The Colony of Unrequited Nightmares

Portrait in Fear [Mystery of Cedar Valley]
Vera Henry
New York: Caravelle, 1964
160 pages

I expected little of Portrait in Fear, the lone novel from an author whose bibliography consists almost entirely of confessionals published in post-war love pulps.

Ideal Love (December 1946) and Glamorous Love (July 1954)

She had me from the opening:

Even after all this time, the townspeople of Cedar Valley view our small summer art colony with suspicion. They tolerate us for business reasons, but they do not like us.

The narrator, children's book illustrator Maggie Balfour, is the colony's longest resident. She's also the youngest. Her parents first brought her as a child. She was fifteen the summer Steve Wentworth moved into the cottage next door. He was writing his first novel. Steve was a young man. Maggie was a girl with a crush. There was nothing untoward about their relationship. As the years passed, the two became good friends and in the off-season would visit other art colony residents in "the city." They all expected the pair to one day move on from being just friends, and so were surprised when Steve all of a sudden married another. Maggie had only herself to blame for introducing the two. Riona, Steve's bride, was an old schoolmate.

Now it's the newlyweds' first summer at the colony. Maggie is determined to put on a good front, and for the most part succeeds. Not so the colony's other women. Retired stage actress Connie Ordway is right in suspecting that husband Brown has been having an affair with Riona. Gwen Darlan is not only certain that her spouse would leave her for Riona, she would gladly give him up. It's not that she doesn't love her spouse, rather that she wants him to be happy. Where the reader recognizes a selfish, directionless child of a man, wife Gwen sees a genius deserving of so beautiful a woman. Sadly for Ted, Riona sees him as a plaything, little more than a sardine entangled by a fishing line.

Riona fits the femme fatale stereotype, right down to her dark hair, pale blue eyes, pale white skin, rocking body, and provocative dress. In a tight-knit community with so much resentment, jealousy, and hatred directed toward one person, you just know that something bad is going to happen. The front cover tells you as much.

Here I'm going to change focus, as I often do when writing about mysteries. I never want to wade in too far for fear of spoiling things. Let's look instead at this Caravelle Books edition, beginning with the cover copy:

• Riona is not "pretty." Maggie, who has every reason to find fault, describes her as the most beautiful woman she has ever seen.
• Riona has great sense of right and wrong. Manipulative and cruel, she's no "lost pussy cat."
• "They" do indeed have a reason to kill Riona, and of course one of them does.

I've spoiled nothing in revealing that Riona is murdered, right? 

Now, the back cover:

The artists' colony is hardly "swinging," though it is true that its men are keen on sleeping with Riona, husband Steve included. 

There is a whopper of an error in the second paragraph:

When Marie Balfour, Steve's ex-fiance, questioned Riona about the odd gold brooch she wore, Maggie didn't know it then but it was a pin that would unlock the mystery of Riona's death.

I'm glad I didn't see this until after I'd read the novel, otherwise I'd've kept an eye out for Marie, the jilted lover. The copywriter means Maggie, not non-existent Marie. Not only are Maggie and Steve never engaged, they never exchange so much as a kiss.

Returning briefly to the novel itself, much of the mystery has to do with painter Paul Petrie. Unlike Maggie, he was not raised in the arts colony, but on the outskirts. He grew up within the "Evangelical Brethern [sic]," a small religious sect that had settled Cedar Valley after "fleeing from the temptations of the mid-Victorian world." Paul was very much a black sheep, painting from an early age in a religious community that considers lipstick garish.

After years of condemnation and rejection, Paul Petrie disappeared at the very point his talent began to be celebrated. If anything, his recognition caused further bad feelings within Cedar Valley's predominantly Evangelical Brethern locals. Young Paul would've given them his paintings for free, now they hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.

Marie Balfour never appears, but does Paul?

I'm not telling, though I will say that the surprise ending Caravelle promises did indeed smack me right between the eyes.

About Cedar Valley: The author gives few clues as to the location of the community, but careful reading suggests that it is on Lake Ontario somewhere between Toronto and Hamilton.

About the author: Vera Henry (née Bates) began life in Forest, Ontario. According to the 1911 Canadian census he was born in July 1909, likely the last of seven children born to 37-year-old William, a livery stable laborer, and 40-year-old Margaret. The family doesn't appear in the 1921 census.

The University of Oregon Libraries, which holds Vera Henry's papers – all "0.5 feet" – reports that the author graduated high school at age fourteen. She may have been living in Michigan at this point. I have nothing to go on other than the proximity to Forest and Vera Henry's association with the state.

The most informative profile I've found, 'You May Be in One of Her Stories,' was published in the 8 May 1954 edition of the Detroit Free Press. This was on the occasion of the Detroit Women Writers honouring Vera Henry as Writer of the Year.

There's so much to explore, like distaste expressed for her cash cow:

This suggests a lost work:

And here's something to keep in mind if I ever write a second edition of Character Parts:

Vera Henry died in Royal Oak, Michigan on 4 October 1987.

About Forest: A community of fewer than three thousand souls located five kilometres east of the southern shores of Lake Huron, Forest has had more than its fair share of notable residents. Emily Murphy lived there for a time, as did journalist Robyn Doolittle. Like any Canadian small town, it has produced at least a couple of NHL players, but the name that stood out to me is Emm Gryner. For ten years, our paths crossed as residents of nearby St Marys, Ontario. Here's Emm onstage with David Bowie:

Object and Access: A mass market paperback, my copy was purchased online earlier this month from a Guelph bookseller. Price: US$3.50.

Evidence suggests that in 1967 there was a second Caravelle edition. As I write, seven copies of the two Caravelles – 1964 and 1967 – are listed online. Prices begin at US$5.00.

The novel was first published in 1964 by New York's Avalon Books as Mystery of Cedar Valley. Worse title, better cover:

Might it also be a better novel?

I ask because Caravelle's Portrait in Fear features several remarkable errors, this being the worst:

One copy of Mystery of Cedar Valley – ex-library – is listed online. It's in pretty rotten edition condition, but does include the dust jacket (chopped up and pasted on the boards here and there). Price: US$50.00.

I recommend both.

More Dope, More Danger, Fewer Dolls

The Black Candle

Emily F. Murphy

Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1922

Returning to Dope Menace, I find that much of the most sensational writing featured comes not from the pulp and porn houses, but from religious outfits like the Pacific Press Publishing Association, owned and operated by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Its books, like Plain Facts for Young Women on Marijuana, Narcotics, Liquor, and Tobacco, were anything but. The press was, as Stephen Gertz writes, 'a great thorn in the side of anyone trying to rationally educate the public on drugs.' Perhaps the most outrageous of its publications was On the Trail of Marihuana: The Weed of Madness, published in 1939:

The marahuana user, freed from the restraint of gravitation, bumps his head against the sky. Street lights become orangoutangs [sic] with eyes of fire. Huge slimy snakes crawl through small cracks in the sidewalk, and prehistoric monsters, intent on his destruction, emerge from keyholes, and pursue him down the street. He feels squirrels walking all over his back, while he is being pelted by some unseen enemy with lightening bolts. He will thrill you with the most plausible accounts of desperadoes who lurk in the doorway ahead, waiting with long sharp knives to pounce on him and carve him to pieces.

Imaginative stuff, Pacific Press - but my favourite passage belongs to Fundamental Truth Publishers, who in 1943 issued a booklet, The Moloch of Marihuana, by the Reverend R. J. Devine:

An ordinary man or woman becomes in the eyes of the Marihuana addict, beautiful beyond compare. Marihuana, grown by trusties on prison farms unknown to prison officials, has been taken to the inmates. Under its influence the prisoners fall desperately in love with one another; as they would with members of the opposite sex outside prison walls. One can understand the debaucheries that take place.

It seems Canada's religious leaders didn't dwell nearly as much on the threats posed by drugs; we certainly had nothing comparable to Pacific Press (our own Pacific Press dispersed propaganda of a different kind). In this land of peace, order and good government, its not really so surprising that our single widely-read work of propaganda would come from a judge. There is much to admire in Emily Murphy, she was the first female magistrate in the British Empire and shares credit in the Persons Case. Still, I find her Historica Minute (née Heritage Minute), performed by the Kate Nelligan, cringe-worthy. Oh, it begins well enough - nice set, beautifully shot, with the attention to detail we've come to expect - but then comes the line: 'I, Emily Murphy, author of the Janey Canuck books, pioneer in the war against narcotics...'

And so, attention is drawn to the fifth of the Janey Canuck books, The Black Candle. Here we find similar panicked misinformation, such as these quoted words from Charles A. Jones, for all of six months the Chief of the LAPD:

Persons using this narcotic [marijuana] smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under the influence, are immune to pain, could be severely injured without having any realization of their condition. While in this condition they becoming [sic] raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility.

When coming from under the influence of this narcotic, these victims present the most horrible condition imaginable. They are dispossessed of their natural and normal will power, and their mentality is that of idiots. If this drug is indulged in to any great extent, it ends in the untimely death of its addict.

Judge Murphy then passes on some information from W. H. B. Stewart, Superintendent of London's Bethlehem Royal Hospital, that 'the drug is used for the purpose of inducing pleasurable motor excitement and hallucinations which are commonly sexual in character among Eastern races.' This is just one of many unreferenced statements in The Black Candle, presented in support of her xenophobic world view. The author writes of 'a well-defined propaganda among aliens of color to bring about the degeneration of the white race', she tells of 'Chinese pedlars' [sic] who boast that the 'yellow race would rule the world' and 'would strike a the white race through "dope"'. According to Murphy, threats come from all sides: 'Some Negroes coming into Canada - and they are no fiddle-faddle fellows either - have similar ideas, and one of their greatest writers has boasted how ultimately they will control the white men.'

Who, one wonders, is this great writer?

The Black Candle is not just another 'Janey Canuck' book; the author departs from her tiresome travelogues to become 'Judge Emily F. Murphy'. Her billing as 'Police Magistrate and Judge of the Juvenile Court' lends an air of authority and knowledge that Rev. Devine and the Pacific Press lacked. The Black Candle was read, reviewed and discussed. The following year, the author thought enough of the work to nominate herself for the Nobel Prize in Literature (not to worry, it was awarded to Yeats). It may be long out of print, but The Black Candle lives on - its considerable influence on our narcotics legislation would be acknowledged by the Le Dain Commission.

As one whose drug of choice is supplied by the Upper Canada Brewing Company, I write without bias that The Black Candle is the most destructive book yet produced in this country.

We honour the author with a statue on Parliament Hill.

Object and Access: Still found in our larger public libraries. The first edition, one of Thomas Allen's more attractive titles, appears to have been published without a dust jacket. Not nearly as rare as some booksellers claim, decent copies can be bought for C$75. The only reprint, the ugly 1973 Coles Canadiana Collection facsimile, features a top-notch Introduction by Robert Solomon, researcher for the Le Dain Commission. Do not pay more than C$20.