A Good Old Soldier

Old Soldier
Frederick Niven
London: Collins, 1936
250 pages

Stewart Reid lives in a small flat with his wife and two young sons in Edinburgh's east end. Minnie sleeps in the one bedroom; the boys share a "concealed bed" in the parlour. Stewart's days begin in a cot next to the stove in the camped kitchen. The missus can't abide this thrashing about under the covers.

Read nothing into that.

Stewart loves Minnie. Minnie loves Stewart. Their lives are happy. Each Friday night, Minnie meets her man as he leaves work. He hands her his pay packet. She withdraws a shilling and he has a dram at the local. Minnie enjoys a bottle of lemonade.

Stewart's shilling comes through his employ at Mackenzie Bothers, one of Edinburgh's most respected  jewellers. He works in semi-darkness below the shop floor, polishing silver with fellow old soldiers. Robert Mackenzie, the sole surviving Mackenzie brother, prefers veterans for the task. It's easy to see why. Stewart follows direction and is dedicated to the job at hand. When tasked, he can be trusted to deliver goods to Edinburgh's finest homes, doing so with fine military bearing. What's more, Stewart Reid lives by routine. While this is disturbed somewhat by his annual summer holiday, Minnie maintains an even keel.

"He's a man who needs a woman to look after him, or a sergeant," says Todd, the oldest of the old soldiers.

Old Soldier is a quiet novel. Nothing much happens. After several dozen pages, one looks about in search of a plot device. Might it be Mackenzie Brothers' flirtatious charwoman Nell Drummond, she of the swinging skirt? Could it have something to do with cold Rev Dr Churchkirk's refusal to be held accountable for the debts of his wife and daughter? How about paymaster Beck's suggestion that Stewart's holiday allotment be held back, lest the old soldier spend it on... you know, his holiday?

Wait, it's the holiday itself, right?

But no, Old Soldier is a tale of everyday life. Its hero is a man who ventures out on a Monday, does drudgery, and suffers an indignity or two for the love of his wife and boys. On Tuesday, he rises in his kitchen cot and prepares for the same. Stewart becomes complaisant. The reader becomes complaisant. When something of significance does happen – remarkably late in the novel – the reader may be caught off guard.

I know I was.

These things happen to other people. Not to me. Not to Stewart Reid.

And yet he continues on, an old soldier.

Dedication: To the author's wife, journalist Mary Pauline Thorne-Quelch.

Object: Purchased last year for £3.00 from a bookstore in Wallingford, England, my copy once belonged to the Newlands Circulating Library of Fiction, 16 Stafford St, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh. I'm sad to report that the address is now taken up by a Frontiers store.

I found this piece of ephemera glued to page 187:

The novel is followed six full-page adverts for other Niven titles: The Flying Years, Triumph, Mrs. Barry, The Rich Wife, The Paisley Shawl, and The Three Marys.

Access: As far as I've been able to determine, the novel enjoyed just one edition and one printing. A bookseller in Tamworth, England offers an ex-library copy at £8.00.

That's it.

It can be read online here courtesy of the Faded Page.

Related posts:

The Dustiest Bookcase: N is for Niven

Three Little Women and One Big Spoiler

The Dustiest Bookcase: N is for Niven

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Old Soldier
Frederick Niven
London: Collins, 1936
256 pages

Twelve years of The Dusty Bookcase and I have yet to read a single book by Frederick Niven.

It isn't for lack of trying.

Regular readers will remember that I spent good money on an old Collins White Circle edition of The Flying Years, but couldn't make it past it's dull, dull, deathly dull cover.

I did better with The Three Marys – which I bought for its cover – only to give up after reading the publisher's description, in which it's revealed that the hero, portrait painter Robert Barclay, is involved in a rail accident: "Barclay is killed, and the books [sic] ends on this note of tragedy." 

Bit of a spoiler, right?

I own only two other Niven titles: Mine Inheritance and Old Soldier. The former is "a story based on the Red River Settlement, Canada," though you wouldn't know it from the jacket of the Collins first edition:

Leaving aside the fact that the clothing is from the wrong century, are those mountains I see?

Mine Inheritance appears to have been popular; plenty of cheap used copies are currently offered online. Sadly, mine is an abridged edition intended for use in Canadian schools.

This leaves Old Soldier, about which I know next to nothing. I say next to nothing because I made the mistake of hunting down 85-year-old reviews. The first mentioned something about a store... and then I smartened up and stopped reading.

What's the book about?

No idea. But I will read this Niven novel! What's more, I'm going to do it this year!

I wonder what the cover looked like.

Related post:

Three Little Women and One Big Spoiler

Ten Best Book Buys of 2020 (& Three Great Gifts)

In years to come – presuming they come – I expect I'll look upon this beat-up copy of Arthur Beverley Baxter's The Blower of Bubbles with great affection. I do now. Published in 1920 by McClelland & Stewart, the book is neither rare nor valuable, yet it is this year's most memorable find. It was purchased at the Bookworm in Perth, Ontario, not long after lockdown restrictions had been lifted. Three months had passed since I'd last visited a bookstore. After all that time, I'd have gladly paid for admission.

As might be expected, most of the books added to the bookcase this strange year were bought online. You'll see I was particularly drawn to signed copies – something to do with the daily reminders of mortality, I suppose.

What follows are the nine other titles in this year's top ten. 

An African Millionaire

Grant Allen
New York: Edward Arnold,

   1897

The first American edition, this isn't the best of copies – I am not a wealthy man – but at US$27.00 it was a great find. Responding to my review of Allen's The Woman Who Did, a friend suggested that An African Millionaire is the author's better-known book. Perhaps, but is it as good?

Mon cadavre au Canada

   [Hot Freeze]

Martin Brett [Douglas

   Sanderson; trans Bruno

   Martin]

Paris: Gallimard, 1955

The French translation of our greatest post-war noir novel. The story is abridged and Bruno Martin is clumsy, but that didn't stop me from also buying Estocade au Canada, his translation of Sanderson's A Dum-Dum for the President.

Pascal Berthiaume
Francis DesRoches

Quebec: Elite, 1932

A novel brought to my attention by Jean-Louis Lessard of Laurentiana. His review of this short novel of romance and small town politics intrigued. I was not disappointed!

Signed by the author.

Married, Yet No Wife;

   Or, Told in the Twilight
Mary Agnes Fleming

New York: Street &

   Smith, [c. 1916]

A fragile paperback published during the Wilson administration, it crumbles to the touch. The nineteenth-century Carleton editions hold up better, but I do like that cover. The title, which predates same-sex marriage in Canada by more than a century, intrigues.

PeeVee
Fred Jacob
Toronto: Macmillan, 1928

Bland boards, lacking dust jacket – please tell me one has survived – and still this ranks as one of my favourite finds. I've been meaning to read poor Fred Jacob for ages. The first sentence grabbed me: "In the Hortop family, innovation was looked upon as something to be combated."

The Twenty-first Burr
Victor Lauriston

Toronto: McClelland &

   Stewart, 1922

An early Canadian mystery, this is Lauriston's only novel. Amongst his other books are A Century of Milling, 1848-1948: the story of the T.H. Taylor Company Limited, Chatham, Ontario and Blue Flame of Service: A History of Union Gas Company and the Natural Gas Industry in Southwestern Ontario. Inscribed by the author.

Mine Inheritance
Frederick Niven
Toronto: Dent, 1945

Niven never had much of a profile, so how is it that Mine Inheritance, of which I'd never heard, was once abridged and edited as a school text? This copy, found in an Ottawa bookstore, came from the library of Henry C. Miller, founder of the legendary Graphic Publishers.

The Devastator
Arthur Stringer

Indianapolis: Bobbs-

   Merrill, 1944

The last of Stringer's forty-four novels, I purchased this on a whim, sight unseen, from an online bookseller located in author's birthplace (Chatham, Ontario). Hollywood figures, as it did in the life of the author. Will you look at that cover! Signed by Stringer!

Psyche
Phyllis Brett Young

Toronto: Longmans, 1959

The first edition of the author's first novel –  signed by the author, with a gift inscription from her mother – how this ended up in a Wallingford, Oxfordshire bookshop is anyone's guess. It has now been repatriated. I made the purchase while working on the Ricochet reissue of The Ravine, Phyllis Brett Young's only thriller.

Three generous souls sent books which, had they not been gifts, would have been considered amongst the year's best buys:

Dale of the Mounted:

   Atomic Plot
Joe Holliday

Toronto: Allen,

   [1959]

Of the fourteen Dale of the Mounted books, this is the one I'd most wanted to read. I mentioned as much when reviewing Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment. Chris Otto of Papergreat heard my wish.

CAW-CAW Ballads
Wilson MacDonald
Toronto: The Author, 1930

Number 449 in this "AUTHOR'S EDITION, WHICH IS LIMITED, NUMBERED AND AUTOGRAPHED." The poet inscribed this copy to Healey Willan. A gift from Fiona Smith, does this go in my MacDonald collection or my Willan collection? I can't decide!

 

The Private War of

   Jacket Coates
Herbert Fairly Wood
Toronto: Longmans,

   1966

A gift from old pal James Calhoun, who worked with me in returning Peregrine Acland's All Else is Folly to print. The Private War of Jacket Coates is Canada's only novel of the Korean War. How is it that there was only one? And why is he title so bad? I aim to find out.

There's more to my purchase of Arthur Beverley Baxter's The Blower of Bubbles. On that day I was in Perth for the celebration of the 101st birthday of André Hissink, my grandfather.

A man born in 1919, in the midst of the Spanish Flu pandemic, two months after his 101st birthday he came down with COVID-19... and he beat it.

Here's hoping I share those genes.

Here's hoping you all are safe and well.

Related posts:

The Twenty Best Book Buys of 2019
Best Book Buys of 2018 (four of which were gifts)
Ten Best Book Buys of 2017 (one of which was a gift)

The Ten Best Book Buys of a Very Bad Year (2016)

Ten of the Best; Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015

Done With Buying Books (2014)

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing

The Globe, 6 December 1919

Last month, the Globe & Mail published 'The Globe 100', its annual list of the year's best books.

Why the hurry?

One hundred years ago, the best books were announced in December. The number of 1919 titles ‐ 247 in total ‐ hints at a particularly healthy harvest, though there's not much in the way of celebration. The list's introduction recognizes the "serious aspect" of then-recent titles being added to bookshelves: "One might have expected after the anguish of the war a reaction towards the amusing and frivolous, but in war's wake comes the necessity of reconstruction." So many new books deal with "the world-wide feeling of unrest":

The obligation, cheerfully assumed, of providing for the welfare of half a million returned soldiers has forced upon people an interest in every angle of the labor which many of them never felt before. This has been accentuated by a series of embarrassing strikes, and also the labor conferences in Ottawa and in Washington.

Must say, "embarrassing" is not the adjective I would've used.

The Winnipeg Tribune
9 June 1919

I'll add that novels like Bertrand W. Sinclair's entertaining and troubling The Hidden Places (Toronto: Ryerson, 1922) lead me to question whether the obligation of providing for the welfare of returned soldiers was "cheerfully assumed."

As if labour troubles weren't bad enough, the Armistice has had a devastating effect on Canadian verse.

"The coming of peace did not bring such a chorus as might have been expected," notes the Globe. "Peace came on the poets so suddenly that it struck them dumb." In this, no country suffered a greater silence than Canada. It dominated the list of best poetry books in 1918 Globe – eight of thirteen titles – but in 1919 is reduced to just two volumes: Canadian Singers and Their Songs, an anthology compiled by Edward S. Caswell; and Flint and Feather, the complete poems of the late Pauline Johnson.

It gets worse. Flint and Feather was first published in 1912.

The fiction list isn't nearly so affected. Its 104 titles is dominated by foreigners Robert W. Chambers, John Galsworthy, Joseph Hocking, Anthony Hope, Peter B. Kyne, Compton McKenzie, Kathleen Norris, Sax Rohmer, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Booth Tarkington, and Francis Brett Young, but within we find sixteen novels by Canadian authors:

The Touch of Abner - H.A. Cody
Sky Pilot in No Man's Land - Ralph Connor
The Heart of Cherry McBain - Douglas Durkin
On the Swan River - Hulbert Footner
The Substitute Millionaire - Hulbert Footner
Bulldog Carney - W.A. Fraser
In Orchard Glen - Marian Keith
Mist of Morning - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
Janet of Kootenay - Evah McKowan
Rainbow Valley - L.M. Montgomery
Polly Masson - William H. Moore
The Lady of the Crossing - Frederick Niven
Joan at Halfway - Grace McLeod Rogers
Sister Woman - J.S. Sime
Burned Bridges- Bertrand W. Sinclair
The Man Who Couldn't Sleep - Arthur Stringer
The Girl of O.K. Valley - Robert Watson

I've long been on the hunt for Stringer's The Man Who Couldn't Sleep. The brief description provided by the Globe encourages a doubling of my efforts:

I'll also be on the lookout for Polly Masson by William H. Moore, a novel described as "propaganda of a praise-worthy kind... designed to bring about a better state of feeling between English and French-speaking Canadians."

Future Governor General John Buchan's Mr. Standfast appears twice.

Guess they really liked it.

Should I have counted Mr. Standfast as a Canadian book? As it stands, the country claims just fifteen percent of the fiction titles. On the other hand, Canada dominates in "Economic" (a category that doesn't feature in previous Globe lists):

On Labor problems Canadians have made valuable contributions, "Labor and Humanity" by Hon. Mackenzie King has reached its fourth edition and has been made a textbook at Harvard University. Prof. MacIver of the University of Toronto, Prof. Leacock of McGill and Dr. Lavell, formerly of Queen's appear prominently his year among those who have helped to create a better understanding of labor and reconstruction.

Industry and Humanity, the Right Honourable Mackenzie King's newest book, is the first in a list of fifteen. Other titles by Canadians include:

Production and Taxation in Canada - W.C. Good
The Canadian Commonwealth - Agnes C. Laut
The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice - Stephen Leacock
Labor in the Changing World - R.M. MacIver
Bridging the Chasm - Percival F. Morley

I wondered about The Canadian Commonwealth and The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice. Turns out that I don't own either. I do have copies of The Heart of Cherry McBain, Burned Bridges, In Orchard Glen, Bulldog Carney, and Sky Pilot in No Man's Land.

Chances are I'll read them before Production and Taxation in Canada. 

Related posts:

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

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

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

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

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

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

The Twenty Best Book Buys of 2019

Never has there been a year like this. I visited few used bookstores, ignored library book sales, spent no more than a couple of hours perusing online offerings, and yet somehow came up with the greatest haul of my fifty-something years.

The riches were so many and so great that the pristine copy of Wilson MacDonald's Out of the Wilderness pictured above was overshadowed. Fellow collectors will envy me for owning a scarce, unsigned copy – though it does bear the signature of previous owner Healey Willan. I'm assuming it came from the composer's library. It is now part of mine.

Because this has been such an extraordinary year, my annual ten best buys list has been expanded to twenty. As has been so often the case, I begin with Grant Allen:

An Army Doctor's
   Romance
Grant Allen
London: Raphall Tuck &
   Sons, [1893]

With A Terrible Inheritance, this ranks as one of the very worst Grant Allen books I've ever read. But, oh, isn't it attractive! After winning this copy in an online auction, I came upon a second. I'm offering it to the first person who expresses interest.

The Incidental Bishop
Grant Allen
New York: Appleton, 1898

If the opinion of Allen biographer Peter Morton is anything to go by – and it is – this novel of a young Canadian caught up in the slave trade will disappoint. The Incidental Bishop is longer than An Army Doctor's Romance, and is considerably less attractive, but I won't let that dissuade me from giving it a try.

Heart Songs
Jean Blewett
Toronto: Morag, 1898

The first of the poet's four volumes of verse, this second edition is inscribed. Blewett's verse has featured on this blog many times ( 'Queen Victoria', 'Easter Dawn', 'Thanksgiving Song', 'Thanksgiving Prayer'). This collection promises further riches.

A Strange Manuscript
   Found in a Copper
   Cylinder
James De Mille
New York: Harper &
   Bros, 1888

A "lost civilization" novel read thirty-six years ago in my very first Canadian literature course. Does the fact that I've read nothing more by its author mean anything?

The Wooing of
   Wistaria
Onoto Watanna
   [Winnifred Eaton]
New York: Harper &
   Bros, 1902

Eaton's third novel, penned in the early days of her ill-fated first marriage to Bertand Babcock. Academics suggest that he helped in its composition. They're probably right, which is not to say she wasn't better off without him.

The Heart of Hyacinth
Onoto Watanna
   [Winnifred Eaton]
New York: Harper &
   Bros, 1904

My obsession with the Eatons continues. They were the most remarkable and unusual family in Victorian Montreal. I fear my soul will not rest until someone writes a proper account of their trials and accomplishments.

Waste No Tears
Javis Warwick
   [Hugh Garner]
Toronto: News Stand
   Library, 1949

The Governor General's Award-winning writer's "novel about the Abortion Racket." Five years ago I helped return Waste No Tears to print as part of the Ricochet series, but had ever so much as seen a copy of the scarce News Stand Library edition.

Les songes en équilibre
Anne Hébert
Westmount, QC: Éditions
   de l'arbre, 1942

Anne Hebert's first book, this copy is inscribed by her loving father, poet and literary critic Maurice Hébert:

À mes chers amis Monsieur et Madam Bandwell, ce livre d'une petite canadienne que j'aime beaucoup.

Le temps des hommes
André Langevin
Montreal: Le Cercle du
   livre du France, 1956

Poussière sur la ville and Une Chaîne dans le parc are two of the best novels I've ever read. They're also the only two Langevin novels that are available in translation. I'm looking forward to tackling this one. Signed by the author.

Shackles
Marge Macbeth
New York: Henry
   Waterson, 1927

The fourth novel by the Ottawa writer whose scandalous roman à clef The Land of Afternoon (1927) so entertained five years ago. The main character in this one is a writer!

The Poems and Essays
   of John J. MacDonald
John J. MacDonald
Ottawa: Ru-Mi-Lou,
   1928

Better known as "James MacRae," youngest of the Four Jameses, my interest in this poet began when we moved to St Marys, Ontario, in which he twice lived. I spent more than a decade hunting for a book – any book – by the man. This year, I found one.

Beast in View
Margaret Millar
London: Gollancz, 1955

The first UK edition of the novel for which Millar won the 1956 Edgar Award. James Bridges' 1964 television adaptation is recommended; Robert Glass's 1986 perversion is not.

Queen Kong
James Moffat [James Moffatt]
London: Everest, 1977

A novelization of a movie I've found unwatchable. This was yet another money job from a man better remembered as the celebrated skinhead novelist "Richard Allen". Featuring eight glossy pages of stills!

Flora Lyndsay; Or,
   Passages in an Eventful
   Life
Mrs. Moodie
New York: De Witt &
   Davenport, [1854]

Now seems a good time to confess that I've never read one of Mrs Moodie's novels. On the other had, I've read two or three essays on Flora Lyndsay. The novel features in my first book, Character Parts, as a result.

The Three Marys
Frederick Niven
London: Collins: 1935

Forgotten Frederick Niven's twenty-first novel (I think). For the reason laid out here, chances are I'll never read this tragic story of an acclaimed portrait painter and his three lady loves. The book makes the list because I like the way it looks and remember the thrill of uncovering it in a dank antique store in rural Ontario .

Wacousta; or, The
   Prophesy
John Richardson
Montreal: John Lovell,
   1868

The fourth and earliest edition I own. Will 2020 be the year I finally read this novel of the War of 1812?

Probably not.

Hardscrabble; or, The
   Fall of Chicago
Major Richardson
New York: Pollard &
   Moss, 1888

A later edition of John Richardson's 1850 novel of the Siege of Fort Dearborn during the War of 1812. Though popular in its day – and for years thereafter – the work didn't save Richardson from death through malnutrition.

By a Way She Knew Not
Margaret M. Robertson
London: Hodder &
   Stoughton, 1883

The penultimate novel by the woman who gave us Christie Redfern's Troubles, the teariest work in all of Canadian literature. Robertson scholar Lorraine McMullen considers By a Way She Knew Not the author's very best novel. I'm betting she's right.

A Romance of Toronto
Mrs. Annie G. Savigny
Toronto: William Briggs,
   1888

A Victorian novel "FOUNDED ON FACT" by a woman whose previous books include An Allegory on Gossip.

How could I resist!

Hamilton and Other Poems
William A. Stephens
Toronto: Rogers &
   Thompson, 1840

Included here because it is now the oldest book of Canadian verse I own. In Anxious Allegiances: Legitimizing Identity in the Early Canadian Long Poem (McGill-Queen's, 1997), Dr C.D. Mazoff dismisses the "Hamilton" as "rather poorly written." Here's hoping he's wrong.

The Days of Their Youth
Alan Sullivan
New York: Century,
   1928

One of several Sullivans purchased that had once been part of the man's personal library. This novel is particularly interesting in that it has a pencilled notation by the author. Some unknown hand went after it with an eraser, but I bet I can discover what it says.

Related posts:

Best Book Buys of 2018 (four of which were gifts)
Ten Best Book Buys of 2017 (one of which was a gift)

The Ten Best Book Buys of a Very Bad Year (2016)

Ten of the Best; Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015

Done With Buying Books (2014)