers are the Tantamar and the St. John, which ties in nicely to The River St. John and Its Poets by L.M.B. Maxwell, LL.D. It consists of a series of biographical sketches and sample poems of sixteen poets, including Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, LL.D., D. Litt.; Theodore Goodrich Roberts, D. Litt.; William Bliss Carman, M.A., LL. D.; and Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey, M.A., Ph.D. I was more interested in plain old Francis Sherman, Charles Boyle, and Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, whose home I visited last autumn.
 

The Complete Adventures of Jimmie Dale, Volume Three

Frank L. Packard

[n.p.]: [n.p], 2022

The final volume of Packard scholar Michael Howard's annotated compilation of Packard's Gray Seal novels, this one includes Jimmie Dale and the Blue Envelope Murder (1930), Jimmie Dale and the Missing Hour (1935), and the unfinished and previously unpublished Jimmie Dale's Only Chance. 

But wait, there's more!

Also included are four chapters that were cut from The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1919), the script for the first episode of the radio serial The Adventures of Jimmie Dale, the beginning of the British edition of The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (in which our hero is an Englishman), and a family biography by the late Francis Lucius Packard.  

The author's grandson, Jeffrey Packard, provides the preface. 

All three volumes can be ordered through Amazon.

One last  gift:

Self Condemned
Wyndham Lewis
Toronto: Dundurn, 2010

My friend Michael Gnarowski died on July 27th of this year. He'd taught at three universities, one of which I attended, but I was not one students. Still, I learned a great deal from Michael. We first met twenty years ago when I was working on my biography of of his friend John Glassco, that great practitioner of deceit. He and I were dogged in our pursuit of "the knowable truth." 

Our last days together started over pints in an Ottawa strip mall pub – the fish and chips wasn't terrible – after which we'd move on to apple pie and vanilla ice cream at the flat he shared with his wife Diana. In our second to last meeting, Michael pulled out this slightly battered copy Self Condemned, asking whether I had a copy.

I lied.

This edition is a Voyageur Classic, a series that followed the Carleton Library and the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts series, all of which Michael had overseen. I'd bought each Voyageur Classic upon release, and was honoured when he accepted my proposal to include All Else Is Folly (see above) in the series.

And so, because I lied, I was able to accept his generosity. Michael signed my copy, explaining that his writing hand would not do what he wanted it to.

 

I last saw Michael on Father's Day, which somehow seems appropriate. He ordered the fish and chips, and then we had pie and ice cream.

17 September 1934, Shanghai, China

July 27, 2023, Ottawa, Canada 

RIP

Related post:
Blue Plaque Special: Maritime Edition
The Further Frustrations of Jimmie Dale
Alec Falcon, C'est Moi
Freedom to Read Week: Generals Die in Bed (I)
Freedom to Read Week: Generals Die in Bed (II)

Hidden Thanksgiving Day Verse

Lines for the day from Canada and Other Poems, Thomas Frederick Young's lone volume of verse. Published in 1887 by Hunter, Rose, the table of contents is interesting in that the page numbers are off. What makes it truly curious is that there's no mention of 'Thanksgiving Day,' one of the stronger poems in the collection. 

THANKSGIVING DAY

                     God of the harvest, once again

                         Our joyful tones we raise,

                    For all Thy goodness, day by day,

                         We give Thee thankful praise.

                    With blessings rich, from fertile field,

                         And gifts from fruitful tree,

                    We wish, this day, our thanks to yield

                         With earnest hearts, to Thee.

                    We ploughed the ground, we sow'd the seed,

                         But Thou didst send the rain

                    In grateful show'rs, in time of need.

                         And now we've reap'd the grain.

                    The sun with grateful heat did shine;

                         The dew did nightly fall;

                    And now, for loaded tree and vine —

                         We give Thee thanks for all.

                    The bee, in well-fill'd honey cells.

                         Her sweets for us hath stow'd,

                    The crystal water in the wells,

                         For us from springs hath flowed.

                    The lowing herd, the prancing steed

                         Received we from Thy hand.

                    And we, this day, return oar meed

                         Of praise, throughout the land.

                    Then let us sing with earnest hearts,

                         Tho' joyful be each lay,

                    And thankful ev'ry song that starts

                         On this Thanksgiving Day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Related posts:

An Expatriate Canadian Poet's New England Thanksgiving

for Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Verse by J.K. Foran

Dr  Logan's Ode for Thanksgiving Day

An Old Thanksgiving Ode by James McIntyre

Jean Blewett's 'Thanksgiving Song'

Jean Blewett's 'Thanksgiving Prayer'

Edna Jaques' Award-Winning Thanksgiving Verse

Thanksgiving in the Midst of War

'October in War Time'

A Thanksgiving Hymn

Thanksgiving Day Advice

'Thanksgiving Morn'

Bliss Carman's Lesser-Known Thanksgiving Poem

Montreal Most Strange (w/ mysterious directions)

Blood on My Rug
E. Louise Cushing
New York: Arcadia, 1956

223 pages

Miss Talmadge visits her St Catherine Street bookstore on a Sunday afternoon. This being Montreal, the decade being the 1950s, her business is closed for the day, but she's looking for something to read... because, I guess, the bookseller doesn't have much of a home library. Her choice is Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea. Miss Talmadge is about to leave when she remembers that there's a letter that must be answered, and so she enters her back office, where she finds a man lying "messily dead" on her treasured rose Khalabar rug.

Miss Talmadge  phones the Homicide Bureau, stirring a napping telephone operator, who in turn sets bored policemen into action. A siren is heard, a car draws up, and Detective Inspector Richard MacKay emerges. Miss Talmadge finds reassurance in the "laughter lines at the corner of his eyes and quirk at one side of his mouth."

Within fifteen minutes, Inspector MacKay has learned the victim's name (George Albert Smithins) and hometown (Red Deer, Alberta). He shares both with Miss Talmadge, whom he's already determined had nothing whatsoever to do with the murdered man. 

Blood on My Rug is the third of E. Louise Cushing's five murder mysteries. Having read the first and second, I knew to expect little by way of intrigue. Mackay, who is so sharp in his first quarter-hour on the case, turns a sluggish dullard. Accompanied by Miss Talmadge, he interviews four of the five young women who work in her bookstore. The fifth, Ellen Pope, left Montreal on the evening of the murder. It's most unlike her, but MacKay doesn't follow up. Why should he? After all, two days later a telegram arrives to say that she's in Lachute caring for sister who has taken ill. 

As in Cushing's previous mysteries, the most suspicious character – indeed, the only suspicious character – will be found to have committed the crime. Though presented as a hero, MacKay errs repeatedly in dismissing evidence pointing to the murderer as "the long arm of coincidence."

St Catherine Street, 1956

It all  makes for a frustrating read, which is not to suggest that it isn't fascinating. What makes Blood on My Rug a real page-turner is its depiction of Montreal as an exclusively English city. There are no francophones. There are no French street names. There are no French newspapers. Every business has an English name. Cushing's Montreal is also one in which the discovery of a dead body might cause distress, but recovery is quick. Here's Miss Talmadge and her maid on the morning after the murder:

Miss Talmadge wakened early Monday morning, which was most unusual for her. She lay looking at the morning sun which glimmered coldly on her white curtains and decided to get up. After all, it was hardly fair to let the burden of any excitement that there might be at the store that morning fall on the girls.

     She stretched out a lazy arm and rang for Daisy, thereby startling that damsel greatly.

     "Did you ring?" she asked uncertainly.

     Miss Talmadge grinned at her. "I did," she said cheerily. "I think I'll go down to the store early, Daisy. Will you shut the window and bring me my breakfast, please?"

The missing Miss Pope's body will be found stuffed in a trunk at neighbouring Brown's Luggage Shop, but none of her co-workers are particularly disturbed. The luggage store closes for the day and police investigate, but business at the bookstore continues as if nothing has happened.

Trust me, Montrealers aren't so cold.

I spoil little in revealing that the solution to the murder comes courtesy of a note the victim hid in the copy of Gift from the Sea Miss Talmadge took home that bloody Sunday. The discovery drew my interest as I'd earlier found this within the pages my copy of Blood on My Rug:

A note found inside a book in which a note is hidden in a book. Whatever can it mean?

The directions continue on the reverse. I'll happily scan the back and send it on to anyone who requests on the understanding that if it leads to treasure we split it 50-50.

If it leads to a body, you're on your own.

Favourite sentence: 

"I know it's not very pleasant for you," he said pleasantly.

Dedication:

Irene Love Archibald, who was dead eleven years when Blood on My Rug was published, wrote under many names. As "Margaret Currie," she had a long-running column in the Montreal Star, at which her husband was editor. She left us with one book: Margaret Currie: Her Book (Toronto: Hunter Rose, 1924).

Trivia: Miss Talmadge tells Inspector Mackay that on the evening of the murder she was at the "Capital Theatre," which I take to be a reference to the Capitol Theatre, also on St Catherine Street. It was torn down in 1973. MacKay doesn't ask the name if the movie. I've read enough mystery novels to recognize his laziness. 

Object: A squat book bound in light green cloth. I'd been looking for a copy for about a decade. The one I purchased was first listed last month on eBay with a US$99.95 opening bid.

There were no takers.

The seller relisted at US$9.95.

I was the lone bidder.

An ex-library copy, it's in far better shape than might be expected. Sadly, the catalogue card has been removed. What attracted most was the dust jacket, which features a pitch for The Sting of Death by Perry D. Westbrook and these "RECENT ARCADIA MYSTERIES":

Run from the Sheep - Eline Capit
The Crime, the Place, and the Girl - D. Stapleton

A Few Drops of Murder - Isabel Capeto

Access: As far as I can tell, the only publicly available copy in this country is held by Library and Archives Canada. The book is more accessible south of the border. According to WorldCat, the Library of Congress, seven American universities, and two American public libraries have copies. What intrigues is that those two public libraries serve Kiowa, Kansas (pop 1026) and Mandan, North Dakota (pop 18,331).

No copies are currently listed for sale online.

Related posts:

Bewitched, Bothered, but not Bewildered

No Picnic

A Poet's Angry Word With the Fenian Botherhood

Angry verse on this 148th anniversary of Thomas D'Arcy McGee's assassination found in Evan MacColl's Poems and Songs (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1883).

A WORD WITH THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD 

(Suggested by the assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, in 1868) 

            "The Fenian Brotherhood "! the phrase sounds well,
            But what's your right to such a title, tell?
            Strangers alike to honour, truth, and shame—
            Conspirators to aim at Fenian fame!
            If truly sang the bard of Selma old,
            The Fenian race were of no cut-throat mould;
            Though sometimes they in Erin loved to roam,
            A land more north was their heroic home;
            The "Cothrom Féine," was their pride and boast;
            Of all base things they scorned a braggart most;
            Besides 'twas not a custom in their day,
            Assassin-like, one's victim to way-lay
            And shoot unseen contented if, cash down,
            The price of blood were only half-a crown!
            Fenians, indeed! all true men of that race
            Fraternity with you would deem disgrace;
            Fenians, forsooth! renounce that honour'd name;
            "Thugs" would more fitly suit your claim to fame! 

            Poor souls, I pity your demented state;
            You will be vicious if you can't be great.
            Better for Erin any fate would be,
            Than to be ruled by bedlamites like ye:
            The war of the Kilkenny cats renewed,
            She'd find, I think, a very doubtful good.
            O wondrous-valiant, treason-hatching crew,
            If words were deeds, what great things might ye do?
            Ye, who have left your country for her good—
            Ye talk of righting all her wrongs in blood!
            'Tis laughable — the more so, that we feel
            Your necks were made for hemp, and not for steel.
            At Britain's lion you may spare your howls,—
            That noble beast is never scared by owls;
            Tis well for you, with all your vapouring frantic,
            You have 'tween him and you the broad Atlantic. 

            Let no one think that he who now cries shame
            On your misdeeds, your Celtic blood would blame;
            A Celt himself, his great grief is to see
            The land that nursed you cursed by such as ye.
            So bright the record of her better days—
            So much to love she still to us displays—
            So rich her heritage of wit and song—
            So warm her heart, so eloquent her tongue,
            He honours Erin. 'Tis to fools like you
            Alone the tribute of his scorn is due. 

            Union is strength. Joy to the nations three
            As now united! May they ever be
            The first and foremost in fair freedom's van—
            An empire built upon the Shamrock plan—
            A seeming THREE and yet a perfect ONE.

Related posts:

'O Martyr'd McGee!'

D'Arcy McGee's Query (with a response)

D'Arcy McGee, All Compliment to Thee

'Death of D'Arcy McGee'

'IN MEMORIAM! The Hon. T.D. McGee'

Remembering Edith Eaton and D'Arcy McGee

'Erin's Address to the Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee'

Tecumseh: 200 Years

Tecumseh
c.1768 - 5 October 1813
RIP

from Tecumseh: A Drama
Charles Mair
Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1886

Of Old Books and (possibly) Mummy Paper

Delightfully charming, unconventionally sentimental schoolgirl verse from Ethel Ursula Foran, whose "New Year's Day" has proven to be by far the most popular poem posted on this blog. Here a very young Miss Foran turns her attention towards favourite things material:

The dead, the embalmed, the mausoleumed... I'm certain that this is the first verse I've read to feature the word "sarcophagi".

            You chat and live with dead men of thought
            As you sit and pursue the words they wrought.
            They are peaceful companions that never betray,
            Nor dispute, nor quarrel, for silent are they.

'Tis lovely, though one cannot escape the sad thought that Miss Foran is herself now a peaceful companion.

What I find most intriguing comes in the poet likening aging books to "Egyptian mummies of old." Might this be a clever allusion to the oft-repeated myth – or is it? – that linen wrappings of mummies were used by nineteenth-century New England papermakers?

I suppose we'll never know.

Never mind.

As we nurse our respective Dominion Day hangovers, I present the six oldest Canadian books in my collection.

The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Montreal: D. & J. Sadlier, 1870

Purchased four years ago – US$8.00 – at an antique store in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. At my aunt's 88th birthday dinner the previous evening I'd bragged that only one Canadian politician had ever been assassinated: McGee. I am a joy at parties. No invitations declined.

Endymion

The Right Hon. Earl of Beaconsfield

Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 1880

Not by a Canadian, but it was published in Canada, I picked up Endymion three years ago for $1.99 at our local Salvation Army Thrift Store. The Dawson Brothers – Samuel and William – were once Montreal's preeminent publishers and booksellers; I came along a century later. A bookish lad raised in the oldish suburb of Beaconsfield, I knew Benjamin Disraeli's name before those of Messrs Wilson and Heath.

Tecumseh: A Drama

Charles Mair

Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1883

A first edition of the Confederation Poet's epic about the great man, this was a gift from a friend who had rescued it from a box of rejected donations to the McGill Library Book Sale. Most generous, I think you'll agree.

A Popular History of the Dominion of Canada

Rev. William H. Withrow, D.D. F.R.S.C.

Toronto: William Briggs, 1885

How popular? Well, my copy ranks amongst the sixth thousand. Purchased in 2000 for forty dollars – I paid too much. Though I've never taken so much as a glance beyond the title page, I'll bet that it's a more interesting work than Neville Trueman: Pioneer Preacher, Rev Withrow's preachy War of 1812 novel.

The Other Side of the "Story"

[John King]

Toronto: James Murray, 1886

A new acquisition, found just last week at a bookstall in London, Ontario. Storm clouds were gathering. In his "INTRODUCTORY", Mr King describes this publication as a "brochure", but at 150 bound pages I'm going to say it's a book. I've not yet had a chance to properly investigate its contents, so know only that it is a critique of John Charles Dent's The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1885). Price: 50¢.

Sam Slick, The Clockmaker

Thomas Chandler Haliburton

New York: John B. Alden, 1887

Purchased thirteen years ago for US$8.00 from a Yankee bookseller, this is surely the skinniest edition of the CanLit classic. Thin, pulpy and grey/brown in colour, the paper is typical of the publish and crumble era. I can write, with great certainty, that no mummies were destroyed in it's making.