Looking Back on Looking Forward

The Daily Witness, 16 May 1913

An addendum to last week's post on Looking Forward by Hugh Pedley.

Looking Forward features cub reporter Billy Scooper. We also meet a disreputable promoter named Humphrey Hustleman. There aren't really any laughs, but there is fun to be had. 

A 1913 novel set in 1927, Looking Forward reminded me of nothing so much as Tim Ososko's 1979 book Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?

Oh, boy, was it!

I gobbled up every detail of Rev Pedley's future Canada no matter how small, as in this description of a Montreal streetcar:

This carriage of the common people was not without its touch of the beautiful. Instead of the long row of heterogeneous advertisements above the windows was a series of fine reproductions of great masters. The city authorities had evidently decided that a ride in a street-car might be a phase of the aesthetic education of the people. They had come to the conclusion that, the suggestion of beauty was better for the health of the people than the suggestion of disease as furnished by the advertisements of patent medicines.

Montreal plays a central role in Looking Forward. It is the city in which Fergus attends university, it is the city in which he befriends those of different faiths, it is the city in which he meets and falls in love with Florence Atherton, it is the city in which he solves the mysteries of hibernation, and it is the city in which he marries Florence Atherton's daughter.

Its best not to focus on that last bit.

Some of Rev Pedley's predictions, like the Mount Royal Tunnel, would've been safe bets. Work began in 1911, two years before Looking Forward was published.  

Construction of the Mount Royal Tunnel, c.1912.

He also anticipates the amalgamation Port Arthur and Fort William, a done deal by 1927, which in reality did not take place until 1970. Rev Pedley's unified city is called Portchester, not Thunder Bay.

Most remarkably, this 1913 novel describes "magnificent new government buildings, which a devastating fire had rendered necessary." It was not three years after publication that the seat of Canadian government went up in flames.

The Globe, 4 February 1916

Telephones, automobiles, paved streets, aeroplanes, and dirigibles, the author plays it safe with his predictions. The outlier is a mountain built in the heart of Winnipeg by wealthy bachelor Irish-Canadian Teddy Ryan. I get the feeling that its existence is meant to be a joke. 

Being a student of the Great War, and noting that this novel dates from 1913, I looked for recognition that  Armageddon might be in the offing. I found it when Billy Scooper tells Fergus that news of his quarter-century hibernation has broken in the eastern papers. “Is it likely to make a stir?” our hero asks:

“Stir! Stir!” said the man excitedly. “Stir! The biggest ship on the sea might go down with all on board, the navies of Britain and France might have a battle with those of the Triple Alliance, Teddy Ryan’s mountain might turn into a volcano, and there wouldn’t be a bigger stir than there’s going to be over this.”

Reference to the Triple Alliance sent a bit of a chill.

Looking Forward was published the year before the start of the Great War. On 30 May 1915, when the conflict was in full force, Rev Pedley preached a sermon titled 'War and the New Earth,' in which he said these words:

Forget not, O forget not, that which is perhaps the noblest sacrifice of all, the surrender by parents of their sons, by wives of their husbands, to the hardships and deadly perils of war by land and self.

Hugh Pedley and his wife Eliza (née Field) had three sons. The eldest, Norman Field Pedley (1884-1909), a civil engineer, died when he was struck by a train in Springfield, Illinois.

Old McGill, 1906

Once war was declared, youngest son, Frank Gordon Pedley (1892-1972), enlisted and served ten months before returning to McGill to continue his medical studies.

Old McGill, 1913

Born in 1888, middle brother Hugh Stowell Pedley, a lawyer, served twenty-nine months. He was killed on 31 January 1918. His body rests at Villers-au-Bois, Departement du Pas-de-Calais, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France.

Old McGill, 1912

Both men Frank and Hugh were recipients of the Military Cross.

Their father died on 26 July 1923, not two years before the realization of the union of of Canada's Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches.

  

The Gazette, 27 July 1923 

The United Church of Canada celebrates its centenary today.

 

Would that Rev Pedley had lived to see it. Would that son Hugh had lived nearly so long.

Reprise: In the epilogue, the reader is presented with this passage which takes place in a future 1927 on the lookout of the steel structure lookout atop Mount Royal:

A couple of German merchants who are in Canada with a view to trade extension stop for a moment, and one says to the other: “Ach Gott! gegen diese zu fechten ware eine schande” (Good heavens! To fight with such as these would be a shame.)

Related post:

Towards a Canada of Light

Towards a Canada of Light

Looking Forward: The Strange Experience of the Rev.

   Fergus McCheyne

Rev. Hugh Pedley, B.A., D.D.
Toronto: Briggs, 1913
294 pages

The cover has it that Looking Forward is "A NOVEL FOR THE TIMES," which it most certainly was, but only to those of certain Canadian Christian denominations. The proposed union of the country's Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches, then a matter of considerable debate, is its impetus. Discussions of sacerdotalism and the episcopate do feature.

Before the eyes glaze over, I rush to add that Looking Forward is also a work of science fiction, imaging a Canada in which hydroplane racing is a popular sport and airships like the Winnipeg Express whisk passengers from Montreal to the Manitoba capitol in under thirty-six hours.

The Winnipeg Express as I imagine it.
Apologies to Seth.

As the subtitle suggests, the novel's hero is Fergus McCheyne. The only son of Presbyterian pastor Rev Robert McCheyne, the young man was born and raised in Cairntable, his father's rural parish, located somewhere in easternmost Ontario (read: Glengarry County). There he was molded by his parents' faith and condemnation of everything not Presbyterian.

Old McGill, 1900

Just a small town boy, his own faith is shaken when, during his studies at McGill, he encounters students of other denominations and finds they aren't such bad fellows after all. He is shaken further when invited to attend the closing exercises of "a well-known Ladies' School" – I'm guessing Trafalgar School for Girls – where he is "confronted by the unforgettable face of Florence Atherton,"  daughter of the Methodist minister whose parish overlaps that of his father.

Fergus does his best to hide his interest in Florence, but a mother knows:

“The Methodist minister’s daughter! Oh, Fergie, what would you be doing with the likes of her? You know how your father feels, and how I feel, about these Methodists. What have we in common with them? They are all wrong in their doctrines, and what little religion they have is all sentiment and shouting.”

Frustrated, our hero finds release in attempting to solve the mystery of hibernation, a subject that has long fascinated. Evenings in which he might been courting Florence are instead spent in the spare room of his rented flat, leading to this rather chilling passage:

For his experiments he managed to smuggle in mice, kittens, and little dogs. He found it much easier to smuggle them out.

Fergus McCheyne is not the villain of this novel. Indeed, there is no villain, though things do get dark.

After many a dead dog, the experiments result in a breakthrough. Not only does Fergus find a way to induce hibernation, he creates a serum to revive the pups. It follows that the amateur scientist's next trial subject be human, but who? No monster, the young man chooses to experiment on himself. Fergus is well-aware that no one in their right mind would willingly take part and so devises a machine with battery and "automatic syringe" to inject the reviving fluid. All is to take place in a remote cavern of considerable size that our hero, a keen canoeist, had discovered on a solo expedition.

The experiment begins in late May 1902. It is meant to last no more than a week. Lest anything go amiss, Fergus has taken the precaution of leaving a letter with firm friend, Anglican clergyman Basil Manthorpe. Tragedy strikes when a squirrel disrupts Fergus's automatic syringe. An even greater tragedy has yet to occur. Rev Manthorpe is killed when the automobile in which he is riding suffers brake failure and is struck by an eastbound train in Montreal West.

The Gazette, 31 May 1913

Two old books by Montreal authors, 31 May 2025.

Fergus's letter remains unopened, hidden away in a secret compartment in Manthorpe's desk until discovered a quarter-century later by a young woman named who – wait for it – just happens to be the daughter of Florence Atherton! Now "a very sweet-faced matronly woman," Florence is married to Hugh Falconer, whom Fergus had mentored whilst the former was a senior student at McGill's Presbyterian College.   

Being a gentleman of propriety, Falconer hands the letter to Rev Manthorpe's surviving brother, who in turn shares its incredible contents. The very next morning, the two men set off for the cavern in the company of Mackenzie, a medical doctor who had been another of Fergus's friends. They expect the worst, of course, but are not so fatalistic that they don't carry a capsule containing the restorative mixture.

Frontispiece

The trio follow the letter's directions to the cavern and the hibernating man. “This is very strange,” says Dr Mackenzie, “ there are no signs of life, no pulsation, no respiration; and yet there is no sign of death. There is not the slightest evidence of decomposition. There is no odour of death. There is no shrinkage of the tissues. The skin has all the firmness and smoothness of health. I don’t know what to make of it.”

Out of caution, Fergus is brought back to the Falconer home before the restorative serum is administered. He opens his eyes to Florence's daughter, also named Florence, who has an equally unforgettable face.

In his preface, Rev Pedley acknowledges his indebtedness to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward:

Whatever opinion may be held of Bellamy’s views, no one can doubt the efficacy of his method in bringing these views to the notice of the world. To be sure, my dream is on a much narrower scale, and with a far less ambitious reach than his. That took in the entire sphere of human life; mine has to do with but a segment of that sphere. That contemplated a perfect social order; mine is content with an improved ecclesiastical situation. That beheld a new heaven and a new earth; mine looks for a Canada made better because a little more of heaven has entered into its life.

The 1927 Canada encountered by Fergus is indeed better. Poverty has been eradicated and the roads are paved with pavement:

• By this time they had turned out of the main traffic thoroughfare into a smooth-paved and absolutely dustless road... (p 124)
• With amazement he looked upon miles of paved street... (p 126)
• The locality was not unknown to McCheyne, and he remembered what it used to be – the ill-paved streets... (p 138)
• On the outskirts of Montreal, but closely knitted to it by well-paved roads... (p 154)
• Park, and drive, and terrace, well-paved streets lined with trees... (p 156)
• And it looks as if there are well-paved streets. (p 190)

There are marvels of technology and engineering like the Winnipeg Express and the much-studied, never realized, Georgian Bay Ship Canal.

A steel structure somewhat resembling the Eiffel tower sits atop Mount Royal, while Winnipeg has a mountain of its own, built and paid for by an Irish-Canadian eccentric. Two hundred feet higher that Montreal's, its summit can be reached by something called the Spirodrome. 

These advances were brought on by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists coming together in a United Church of Canada. They even get Anglicans and Baptists to pitch in. With the squabbling amongst Protestants over, all are now able to focus on the betterment of men, women, and children. Catholics serve a useful purpose in providing friendly competition.

Looking Forward is indeed less ambitious than Looking Backward. Rev Pedley's imagination, despite its focus, is not nearly so rich and his prose makes for painful reading. This passage takes place not on the Winnipeg Express but in the engine room of the Saskatchewan, another airship, where Fergus encounters a man named Dennis Mulcavey:

“I knew a man of that name. He was foreman for the Sands Company.”

   “Sure, sorr, it’s a foine mimory ye hev. That was my father, and he’s been did these twinty years.”

   “Yes,” said McCheyne, somewhat idiotically, "have a fine memory, for I do remember your father.”

   “It’s wonderful,” said the other, “but they tell me he was a foine man, and a smarrt wan, too.”

   “Yes, a very smart one.”

   The talk then turned upon the airship, the working of the engines, the liability to accident, and the time they were making on their trip, in all of which topics McCheyne took a deep interest, and won the respect of the men by the intelligent way in which he received their information.

I'm tempted to provide further examples, but won't. What I will provide is the ultimate spoiler in revealing that the novel ends with a declaration of love, followed by a marriage. The bride is Florence Falconer – not the Florence Falconer (née Atherton) who was the love of Fergus's life, rather her daughter, who we are told looks just like her matronly mother when a young woman:

“But I have heard that twenty-five years ago you felt like this towards my mother.”

   “Yes, exactly like this.”

   “So it is because you see my mother in me that you say you love me?”

   "Yes,” was the direct, honest reply.

   “Then,” said she, all lightness thrown aside and speaking in tones that trembled with emotion, “I am honoured beyond measure by such a love.”

The mother of the woman who accepts his marriage proposal will later be referred to as "the Florence of an earlier time."

I found this disturbing.

My wife is more dismissive: "It's written by a man."  

The McCheyne/Falconer wedding is well-attended. Saskatchewan engine man Dennis Mulcavey is in attendance, as is the local Catholic priest:

McCheyne stretches out his hand, which is at once enclosed in a firm and friendly clasp. Then the eyes of the two men meet... and Fergus is conscious of the only pang that has marred this crowning day. As he looks into the young priest’s eyes he feels as if gazing one moment upon a parterre of flowers, there has the next moment been the sudden opening of a cleft, and he is looking down into a profound abyss where ice and fire are strangely intermingled; and he knows that he has had a momentary glimpse of the age-long mystery of the ecclesiastically ordained celibate life.

A strange thing to include in an otherwise joyous and happy final scene, though it did serve to remind that Fergus's experiments and long hibernation would never have taken place had only his parents been willing to accept a Methodist as a daughter-in-law.

More on Looking Forward a week this Tuesday, the one hundredth anniversary of the United Church of Canada.

Trivia: Looking Forward follows The Street Called Straight as the second consecutive novel I've read to end in with a wedding. If You Want to See Your Wife Again..., the novel I tackled before these two, ends with a marriage proposal. 

Object and Access: An attractive hardcover with olive boards and full-colour frontispiece by G. Horne Russell, my copy was purchased online or US$15.00 this past February from a Manitoba bookseller. It once belonged to Lady Inez Peterson sponsor of the Lady Inez Peterson Trophy.

 

The Sherbrooke Daily Record, 4 September 1953

As far as I can tell, the novel enjoyed one printing, but with boards of different colours (green, red, and brown). As write this, four are listed for sale online, the least expensive being US$15.75.

Move quickly! The three others range in price between US$79.95 and US$150.00.

Related posts:

Looking Back on Looking Forward

The Strange Satanic Canada of a Future Past
The Long and Winding Street

"A good kidnapping story always has wide appeal."

An Expo 67 Murder Mystery?

So Long at the Fair

Janet Gregory Vermandel

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1968

186 pages

Canadian publishers really messed up with Expo 67; McClelland & Stewart, Macmillan, Ryerson, and Copp Clarke published nothing related to the fair. Swan, so small a paperback house that it is pretty much forgotten today, sought to cash in with Instant French, its penultimate title.

Meanwhile, newspapers, magazines, and news agents seized the opportunity by publishing guides to the fair. MacLean-Hunter's official guide is by far the most common, followed by Bill Bantey's Expo 67, published by the Montreal Gazette.

American book publishers were far more savvy, giving us a memoir (Expo Summer), a work of pornography (Sexpo '69), and this novel of suspense.

So Long at the Fair was Janet Gregory Vermandel's debut. She shares something with memoirist Eileen Fitzgerald and pornographer Charles E. Fritch in being American. That she actually lived in Montreal sets her apart. The publisher's author bio (right) is one of the most unusual I've ever read.

I like it.

Vermande would go on to write five more novels, most of which were set in Montreal. She eventually returned to the United States and her home town of Buffalo, dying in 2002 at age 79, another victim of Alzheimer's.

The first sentence of So Long at the Fair shook me cold:

"Good-by, Brian."

Brian is narrator Lisa Bentham's ex-fiancé. They'd worked together at a Buffalo advertising agency until office gossip of his affair with a lithe, blonde co-worker reached her ears. Seems everyone knew but her. So Long at the Fair begins with Lisa, all of twenty-two, flying off to Montreal for a fresh start. 

Why Montreal?

Lisa preferred Paris or New York, but her mother did not approve. Montreal was a neat compromise. Mrs Bentham insists that her daughter room with Victoria Lester, niece to a bridge partner, until she finds her footing. And so, Lisa's journey from Buffalo to Montreal ends with a walk through a polished marble lobby lit by crystal chandeliers.

Victoria's apartment is luxurious and spacious – more than enough room for a guest – which is surprising for a woman who does occasional work at a temp agency. She and Lisa have known each other since childhood, but were never quite friends. After some awkwardness, they spend the evening catching up. The next morning Victoria heads off to work, leaving her guest alone to explore a foreign city.

Lisa returns in late afternoon to an empty apartment, waits for Victoria, gives up, makes herself an omelette, and then turns in. She's awoken after midnight by the sound of someone moving about the apartment. When she calls out Victoria's name all goes quiet.

It's not her.

Lisa next sees Victoria at the city morgue.

Maybe New York wasn't such a bad idea, Mrs Bentham.

So Long at the Fair features two murders, an attempted murder, an assault, break-ins, extortion, and various other crimes committed by seven different characters, not all of whom are connected – and yet, Montreal comes off rather well. Vermandel, clearly loved her adopted city, and has her heroine share the love by treating her to evenings out at Altitude 737, La Bonne Femme, and La Reserve in the Windsor Hotel. The Buffalo gal makes her way with surprising ease. Jobs are plentiful. The afternoon Lisa quits her first job, with printer Ross-Fairchild, she's hired as a secretary at the Expo 67 Administration and News Pavilion.

Publisher Dodd, Mead positioned So Long at the Fair as a "story of murder and romance, set against the fabulous background of Montreal's Expo '67." Certainly "background" – as opposed to "backdrop" – was intentional. The novel takes place in January 1967, ending with the fair still three months away. Set during the planning of Expo, it's to Vermandel's credit that she captures something of the excitement that until now I'd read about only in old newspaper and magazines.

Leave it to an American expat.

Trivia: As "Murder at Expo 67," a condensed version appeared in the October 1967 issue of Cosmopolitan (the subject of next week's post). 

Object: A typical Red Badge Mystery in that it is a cheaply produced hardcover. In this case, the boards are blue. The jacket is by Alan Peckolick, best-known for the GM logo.

I purchased my copy earlier this year from a bookseller located in League City, Texas. Price: US11.75.

Access: A few copies are listed online. At US$7.41, the least expensive is described as being in good condition. Seems a bargain.

The most expensive – £31 – is the UK edition published in 1968 by Herbert Jenkins as Murder Most Fair. 

Not sure about the title, but I do prefer its cover to the American.

There has never been a Canadian edition.

There have been two translations, the earliest being the German Kastanien aus dem Feuer (1968), which was followed by the Dutch Het rode paspoort (1969).

Neither cover depicts a scene found in the novel. Of the two, I like Het rode paspoort more, but only because it imagines a Montreal that has never existed.

Sadly, there has never been a French translation.

What is wrong with us?

Related posts:

Summer of a Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

A McGill Student's Mild Summer of Love

The Little People of Expo 67

Quick! To the Customs House!

Montreal Customs House, c. 1916

I've been on something of a Constance Beresford-Howe kick this past week, all to do with her 1947 novel Of This Day's Long Journey. It's a remarkable achievement from a young woman who was otherwise working on her MA and PhD. What struck most was the maturity of voice. Written by a twenty-four-old academic, it concerns a twenty-four-year-old academic, yet seems in no way autobiographical. Believe me, I've tried to find some sort of link between Constance Beresford-Howe and her heroine Cameron Brant; my first book, Character Parts, dealt with characters modelled on real people.

One resource I used in my search is Google's increasingly unstable, moribund News Archive.  

As might be expected, clicking "Petite, Pretty, Young Writer Teaches Mcgill Niaht School" brought me to this, in which I learned that the novelist was more than a mere cutie pie:

Beresford-Howe taught "The Art of Shorter Fiction;" Somerset Maugham's "Rain" and Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, published just the previous year, were amongst the works discussed. One lecture was titled "Bad Fiction and How to Recognize It."

According to the article, the petite, pretty, young successful novelist was at the time completing her most ambitious project, "Drink Thy Wine With Joy," a historical novel inspired by a 16th-century English divorce. I recognized it as 1955's My Lady Greensleeves:

This Google News Archive link was even more interesting. 

'Facts Tout' brings to mind 'Bonjour Hi!' It's the very thing to get Premier François Legault's knickers in a twist. 

Speaking of knickers, are you not intrigued by "Panties Customs Dust?" I was! Clicking on the link brought some disappointment:

I shouldn't complain because columnist Harriet Hill's focus is Beresford-Howe's first, unpublished novel. In publicity material, publisher Dodd, Mead had teased of this bit of juvenilia, but provided few details. This is the most I've ever read about the manuscript:

Where is "Gillian" today? By the time the manuscript would have landed there, the eight-story Customs House had grown to take over an entire city block. It's occupied today by the Canada Border Services Agency, the descendant of the Department of Customs and Excise. I like to think that "Gillian" is somewhere in that building, perhaps close by seized copies of The Temple of Pederasty and By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.

Who knows? Given Pierre Poilievre's announced intention to give away six thousand federal buildings to developers, it might just turn up in a dumpster on rue Normand.

Related posts:

Destination: Montreal

The Dustiest Bookcase: B is for Beresford-Howe
Hard Copy
Elizabeth Smart Burned and Banned?   

Destination: Montreal

Of This Day's Journey
Constance Beresford-Howe
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1947
240 pages

A second novel, Of This Day's Journey followed the author's debut by a little over a year, during which she earned her MA and had begun work on a PhD. Beresford-Howe was all of twenty-four years old when it was published.

Camilla "Cam" Brant, the novel's protagonist, is also all of twenty-four. The earliest pages take place as she's preparing to leave Blake University, somewhere in New England, for her Montreal home. Cam had been hired a year earlier as a seasonal lecturer in English and has been living with the wonderfully-named Olive Pymson, spinster secretary to Andrew Cameron, Blake's tall, lanky president.

Of This Day's Journey is divided into three parts – Morning, Afternoon, Evening – each featuring a different narrator; plain Miss Pymson, the most endearing and attractive, is the first. It was quite unlike her to open up her home to Cam, but she'd been taken by a sudden urge to shake up her life. The two hit it off from their first meeting, an unlikely duo with a shared taste for dry humour.

The second part, Afternoon, is told by Cam herself. The shift in perspective is an eye-opener. For example, Job Laurence, whom Olive had thought a good match for her new housemate is seen with fresh, younger eyes as a physically unattractive man who is much older than herself. It's to Beresford-Howe's credit, I think, that Cam's narration is slightly less engaging. She is, after all, a different person. In this middle part we learn that Cam's reason for leaving Blake has to do with her love for the older – but not Job Laurence old – Andrew Cameron. This should not come as a surprise to the reader; in Morning, Miss Pymson provided enough hints. The front flap of Dodd, Mead's dust jacket isn't nearly so subtle.

The Gazette,
10 May 1947

Lastly, in Evening, we have Andrew – not as seen by Olive Plymson or Cam Brant – rather as how he is: a man exhausted by obligation and responsibility. He abandoned his academic pursuits and interests in order to steer Blake, an institution co-founded by one of his great-grandfathers. Homelife centres on care for his once-adulterous wife Marny. Her series of affairs was brought to an abrupt end by a car accident. Who knows whether the child she was carrying – the child she lost – was Andrew's. Now confined to a wheelchair, Marny refuses to leave the house, and so her husband must attend functions stag... functions also attended by Cam.

The only possible happy ending to such a scenario would have Marny succumb to her infirmity, thus freeing Andrew to be with Cam. But Beresford-Howe, all of twenty-four, was already too good a writer for such contrivance. Of This Day's Journey is far superior to her debut, The Unreasoned Heart (1946).

Beresford-Howe's third novel, The Invisible Gate, was published the month she turned twenty-seven. She'd almost completed her PhD by that point. Given her trajectory, I'm betting it's the best of the three.

Object and Access: A hardcover bound in grey boards with uncredited dust jacket. I purchased my copy, the American first edition, five years ago from a Rochester, New York bookseller. Price: US$9.94 (w/ US$18.00 shipping).

A British edition was published in 1955 by Hammond & Hammond (above). There has never been a Canadian edition.

As of this writing, two copies are listed for sale online, the cheaper being a jacketless copy of the Hammond & Hammond being sold at £17.50. The other is an inscribed edition of the Dodd, Mead edition:

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Poor. 1st Edition. HARDCOVER W/dj; NF/poor, 240pp. SIGNED.inscribed by author ffep. Newspaper sad [sic] for this title laid in. First edition. Please email w/questions or to request picture(s); refer to our book inventory number.

Tempting, but at US$49.00, with a further US$53.00 for shipping, I'm taking a pass.

Related posts:

Constance Beresford-Howe Memorial Plaque

Celebrating Constance Beresford-Howe
Passion Over Reason in a Bland Bachelor's Lap
About Those Butt-Ugly Laurentian Library covers

Summer of a Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Sexpo '69
Winston Smith [pseud Charles E. Fritch]
North Hollywood: Brandon House, 1969
176 pages

The years leading to '69 have not been easy on Lisa Garris. A twenty-something gal from upstate New York, she'd moved to Manhattan with dreams of Broadway, but Broadway hadn't been much interested. "There were too many girls who were prettier, more talented, and willing to sleep with anybody to get ahead in showbiz." Lisa tried a similar path by allowing a producer to paw her, but there'd been no callback. With her savings exhausted, Lisa was forced into a dead-end clerk-typist job and shared apartment. Roommate Jayne, a blonde buxom bombshell with a habit of walking around in the nude, is an impetuous gal; out of nowhere, she'd announced that she was leaving Manhattan for Montreal: "How about coming along, Lisa. It's a real swinging town, especially with Expo 69."

The Sherbrooke Daily Record, 20 May 1967

The two found a one-bedroom flat on Tupper Street. Jayne was in her element; Montreal satisfied her "nymphomaniacal tendencies." Lisa's pleasures are more innocent:

She enjoyed taking the bus up to Mount Royal lookout, where she could see the entire panorama of the city below, with its uncluttered skyline etched against the background of the St. Lawrence River and the blue sky. She loved to stroll through the downtown area, with its combination of gleaming new buildings such as the Royal Bank Building in the are around St. Catherine and Peel Streets, mixed with old-style architecture as the City Hall, the Mary Queen of the World Basilica, interrupted by green oases of parks such as Dominion Square...

And, of course, there were visits to Expo, though not even a world exposition could dim the "incandescence in her loins."

There's more to the backstory, but let's ignore all that and focus on the action. Sexpo '69 begins with Lisa entering her flat to the sight and very loud sounds of Joyce and her latest lover. The apartment is dark and the bedroom door is open. Lisa watches from the living room, raises her skirt, then searches for and finds "the seat of her mounting desire."

The Gazette, 9 December 1969

A few pages on, our heroine sneaks out in search of booze. This is something of a habit; dealing with her "familiar itch" by drowning herself in alcohol. She passes the Cock 'n Bull, ending up in an unidentified side street dive bar. After four strong drinks that run lowly Lisa is approached by a fat drunk who suggests they return to his apartment. She turns him down, he turns her over, pulls up her skirt, pulls down her panties, and gives her several swats on the derriere. This is followed by a chase into an uncommonly dark and deserted street. Somehow, the fat man manages to catch up with Lisa and is in the midst of assaulting her when scared away by the headlights of a passing car.

The woman behind the wheel rescues Lisa, takes her to her luxurious house, plies her with liquor, bathes her, plies her with more liquor, and takes her to bed: "I will make love to you, my darling, the way only another woman can." 

Sexpo '69 came in the afterglow of lesbian pulp fiction's golden age, and features many of the genre's greatest clichés. Consider Lisa's sexual relations with men, which are not only unfulfilling, but abusive in the extreme. Her backstory includes an ex-fiancé who, upon receiving the news of Lisa's pregnancy, kicked her in the stomach, causing a miscarriage.

Bobbie Posner, Lisa's rescuer, is an older, short-haired woman. After their initial "escapade" – Bobbie's word – the younger woman asks for space. The older woman will have none of it. Ignoring Lisa's wishes, she's aggressive in her pursuit, phoning persistently:

"The truth is, well, last night was sort of – well, unexpected, I have to have some time to think things over."

   "I understand, my pet,""Bobbie crooned. "May I call you tomorrow?"

   "I'll call you," Lisa decided.

   "Very well, my sweet, " Bobbie said softly,"but I shall miss you tonight, all alone in the big bed. I shall dream abut you, and perhaps tomorrow my dreams will come true."

Bobbie phones again the next morning.

Offstage is a milquetoast character with a curious name: Vince Balluck. He and Lisa went out on two perfectly fine dates when she lived in New York. Vince phones her long distance – which is not cheap! – because he's coming to Expo and would like to see her again. Turned down, he does not phone a second time.

Thrown into the mix are scenes set at Expo, the most memorable being an evening Lisa visits La Ronde with Bobbie and another lesbian couple, Lorraine and Nancy. This includes a page-long description of a ride on the Gyrotron, a ride I was too young to enjoy.

The following afternoon, finds our heroine in the Arts Centre, where some of Bobbie's paintings are on display:

It was no surprise to Lisa to discover that Bobbie's subject matter consisted of female nudes very realistically represented. She felt a pang of jealousy as she wondered if the artist had had affairs with all these girls. 

As genre dictates, Lisa's is knocked off-balance by her lover. Of a sudden, Bobbie flies off to Chicago with explanation that she has been invited to present a one-woman show. Is she being honest or unfaithful? It might be said that Lisa has herself been unfaithful, fantasizing about Joyce while having sex with Bobbie. One night, unable to control her urges, she slips into her sleeping roommates bed:

"I at least thought you'd have some understanding of the torment I've been going through. Remember when you didn't have any sex for a few days, you were going out of your mind."

   "But I didn't turn queer!" Joyce snapped.

Joyce is gone by morning.

That evening, Bobbie returns from Chicago. Lisa arrives at the artist's house to find Nancy in a "diaphanous shortie nightgown." A catfight ensues, which leads to sex and, eventually, a ménage a trois. The three women live together until Lisa, increasingly jealous, delivers Bobbie an ultimatum:

"I am sorry, Lisa, but I must choose Nancy."

   The words struck Lisa like an electric shock. She had never considered the fact that Bobbie wouldn't choose her. Tears stung in her eyes. "But –"

   "Why? Because Nancy was a lesbian when I met her, she is a lesbian now, and she always will be."

   "But I'm a lesbian now and always will be," Lisa protested.

   Bobbie shook her head sadly. "Do you know how many heterosexual women have lesbian experiences? More than you would guess. College girls who have pajama parties with other college girls and go on to become housewives. Housewives bored with their life who invite other housewives over on afternoons to have fun in bed while their husbands are away at the office... You've had bad experiences with men, and good experiences with me – but that doesn't make you a lesbian necessarily."

It's a dramatic scene, but the climax – unconvincing – comes when Joyce makes a surprise return to the apartment she'd once shared with Lisa. She apologizes to her former roommate, revealing that she had in the past, on occasion, been with other women:

"Nothing serious or very long, just a few pajama parties in college where we – well, sort of fooled around. I tried to kid myself that it was the same as masturbating, but I know it wasn't. I guess I knew subconsciously I tended to be bisexual all along and consciously tried to disprove it by sleeping with as many men as I could." 

And with that out of the way, Joyce tries to convince Lisa that she too is bisexual. She encourages her friend to go out on another date with Vince. Maybe she'll enjoy sex with him. After all, Lisa has had sex with only five men. Sure, she didn't like it, and sure the ladies are batting three for three in this regard, but who knows? She may even marry Vince! And if Lisa feels the need for lesbian sex there are always ladies "bridge clubs."

"Where does this leave us now?" Lisa asked.

   "Friends, I hope ," Joyce said sincerely. "I'd like to be your roommate again, if you'll have me."

   "I'd like that, Joyce, very much – except I'm not sure I can keep my hands off you."

   Joyce gave a reassuring smile. "After that little escapade we had honey, I'm not sure I want you to keep your hands off me. Who the hell do I think I'm kidding anyway. I enjoy sex, all kinds, and putting a label on certain kinds is making life difficult."

And then Lisa and Joyce have fun in bed; this time consensually.

So, a happy ending after all, but not terribly satisfying.

About the author: For the most obvious of reasons I'd assumed "Winston Smith" to be a nom de plume. Was the author even Canadian? Brandon House provides no biography. All seemed a mystery – and not only to me – until I happened upon this entry in the Catalog of Copyright Entries, Third Series: January-June, 1969, published by the Library of Congress:

Charles Edward Fritch (1927-2012) was a writer of science fiction, mystery, and horror. Erotica can now be added to the mix. Consensus has it that Negative of a Nude (1959) was his first published novel.

Fritch's bibliography is a matter of further research. Sexpo '69 was not the only book he wrote under a pseudonym. To known works Strip for Murder (1960; as Eric Thomas),  Seven Deadly Sinners (1961; as Christopher Sly), and Psycho Sinner (1961; as Eric Thomas), I add Lesbian Blow-Up (1968). Winston Smith erotica, it seems to have garnered one lone review: 

Unsigned, it's found in the December 1968/January1969 issue of The Ladder, published by the Daughters of Bilitis. The same issue includes 'The House Guest,' an uncollected short story by Jane Rule.

Fritch was not Canadian. He was born in Utica, New York, and lived his life in the United States. I wondered whether he'd visited Expo '67 – hundreds of thousands of Americans did – until I found this photo of Fritch (right) with science fiction writer William F Nolan taken outside Fort Edmonton at La Ronde.

My thanks to members of the Expo 67 Facebook page for identifying the location.

I wonder whether Fritch saw the 27 May 1967 edition of Tab International:

Object: A mass market paperback, typical of its time, the novel itself is followed by sixteen pages of adverts for other Brandon House titles, including the classics Candy, Teleny, Eveline, Fanny Hill, My Secret Life, The Pearl, The 120 Days of Sodom, and of course Lesbian Blow-Up.

Access: WorldCat suggests that only UCLA and the San Francisco Public Library have copies.

I purchased my copy last year, ending a hunt that began in the 20th century. Price: US$45.

Related posts:

A McGill Student's Mild Summer of Love
The Little People of Expo 67

The Great Canadian Lesbian Pulp Novel?
Bewitched, Bothered, But Not Bewildered
The Girls Who Got Away

Average Leacock for the Average Man

Winnowed Wisdom
Stephen Leacock
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1926
300 pages

The author's sixteenth book of humour in as many years, one wonders how he managed; it's not as if Professor Leacock had no day job.

Winnowed Wisdom came in mid-career with the best of his writing in the past. Look no further than the six-page italicized preface for evidence:

It is the especial aim of this book to make an appeal to the average man. To do this the better, I have made a study of the census of the United States and of the census of Canada, in order to find who and what the average man is.
     In point of residence, it seems only logical to suppose that the average man lives at the centre of population, in other words, in the United States he lives at Honkville, Indiana, and in Canada at Red Hat, Saskatchewan. 
     In the matter of height the average man is five feet eight inches, decimal four one seven, and in avoirdupois weight he represents 139 pounds, two ounces, and three pennyweights. Eight-tenths of his head is covered with hair, and his whiskers, if spread over his face...  

You get the idea. Still, this made me laugh:

The percentage of women in the population being much greater in the eastern part of the country, the average woman lives one hundred and five miles east of the average man. But she is getting nearer to him every day. Oh yes, she is after him, all right!

The thing with Leacock is that even his most middling work has something that catches the light and shines. The same might be said of the collections themselves; Winnowed Wisdom may be weak, but three of its essays – 'How We Kept Mother's Day,' 'The Laundry Problem,' and 'How My Wife and I Built Our Home for $4.90' – were included in Laugh With Leacock: An Anthology of the Best Work of Stephen Leacock (1930).

Deservedly so.

This early passage from 'The Laundry Problem' had me sold:

In the old days any woman deserted and abandoned in the world took in washing. When all else failed there was at least that. Any woman who wanted to show her independent spirit and force of character threatened to take in washing. It was the last resort of a noble mind. In many of the great works of fiction the heroine's mother almost took in washing.

This comes later:

In the old days if you had a complaint to make to the washerwoman you said it to her straight out. She was there. And she heard the complaint and sneaked away with tears in her eyes to her humble home where she read the Bible and drank gin.

J.B. Priestley looked at Winnowed Wisdom and selected 'Our Summer Convention' and 'At the Ladies Culture Club' for 1957's The Bodley Head Leacock (aka The Best of Leacock).

I wouldn't have chosen either. 

My Winnowed Wisdom favourites have never featured in a Leacock anthology, so I thought I'd share. Each is as relevant today as a century ago.

The first, 'The Outline of Evolution,' is the second of Prof Leacock's 'The Outlines of Everything' essays.

It begins:

It seems that recently there has been a lot of new trouble about the theory of evolution in the schools. Either the theory is being taught all wrong or else there is something the matter with it. For years it had seemed as if the doctrine of Evolution was so universally accepted as to lose all its charm. It was running as a close second to Spherical Trigonometry and Comparative Religion and there was no more excitement about it than there is over Anthropology.

     Then suddenly something seems to have happened. A boy in a Kansas public school threw down his book and said that the next time he was called a protozoon he’d quit the class. A parent in Ostaboola, Oklahoma, wrote to the local school board to say that for anyone to teach his children that they were descended from monkeys cast a doubt upon himself which he found intolerable.

I never experienced such a fuss, but then I attended school in Montreal.

Sounds smug, I know. Given what's going on in the republic to the south, I can't help it.

My second favourite essay is titled 'Are We Fascinated with Crime?'

I've never been much fascinated myself, though I once made a good living writing true crime books published under a nom de plume. This was a decade ago. The books were sold around the English-speaking world – French and Polish translations appeared in other spheres – and I got a fair cut.

There's been talk about the rising interest in true crime, but I don't buy it. The fascination pre-dates London's Police Gazette. Montreal had Police Journal, and, in my day, Photo Police and Allo Police. 

Allo Police, 16 September 1984

As a younger man, I watched 48 Hours, Unsolved Mysteries, America's Most Wanted, and...

Mea culpa.

I was fascinated with crime. We are all fascinated with crime. In 1926, Leacock recognized as much, all the while questioning our interest: 

If a rich man is killed by his chauffeur in Tampa, Florida, and his body hidden in the gasoline tank, why should you and I worry? We don’t live in Tampa and we have no chauffeur and gasoline is too expensive for us to waste like that.

     Yet a whole continent will have to sit up and read a column of news about such a simple little event as that.

I read the professor's article as BBC and New York Times reports on the arrest of the Long Island Killer vied for my attention. 

The Montreal Gazette, 7 December 1957

Busby? Preistley? You tell me who chose better. Winnowed Wisdom can be read online here courtesy of the fine folks at the Faded Page.

Whatever you decide, I guarantee the average man will something that amuses, as will the average woman.

Object: One of the many Leacocks purchased up over the years at the McGill Book Fair. I'm fairly certain this one, a first American edition, was picked up in the early 'nineties. Price: $2.  

Access: First published by Macmillan (Canada), Dodd, Mead (United States) and John Lane (United Kingdom). The Macmillan and Lane editions feature the same dust jacket illustration by John Hassall.

The cover of the Dodd, Mead edition is by Jazz Age illustrator John Held, Jr.

In 1971, Winnowed Wisdom was added as #74 to the New Canadian Library. It holds the distinction of being the first NCL title without an introduction. It survived long enough to benefit from the third series design.

Related posts:

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like
Professor Leacock Sets the Stage
Am I the Only One Laughing with Leacock?