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?

L.R. Wright Before She Became L.R. Wright

Neighbours
Laurali Wright [L.R. Wright]
Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1979
258 pages

There's so much wrong with this jacket illustration. Set aside the eyes for a moment and focus on the houses. They're nearly identical, right? The one on the left is a mirror image of the other two, yet the neighbours in Neighbours live in dwellings of differing designs separated by spacious lawns. The figure standing before the open garage in Clement Clarke Moore sleeping cap does not feature.

Returning to the eyes: I thought they belonged to a man, but Neighbours is a novel about three women. Betty Coutts is the first we meet. She lives with husband Jack and daughter Heather in a Calgary subdivision. As a travelling salesman, Jack is rarely present, which leaves young Heather in a precarious position. The extent to which Jack recognizes his daughter's peril – I do not exaggerate in using that word – is unclear. Could be he's in denial.

It's apparent from the start that Betty is suffering from a serious mental illness. She's unable to work and spends much of her day in bed eating candy. The house is a worsening filthy mess, which prompts Jack, who has returned home from yet another sales trip, to spray the kitchen with a garden hose. This early scene is uncharacteristic; Jack is otherwise sensitive and patient regarding his wife's mental health. It's due to his efforts that Betty has weekly meetings with a psychologist named Jessup.

For a time, it's suggested – by the doctor, at least – that Betty is making progress. At Jessup's urging, she makes an effort to make new friends, deciding on her two next-door neighbours. Elderly Poinsettia, lives in the house to the left. Betty insists on calling her Bertha, which Poinsettia quite likes. Sheila, to the right, lives in the house Betty considers the most beautiful on the block.

Both women have problems of their own. Bertha, who lives to garden, struggles with severe arthritis. She fights worsening pain and a son and daughter-in-law who want her to give up her home and come live in theirs. Sheila's problem is worse still. Minutes before Betty's intrusion in her life – it is very much an intrusion – husband Ed revealed that he'd been having an affair. Sheila's reaction to the infidelity amounts to the strongest writing of the novel. If you read nothing else from the novel, read this.

Neighbours was a Search-for-a-New-Alberta-Novelist winner. Pauline Gedge, Andre Tom MacGregor, Fred Stenson, Jan Truss, and Betty Wilson were fellow honourees. In reading reviews from the time, I came upon three in the Montreal Gazette, my hometown paper. Published on 1 June 1979, the first belongs to Zonia Keywan:

 

The second is by Walter J. Traprock, whose name I can find nowhere outside the newspaper's 3 November 1979 edition. He butts against Zonia Keywan, feeding Western alienation: 

Laurali (Bunny) Wright is the winner is of the fourth Search-For-A-New-Alberta-Novelist competition. Despite this dubious distinction, she writes well, and if her first novel, Neighbours, has problems, it also has considerable promise. 

I have no idea why the Gazette saw fit to review the Macmillan edition twice. Change in editors? Poor memory? Drunkenness? 

The third, published on 11 June 1980, was occasioned by the novel's paperback release. Written by the legendary Marion McCormick, it's the shortest and the most amusing:

All too often, young writers write the same heavily autobiographical story: the hero heroine – always the most sensitive kid on the school bus – suffers in a provincial hamlet populated by Yahoos until he she can break away and write a novel about it.
   Neighbours is something else; a well-plotted suspense story involving three families who live on a Calgary street. The author achieves a mixture of pathos and menace that sticks in the mind. 

I side with Marion McCormick.

Macmillan's dust jacket, flaps included, focus on Betty, selling the novel of one woman's hellish decent into madness. I see it as something much more. Neighbours is about neighbours. Betty brings Bertha and Sheila into the story. Again, it is a novel about three women; it is a "Chilling Story" only because the struggles each face are so consuming that they can do nothing to help one another. 

It sticks in the mind.

Object and Access: The jacket illustration is credited to Martin Springett. Richard Miller is credited with the design.

As "L.R. Wright," Laurali Wright – Rose was her middle name – went on to become the foremost Canadian mystery writer of her time. Wright's fourth book, The Suspect, was recognized in the United States with the 1986 Edgar for Best Novel. This being Canada, it is unsurprising that the Macmillan edition enjoyed nothing more than a single printing. In 1980, Signet published the novel in paperback. I've never seen a copy.

Neighbours is sadly typical of Macmillan's 'seventies output in that it is nearly impossible to read without cracking the spine. Collectors of Alice Munro and Robertson Davies know of what I speak. My copy was purchased two years ago in Montreal at S.W. Welch. Price: $5.00. The previous reader or readers broke its spine twice. I take pride in having been so careful as to not increase that number.

Mine is the only copy I've ever seen in person, but there are others – not many – being offered online. At US$13.95, a Nova Scotia bookseller has listed one as "very tight unread/unopened." Another bookseller shares this disturbing image:

At US$100, the standout is a Very Good copy signed by the author.

That is the one to buy. Careful with the spine!

Good Times Never Seemed So Good

Caroline
André Norton and Enid Cushing
New York: Tor, 1983
320 pages

Caroline was published in January 1983, eight months before Enid Cushing's death. Her passing was not recognized by the Montreal Gazette, her hometown's surviving English-language daily, though the family did publish an obituary in the 30 August 1983 edition.

It's no surprise that the Gazette gave Enid Cushing's death no notice; the paper paid little attention to her writing career. Not one of her murder mysteries – Murder’s No Picnic (1953), Murder Without Regret (1954), Blood on My Rug (1956), The Unexpected Corpse (1957), and The Girl Who Bought a Dream (1957) – was reviewed in its pages. The same holds true for the titles she penned in her late-in-life resurrection as a writer of historical romances: Maid-At-Arms (1981) and Caroline (1983).

My interest in Enid Cushing began with the discovery of her 'fifties Montreal mysteries, but I'm much more intrigued by her two romances. Both Maid-At-Arms and Caroline are collaborations with celebrated American science fiction writer Andre Norton (aka André Norton; née Alice Mary Norton). While I've not been able to discover how the two came to work together, I have learned that their friendship dates back to at least 1953, the year Murder's No Picnic was published.

Maid-At-Arms stands with Rosemary Aubert's Firebrand as my very favourite Canadian romance novel. Caroline is a close third. 

The back cover copy is a touch misleading:

Caroline Warwick is indeed young, beautiful, and a free spirit, but she never expresses a wish to study medicine. This is not to suggest that Caroline isn't curious; the earliest scene has her looking to set a kitten's broken leg by consulting medical texts. There are a great many such books in her parents' Montreal home. Caroline's father, one of the city's most respected physicians, lectures at McGill. Elder brother Perry is studying medicine at the university. And then there's Richard: "Richard Harvey (he was not a Warwick at all, although he had lived with them since his mother died when he was born and his father had gone west and died in the wilderness) who seemed to be the truly devoted doctor."

Richard began his education in Canada and furthered it in Scotland. His unanticipated return, pretty new wife in tow, is met with mixed reception in the family's St Gabriel Street home. Doctor Warwick, Mrs Warwick, Caroline, and Perry are happy, but not Priscilla. The fifth member and eldest daughter of the household, Pris had a thing for Richard. It doesn't help that his bride is Lady Amelia, niece of Lord Elgin, the newly installed Governor General of the Province of Canada.

But Pris is something a coquette – "flirting and playacting" is how Irish housemaid Molly puts it – and so she's over it soon enough, turning her attentions of Lord Elgin's aides-de-camp, including Lady Amelia's bounder of a brother Captain Carruthers and dark brute Major Vickers. Before the Governor General's arrival, Pris had time for handsome Corbie Hannacker, the most eligible bachelor in all the province, but she now ignores him, much to the distress of her younger sister. Caroline sees Hannacker as everything Pris should want in a man. Like Richard, he's good, kind, and wonderful, so much so that he continues to visit because he knows how much Caroline, seventeen going on eighteen, admires his horses.

Caroline is a much more conventional romance than the gender-bending Maid-At-Arms. Seasoned readers of the genre will recognize in the early pages that its heroine is destined for Corbie's arms. The question is just how this happy union – there is a wedding – will come to be.

 

Caroline is a well-written, well-crafted novel; the headache-inducing sentence in which Richard is introduced is an anomaly. Given Enid Cushing's awkward mystery novels, one might conclude that Norton's name deserved place of prominence, but I argue otherwise. Norton had no connection with Canada, never mind Montreal – and Caroline is very much a Montreal novel. The action takes place over little more than twelve months in the city's history. Beginning in January 1847 with Lord Elgin's arrival, it incorporates the Summer of Sorrow and the opening of the Montreal & Lachine Railroad, ending in the early months of 1948. Throughout it all, I kept an eye out for historical inaccuracies, yet spotted nothing. I doubt credit goes to Norton, just as I doubt Norton, a science fiction novelist from Cleveland, Ohio, came up with the idea of a historical romance set in mid-nineteenth-century Canada. It's unlikely Caroline will ever be reprinted, but if it is, let's give Enid Cushing equal billing.

Trivia: This Montrealer has memories of a St Gabriel Street, location of the Warwick residence, but I couldn't quite place it. Investigation reveals that it is - unsurprisingly - in the oldest part of the city.

Adolphus Bourne, Map of the City of Montreal, 1843 (detail)

Three short blocks in length, it was once home to the Scotch Presbyterian Church. Its story was recorded by Rev Robert Campbell, "the last pastor," in A History of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, Saint Gabriel Street, Montreal (Montreal: Drysdale, 1887). Amongst the subscribers is a man named Charles Cushing. 

Object and Access: A decaying mass market paperback. The cover illustration is by New Brunswicker Norm Eastman, best known for men's magazine covers like this:

New Man, October 1968

I purchased my copy last year for US$5.79 from an Ohio bookseller. 

As far as I can tell, not one Canadian library holds a copy.

Related posts:

Bewitched, Bothered, but Not Bewildered

Montreal Most Strange (w/ mysterious directions)

A Curious Romance of Closeted, Corseted,

Petticoated Poet and His Twin Sister

Loving the Mayor of Toronto