The 1921 Globe 100 206: Don't Mention the War

The Globe, 3 December 1921

The 1921 edition of 'Recent Books and the Outlook,' the Globe's annual list of best books, begins on a positive note: "Author's and publishers have had an unhappy experience during the past few years owing to conditions which they could not control, but the current season has a distinctly better tone."

The Great War must surely have ranked as the preeminent condition. There were years in which the conflict came close to dominating 'Recent Books and the Outlook.' The 1920 edition had an entire section devoted to books about the war:

Not only is the Great War barely mentioned in the 1921 'Recent Books and the Outlook,' just three of its 206 books are related to the bloodshed just twenty-four months past. Great War poetry disappears entirely... and with it poetry. I exaggerate, but only slightly. Eight volumes of verse are listed, down from nineteen the previous year; four are Canadian:

My Pocket Beryl - Mary Josephine Benson

Later Poems - Bliss Carman

Bill Boram: A Ballad - Robert Norwood

Beauty and Life - Duncan Campbell Scott

I'm not familiar with any of these titles, but have read and reviewed Robert Service's 1921 Ballads of a Bohemian. To this point, the Bard of the Yukon had been a 'Recent Books and the Outlook' favourite;' I'd thought Ballads of a Bohemian a shoo-in. Is Bill Boram: A Ballad so much better? I must investigate.

As in years past, fiction makes up the biggest category; their number is seventy-two, the star being If Winter Comes by A.S.M. Hutchinson:

Hutchinson's achievement aside, the Globe is disappointed by foreign offerings:

Fiction in other countries has been disappointing during the last year, and has certainly not proved as rich as biography or history. American readers fall into two classes says the New York Times Book Review, those who like John Dos Passos' "The Three Soldiers" and those who do not.

The correct title is Three Soldiers.

It doesn't make the list.

My copy
(New York: Doran, 1921)

Where foreign writers of fiction disappoint, Canadians flourish. A record twenty-four Canadian fiction titles figure. Or is it twenty-three? Twenty-two?

The Lone Trail - Luke Allan

Anne of the Marshland - Lady Byng

Barriers - Lady Byng

To Him That Hath - Ralph Connor

The Lobstick Trail - Douglas Durkin

The Gift of the Gods - Pearl Foley

Red Meekins - W.A. Fraser

Maria Chapdelaine - Louis Hemon [trans W.H. Blake]

Maria Chapdelaine - Louis Hemon [trans Andrew Macphail]

The Quest of Alistair - Robert A. Hood

The Hickory Stick - Nina Moore Jamieson

Little Miss Melody - Marian Keith

The Empty Sack - Basil King

The Conquest of Fear - Basil King

Partner of Chance - H.H. Knibbs

Miriam of Queen's - Lillian Vaux MacKinnon

The Snowshoe Trail - Edison Marshall

The Window Gazer - Isabel Ecclestone MacKay

Purple Springs - Nellie McClung

Rilla of Ingleside - L.M. Montgomery

Are All Men Alike? - Arthur Stringer

The Spoilers of the Valley - Robert Watson

Let's ignore the misspelling of Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's surname, shall we. Louis Hémon's, too. Interesting to see both Maria Chapdelaine translations, don't you think? What really intrigues is the inclusion of Basil King's The Conquest of Fear.

As my 1942 World Library edition (above) suggests, The Conquest of Fear is a work of philosophy. The Globe describes it at a novel:

The inclusion of Arthur Stringer's Are All Men Alike? is just as intriguing. The author published two books in 1921, the other being his heart-breaking roman à clef The Wine of Life. By far the finest Stringer I've read thus far, my dream is to one day bring out an edition featuring the twenty-four James Montgomery Flagg illustrations it inspired.

My collection of the Globe's 1921 Canadian "fiction" titles

Is Are All Men Alike? superior to The Wine of Life?

I haven't read it, nor have I read Jess of the Rebel Trail or Little Miss Melody. I have read Miriam of Queen's and The Window Gazer, both of which disappointed. The Empty Sack is my very favourite Basil King title, and yet it too pales beside The Wine of Life.

Or is it better? Are they all better?

What do I know? I think Three Soldiers is the best novel of 1921.

Yes, I'm one of those who like it.

Related posts:

Best Books of 1920: Beware the Bolshevik Poets

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb

and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing (1919)

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1917:

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1916

The Season's Best Books in Review – A.D. 1915;

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

Rhyming Leads to Ruin

Back to School With Miriam of Queen's

The Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel?

Romance Amongst the Racists

Arthur Stringer's The Wine of Life

Portraits of a Marriage: James Montgomery Flagg and Arthur Stringer's Wine of Life 

Lilian Vaux MacKinnon and Her Critics

A fleeting follow-up to the previous post:

Lilian Vaux MacKinnon earned a English B.A. (Honours) at Queen's, though I don't see much evidence of this in Miriam of Queen's. What the university's website describes as a "critical success" received a mixed bag of reviews. The harshest appraisal comes from an anonymous critic in the December 1921 edition of Canadian Bookman:

The book gives one the idea that Mrs. MacKinnon enjoyed her student life under "Geordie" Grant to the full, and wants to enable others to see it as she did, but is handicapped in her effort by a desire to stick to literal facts. It is somewhat as if one were to attempt to describe  the life of a great university by reproducing a sophomore's diary.

There's more, of course, but I've chosen these words because they touch on the autobiographical nature of the novel. It's this reading of Miriam of Queen's – as a roman à clef – that brought the most positive reviews, like this one in The Ottawa Citizen:

Many of the characters in "Miriam of Queen's" will be recognized. There is for instance her father, a good civil servant. "Roderick Campbell had been in the government employ in increasingly responsible positions since he had moved to Ottawa from the Island of Cape Breton. Highly esteemed, reserved to the point of austerity, a scholarly man, books were his favorite pastime." The Campbell's lived "in a substantial brick house set among the trees" in the Capital.

Like Miriam, Lilian Vaux MacKinnon called Ottawa home, and like her heroine she travelled widely. The Citizen review describes Marion of Queen's as being "almost Dominion-wide in its scope, the scenes extending from the countryside to Cape Breton to the cities of eastern, middle and western Canada."

And so I'm left shaking my head over this:

Canadian Bookman, June 1922

Never assume that a reviewer has actually read the book in question.

Related post:

Back to School with Miriam of Queen's

Back to School with Miriam of Queen's

Miriam of Queen's

Lilian Vaux MacKinnon

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1921

Imagine, a Canadian college novel published just one year after This Side of Paradise.

I expected nothing quite so impressive from Miriam of Queen's. That said, what I'd thought would be a light fin de l'été read turned out to be the year's toughest slog; it took three runs at the first chapter before I found my footing. The opening pages bring Elizabeth Danvers, Aunt Laura, Mrs Roderick Campbell, Pauline, Sedley, John Hielanman, Aunt Hannah, Cora Hotchkiss and, of course Miriam. Many more will follow. Most, though not all, are related in some way to one another – but how? It's much like being thrust into a wedding reception at which one knows no one. Indeed, a wedding is in the offing, as Mrs Roderick Campbell reveals:

"You're getting another son, Ellen. Isn't that the modern form of consolation? And a bookish sort like Sedley, too." She turned suddenly to listen. "That is not his voice now is it? Mr. Rutherford's, I mean. It sounds familiar, though."
     "And so it should be, my dear," Mrs. Danvers rejoined, rising and leading the way across the hall. "It should be familiar, since it is your own nephew's – Fyfe Boulding, you know. He is to have a little part in tomorrow's ceremony, just a bit of distraction because of his connection."

I'm of the opinion that there's much to be learned from bad writing. In Miriam of Queen's lessons come  on every page, and are of such clarity that I feel no need to do anything but present. This paragraph comes at the end of Miriam's first year:

And at last came the days of the trial, when Convocation Hall was turned into a vast arena, where the competitors gathered in mortal combat and the witnesses were those bygone seers on the wall who, unmoved, had witnessed many a struggle, from their eventual element of calm, and whose lofty gaze inspired the frantic souls below to fight on. Elbowed by a science man on one hand, by a theologian on the other, Miriam wrote away. All her store of hardy-won knowledge was registered once and for all on paper, before the cares of this work-a-day world should have blotted it out. There was something fitting in the act, and a feeling of triumph visited those well-doers who were enabled to give an account at last of the laborious days they had lived.

Prose such as this leaves little room for plot. Miriam, our heroine, attends Queen's and looks on as dramatic events envelope others. Kind-hearted Cousin Sedley makes the mistake of marrying a vicious and vacuous flirt. Cousin Fyfe, a ne'er do well, is arrested, tried, and sent to Kingston Penitentiary. But before this takes place, in the most dramatic scene, both fall in the drink whilst playing hockey:

They are coming from all quarters. The ice is blackening with fleet figures. Will it be too late? The girls are lying flat and Elizabeth has caught Sedley's foot and Miriam, Elizabeth's, and the living chain moves nearer. Slowly, slowly, and oh, how carefully! Up, up and cautiously, cautiously! Out of the deathly waters, over the treacherous edge, Fyfe Boulding is drawn to safety. Then, just as the cry of thanskgiving rises to their lips, the ice gives way under double strain. there is an ominous crack, the sound of heavy body splashing down, and as Boulding creeps to safety Sedley Danvers goes down, down, into the icy waters of Lake Ontario.
     Stretch out your stick to save him now! If he can come up! Will he strike under the ice? Will the current bear him away? Or is there a chance, one chance in a thousand, that he may be seen again? The crowd presses nearer, strong arms stretch out to aid. Yes, there it is, that dark, struggling, helpless object at the edge of the break. Too late! Down, down it goes, while a cry of anguish breaks from the lips of the onlookers. Once more, once it comes. Now, men, now! They reached him , they drag him out, white and sodden and spent. Miriam, turning in horror from that death-like form, looks into Hugh Stewart's face.
     "Oh, Hugh,!" she screams. "Take me home! Take me home! Sedley is drowned! Don't you see? Sedley is drowned!"
    But no! It is a collapse, consequent on shock and exhaustion.

As I say, there's much to be learned from prose such as this.

The Regina Leader-Post, 17 December 1921

Any value in Miriam of Queen's lies in what it captures of student life at Queen's University during the earliest years of the last century. Though their debut novels were published so close together, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Lilian Vaux MacKinnon were of different generations. Mrs MacKinnon graduated from Queen's in 1902, a decade before the petting parties of Princeton. Her university experience – and Miriam's – consisted of muscular Christianity, college songs and fleeting glimpses of the Very Reverend George Monro Grant.

Modest mention in the 12 September 1942 Regina Leader-Post has Mrs MacKinnon as the author of two novels: Miriam of Queen's and The Guinea Stamp. I can find no record of the latter. The Queen's University Archives holds the manuscript of an unpublished romance "set near Brockville"  with the rather ribald title Hard by St. Lawrence.

Unpublished?

I'm not at all surprised.

Object: An attractive hardcover in mustard cloth. I found my copy nine years ago in a Vancouver Salvation Army Thrift Store. Price: $2.

Access: A very scarce title, it appears that the only public library carrying the book serves the good folks of Toronto; Kingston's has no copy.

Miriam of Queen's enjoyed a single run, split by McClelland & Stewart and George H. Doran. All of two editions, the latter is by far the least common. One copy of each is listed for sale online. At US$75, the less expensive is a "Fair to Good, Reading Copy" McClelland & Stewart edition. The other is the one to buy: a Near Fine copy of the American first in "Very Good plus dustjacket" for US$175.

Great price! Take note, Kingston Frontenac Public Library.

A Termination that Dare Not Speak Its Name

The Letter of the Contract

Basil King

New York: Harper and Brothers, 1914

The contract in question concerns the marriage of Edith and Chipman Walker of the New York Chipman Walkers. Theirs is a union in which happiness has "grown more intense every month, each week, each day", and yet all is shaken when a not so young woman is spotted gazing at their luxurious Manhattan home from the park across the street. Just who is this "pathetically unobtrusive" figure? Elegant Edith, who simply must know, approaches the coy voyeur one fine spring day and makes a shocking discovery. It seems that eleven years earlier, before the Walkers had so much as met, Chip and this woman, simple-minded actress Maggie Clare, had had a relationship that involved "everything"... well, almost everything – from the start, Chip had made it plain that marriage was not in their future.

The exchange between Edith and Maggie gives way to confrontation when Chip arrives on the scene. Poor bewildered Maggie is caught in the whirlwind, as captured wonderfully by illustrator James Montgomery Flagg.

Edith accuses her husband of breaking "the letter of the contract". But has he? After all, his trysts with Maggie took place years before the marriage. Or could it be... could it be that Chip continued seeing the actress as a married man? We really can't be sure. So much of the unpleasantness in The Letter of the Contract is cloaked and screened.

Divorce, the subject of this book, is mentioned by name on only one of its 210 pages – but it does take place, propelled by Edith's Aunt Emily. At the end of it all, Edith emerges dissatisfied; the whole degrading, painful process had failed to bring Chip "a realizing sense of what he had done to her." She takes the children to Europe, expecting that the move will have an effect. When that fails, Edith considers marriage to an unattractive, weedy Englishman:

If she did marry he would know at last to what he had forced her. He would have forced her to looking to another man for what she should have had from him – and then he would be repentant. Surely he would be repentant then!

Meanwhile, Chip contemplates turning to the bottle:

He had known fellows who drank themselves to death; and except in the last dreadful stages it hadn't been so bad. They had certainly got their fun out of it, even if in the end they paid high. He was paying high – and perhaps getting nothing at all. Wouldn't it be better if he went off this minute somewhere, and made a night of it? – made a night which would be the beginning of a long succession of nights of the same kind? Then when he was ruined beyond recovery, or in his grave, Edith would know what she had done to him.

And so they move through their separate lives, each obsessing over the other, neither particularly happy or satisfied.

There is a message in this misery, one the author, a retired Anglican clergyman, first hammered home in his 1901 novel Let No Man Put Asunder.

In The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Ken MacKinnon writes that The Letter of the Contract illustrates how "King's clever plots were declining into mere formulae". I won't disagree. As with all bland novels, I found myself clinging to the curious and quirky. Here these come in the veiled allusions to lesbianism. For instance, we have Aunt Emily, a spinster who surrounds herself with a "little circle of adorers". Even more interesting are the Misses Partridge, whom we encounter playing host to the writers and poets of Europe. Though sisters, Rosamond – "who looked like a coachman" – and the "thin and angular" Gladys appear to be based on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas.

They were then in their seventh year as a couple.

No contract, though.

Bloomer:

The woman's tears began to flow again.

"It's because I don't know what to do. When he doesn't come anymore–"

"Oh, so he doesn't come."

"Not unless I make him."

Trivia: James Montgomery Flagg work is also found in Reverend King's 1917 novel The Lifted Veil. Though an accomplished book illustrator, he's best remembered for his wartime propaganda posters, including this:

Object: An unremarkable hardcover, enlivened by four Flagg illustrations, my weathered copy was bought for $2.98 eight years ago in a Vancouver bookstore that specialized in science fiction, sword and sorcery, and comic books. It lacks the uncommon dust jacket. Edward N. Zempel and Linda A. Verkler's First Editions: A Guide to Identifications would have me believe that I own a first edition. If so, I suspect my copy is a second issue, following this marginally more opulent variant.

Access: An old familiar story, The Letter of the Contract is found in university libraries across the country, but when it comes to the public only Toronto serves. It is not held by Library and Archives Canada. The reverend's work being in the public domain, the print on demand folks have moved in. Nearly all ask more than US$15, at which price one can find a Very Good copy of the 97-year-old Harper first edition. Only one bookseller offers a copy with dust jacket – pretty rotten condition, though at US$50 it seems a fair price. An Aberdeen bookseller holds the distinction of listing the lone copy of the more attractive English edition (Methuen, 1914) – at £20, it too seems fair. The unfair? Look no further than the New York bookseller that lists no less than fourteen different POD editions at prices ranging from US$33.95 to US$153.95 (pictured). Expect to pay a further US$10.50 in shipping .