Sunshine Scandals of a Little Town

A View of the Town
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1954
269 pages

There is no town of Inverness on Nova Scotia's mainland. That I wasn't sure says as much of my shaky knowledge of the Maritimes as it does the author's talent. Her Inverness seems real. At first, I thought it might have been inspired by an actual town – as Southport in Hilliard's Miranda (1960) is modeled on Yarmouth – but I've since come to realize that it is based on no one town, rather seventy or eighty of them.

The history of Inverness is important to the plot. It was on 15 May 1781 that Captain Joshua Ward of Virginia landed on Nova Scotia's western shore, taking possession of five hundred acres of virgin soil he'd been awarded for his loyalty to the Crown. Two months later, the immigrant ship Holly arrived from Scotland bearing the Mackays, Fifes, Camerons, Loves, Leckeys, and Macdonalds. The leader of the expedition, Fergus Mackay, who'd spent much of the voyage below deck "guarding" the scotch, emerged in time to yell "I name thee Inverness!"

A View of the Town is not a historical novel, it takes place in 1930 as the sesquicentenary of Inverness approaches. Simon Ward is troubled. Pioneer Day, which celebrates the arrive of great-great-grandfather Joshua, has long been in the shadow of the Holly Day celebration of the Highlanders' arrival. This is easily understandable, after all, the Scottish ship brought the Mackays, Fifes, Camerons, Loves, Leckeys, and Macdonalds, whereas Joshua Ward brought only his family, crew, and a dozen slaves:

"The Wards, who had a weakness for begetting females, were outnumbered in no time."

Simon himself has two offspring, both female. Primrose, named for her late mother, is the eldest. An unmarried innocent of twenty-six, she

spends her days indoors caring for her skin and reading Ruth Fielding novels. Helen, Prim's younger sister, is the more grounded of the two, though recent history suggests otherwise. Wed at nineteen to Denis Cameron, son of the wealthy foundry-owning Camerons, she was abandoned a year later. Her estranged husband is thought to be in California trying to paint. 

Simon is trying to write. He has spent the past two decades working on a history of Inverness in a small octagonal room perched atop the otherwise three-storey Ward family home. The only intrusion he allows comes in late afternoon when the women of the house bring tea. Prim and Helen take their turns, as do Simon's sister-in-law Marlow, and housekeeper Katharine Macdonald (known to all as Katie Wee Duncan):

Nobody had ever caught him actually seated at his desk writing. He might be found taking a nap or reading a book, looking at something in the town, or simply waiting.

Simon means to set things right. Great-great-grandfather Joshua is the true founder of Inverness. It was the Ward family that built the foundation of this proud Nova Scotia town. Neighbour Mary Mackay, president of the Inverness Argus Society, wouldn't dare challenge Simon on this view – she's far too savvy. The play between the two in the months leading to the Pioneer and Holly Day sesquicentennial celebrations is something to see, but there's so much more.

There's Helen's failed marriage, of course. But what of spinster aunt Marlow, who lives in the Ward home next door to the fiancé who threw her over? That old beau went on to father Ian Cameron, Helen's missing husband. Unmarried Katie Wee Duncan, the Ward's housekeeper and cook, is the mother of Rose, who is Mary Mackay's unacknowledged granddaughter. Newly arrived lawyer Percy Mattheson divides his attention between Mary's daughter Florence and Prim Ward until the former runs off with her sister's husband. 

Capping it all off is a climactic scene clearly inspired by "The Sinking of the Mariposa Belle" (aka "The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias"). Harmless fun, A View of the Town is the most gentle of Hilliard's five novels in that no one dies and there are several happy endings. The black humour, very much present in the others, is here pale grey. This 23 October 1954 Globe & Mail ad is the very example of truth in advertizing:

Trivia I: Inverness, Nova Scotia is located on the western shore of Cape Breton. The Inverness of A View of the Town is described as being on the mainland, some one hundred miles north of Halifax. 

Trivia II: Prim's Ruth Fielding novels are just the beginning! Early in the novel, much to her horror, Marlow discovers a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover hidden under the mattress of Helen's bed. Confronting her niece, Marlow threatens to burn it, but puts the marches away when Helen tells her that it belongs to Mary Mackay's daughter Florence.

About the author:

Sadly, the author would never write or illustrate a travel book.

Object and Access: A green/grey hardcover, split-run with American publishing house Abelard-Schulman (for whom the author worked as a fiction editor). The jacket illustration is credited to George Thompson about whom I know nothing. I bought my copy in early 2024 from a southern Ontario bookseller. Price: $15. I purchased a signed Abelard-Schulman edition early this year. Price: US$30. It is guaranteed to place on my 2025 list of best book buys.

You too can own a signed copy! As of this writing a Calgary bookseller is offering not one but two at $40 apiece!

Get 'em while you can!

Related posts:

A Crooked Cousin in a Country Cottage

A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic

Growing Up With Mother
As He Lay Dying

'How we joyously welcome this travail-less birth'

Verse for the day, written for the country's very first day, by champion of Confederation Peter Steven Hamilton under his poetry nom de plume Pierce Steven Hamilton. This version closes the second sedition of his collection The Feast of St. Anne and Other Poems (Montreal: Lovell, 1890).

CANADA

Sound the note of rejoicing from trumpet and horn;

For this day to the family of nations is born

Our Canada!

Let the thunders awaken to tell the old earth

How we joyously welcome this travail-less birth

Of Canada.

Let the bonfires blaze from the hill’s highest crag,

And unfurl to the breeze the yet spotless young flag

Of Canada;

While the people, exulting with shout and with cheer,

Proclaim to the listening nations how dear

Is Canada!

Blessed child of a glorious parentage,

Born into the world in its brightest age,

No deluge of blood does thy young life immerse;

Nor stamped on thy brow is a mother’s curse:

All untrammeled thy limbs by the cankering chains,

The harrowing toils and the numbing pains, 

Which systems at war, in the gloom of the past,

Have over thy suffering sisterhood cast:

Thou art free as the wind o’er thy prairies that blows,

And strong in the vigor that hourly grows;

No burden impedes thy triumphant career;—

All, all of thy Mother’s that thou mayest share,

Is the glory that brightens her history’s page.

Say: what wilt thou do with this heritage,

Oh, Canada?

Reposing there on thy Northern throne,

   With thy free-born air, so proud and grand,
Thy bosom begirt with a golden zone,

   And an ocean kissing thy either hand:

Is thy crown not already irradiated

By the beams from the sun of futurity shed!

May never that lofty and stainless brow

With the blush of shame in confusion bow,

Nor the voice of the future recall with scorn

The promise of this thy natal morn,

Fair Canada!

Wilt thou blazon forth on the scroll of time

A proud record of thoughts and of deeds sublime?

Be warned by—-but not to imitate—

The errors and crimes of a world effete

Shall the rule universal that governs thy land

Be, not the contrivance by impotence planned,—

A chaos of fiction, of error, deceit,

Where Anarchy’s smile is Society’s cheat;—

But the law, e’er evolving to infinite years,

And which lives in the music of numberless spheres,

Developing ever what best is in man,

And ignoring the creed of Humanity’s ban;

Whilst. ever in Civilization’s advance,

In the vanguard shall quicken thy brightening glance,

Till the sorrowing nations their tumult shall cease

To partake of thy glories of dignified peace,

Brave Canada?

Or foredoomed is that beauteous form to be

Of most loathsome of human things the prey,

Who, sneering at patriotism’s filial ties

And all things regarding with bestial eyes,

Would abase thee to grade of the prostitute,

And thy name, and thy fame, and thy honor pollute?

Shall the reckless empiric and impudent fool

Presume o’er thy splendid Dominion to rule,

And punily wise whilst viciously daft,

Go aping old wiles of exploded state-craft,

In an endless procession, forever the same,

With “reform” but the change of a factionist name?

Shall a verminly host of corruptionists crawl

O’er the face of thy loveliness, fouling it all,

Till their carcases, gorged with the tide of thy life,

Make the stench of pollution where sweetness was rife;

Whilst their poison, cast back in thy nurturing pores,

Marks their trail centipedal with festering sores,

The spume of a leprosy raging beneath,

And making thy life one long, lingering death?

Shall the knave sanctimonious and smooth hypocrite,

All the while, on thy breast, like an incubus sit,

To mock thee with tales of the Heavenly Will,

And tell thee thy woes are inevitable;

Till the wise of thy children—most loved of thy heart,—

Away from the sight of thy wretchedness start,

In despair at thy ruin, and blushing with shame

At the blight ignominious that clings to thy name,

Poor Canada?

Let our songs of rejoicing be toned with the prayer,

That thy future may brighten a record more fair;—

For that prayer will re-act on the uttering Will,—

To uplift, to expand, and intensify still.

May thy sons, with due mete of their dignity rise,

To wrestle, like men, with their destinies;

Put away childish things; self-reliant and bold,

Drawing lessons of truth from the lore of the old,

Yet seeking forever intensified light,

Rear thy empire proudly in wisdom and right;

And ever their glories ancestral advance,

With more than the splendors of England and France;

Till thy banner of peace and of progress unfurled,

Shall blaze in the van of a happier world;

Whilst thy generate millions, through ages unborn,

Shall honor with pride thy Nativity Morn,

Dear Canada!

   July 1st, 1967

 
Happy Canada Day!

Related posts:

'We first saw light in Canada...'

'God Guide Thee Canada'

Laura Salverson's 'For Canada' for Canada Day

'Canada to England, July 1st 1917' by Horace Bray

'O Canada! beloved native land...'
'O Canada! our native land thou art!'
Patriotic Verse from the Garden of a Girl's Dreams
A 123-Year-Old Poem for Canada Day

Two Hurrahs for the New Dominion

Charles G.D. Roberts' Dominion Day Collect
Marjorie Pickthall's Canadian Hymn

Verse From the First of Dominion Poetesses
Fair Canada: 'Here many nations dwell...'

The Man with the Midas Touch

Sword of Desire

Robert W. Tracy [Alvin Schwartz]
New York: Arco, 1952

176 pages

As far as I can tell, "Fort Crime!" is the first Alvin Schwartz story I ever read. It concerns a criminal organization that uses heavy artillery in committing crimes. Superman, Batman, and Robin figure.

"Fort Crime!" first appeared in published in World's Finest Comics #71 (September-October, 1954). I read the story when it was reprinted twenty years later in World's Finest Comics #224 (August 1974).

Alvin Schwartz had long since walked away from comics by the time I caught up with him, but in 1954, when "Fort Crime!" first appeared he was still very active in writing for the comics. He was just as active in 1952, the year Sword of Desire saw print, churning out stories for Batman, Superboy, Superman, and the Superman daily comic strip.

Sword of Desire is not for children. It opens on the meeting of a senate committee looking into a "white slave" syndicate. The most recent witness, a woman who wore a clinging black silk dress and "gracile lizard skin pumps" – much is made of this – has been found naked and dead in a vacant lot. Senator Kingarden, who heads the committee, has had enough:

"Let's stop acting like a collection of sanctimonious old women poking Puritanically around the outer edges of wickedness. Let's be realistic and recognize that you don't investigate a crime by turning up your noses at the smell. If it's our business to legislate, then we can't afford to be so refined that we regard our noses as mere facial ornamentation. We've got, if I may say so, a genuine stink on our hands and the sooner we use the natural organs that God gave us for dealing with it, the sooner we'll get results."

Tough talk, though it is clear that Kingarden has no intention of bringing fellow senators' noses or other organs an inch closer than need be. Instead, he proposes that psychoanalyst Dr Genorius Veresi be brought in to help with the investigation by going undercover as a john. There is some pushback from committee members, though not nearly so much as one might expect.

"One of those rare geniuses of healing that has come out of the new schools of psychology which regard sex as the basis of all man's inner desires," Veresi is a controversial figure who employs unorthodox methods. Schwartz hints that the doctor restricts his practice to married women who have little or no sexual desire. The doctor's treatment, which comes from years of intense study, involves a fleeting touch that unleashes sexual desire.

It's not what you think, nor is it wear you think. In the first case, Veresi grazes the underside of a patient's wrist.  

Consider it a superpower. The doctor uses it to induce women in the syndicate to reveal all.

There were many points at which I nearly gave up on this novel. The whole thing seemed so silly and, to be completely honest, the sex scenes were mild in the extreme. Still, I'm glad I made the effort.

It was, I think, in "Contact Two," the sixth chapter of sixteen, that something twigged. I recalled something about Wilhelm Reich, "orgone energy," and "orgone theory," which were all the rage in the post-war years. I'm fairly certain I skimmed over something about it all in university. I next came upon a 2005 online response to a query in which Schwartz describes Sword of Desire as a "take-off on Reichian Orgone psychology." That he seemingly felt the need to explain suggests limited appeal for today's reader, Reichians excluded. 

I will say that after "Contact Two" things really begin to pick up, even for those who know little of Reichian theory. It's here that Sword of Desire becomes a true detective story.

As might be expected, a woman proves to be both Veresi's Kryptonite and his Lois Lane.

Sword of Desire was read for the 1952 Club, co-hosted by Kaggsy and Simon. Other books from 1952 I've read and reviewed here over the years include:

Dark Passions Subdue - Douglas Sanderson

Destination: Universe! - A.E. van Vogt

Die With Me Lady [Weep No More, Lady] - Ronald Cocking

Flee the Night in Anger - Dan Keller [Louis Kaufman]

Hot Star - Robert W. Tracy [Alvin Schwartz]

The Lively Corpse [Rose's Last Summer] - Margaret Millar

Murder Over Dorval - David Montrose [Charles Ross Graham]

Pierre le magnifique - Roger Lemelin

Vanish in an Instant - Margaret Millar

Of these, the one I most recommend is Vanish in an Instant, which is one of my very favourite Margaret Millar novels. She wrote so many!

I would be remiss in not also praising Murder Over Dorval by the mysterious David Montrose (Charles Ross Graham), which I helped return to print as part of the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books series. Coincidentally, I'm now involved in reissuing another of the titles listed above.

More to come! 

Object: A red hardcover wrapped in a jacket with uncredited illustration. The novel itself is followed by  several pages of Arco promo material, six of which flog "ARCO SOPHISTICATES." The first title listed is Touchable, Schwartz's 1951 Arco collaboration with Lee Scott. It's the first Alvin Schwartz novel I ever read.

Access: Published once, then never again, McMaster and the University of Toronto have it in their holdings.

I purchased my copy two years ago as part of a lot of twelve Arco books. There were only two I wanted, the other being Alvin Schwartz's Man Maid (New York: Arco, 1952), but the price was right at an even US$100. At the time, two copies of Sword of Desire were listed online, the cheaper being US$100!

Never mind! As I write this, just one copy of Sword of Desire is listed for sale online. The price is a mere seven quid! Get it while you can!

Related posts:

Sexy Stuff from Bizarro Superman's Creator
Dick Tricks Chicks Into Hot Pix!

An Alvin Schwarz Cover Cavalcade

The Case of the Queer Antiques Dealer

The Mystery of Cabin Island
Franklin W. Dixon [Leslie McFarlane]
New York: Grosset & Dunlop [c. 1960]
214 pages

If you ever happen to visit Bayport, home of internationally famous detective Fenton Hardy and his sons Frank and Joe, I recommend you stay away from the water. The Missing Chums, which I read last year, begins with the near collision of a motorboat with two sailboats. The early pages of The Mystery of Cabin Island features the near collision of two ice boats. In both cases, tragedy is averted only due to Frank's quick thinking and piloting skills.

Iceboats date back to 18th-century Holland, but I had no idea that they were so common in 1920s America. Frank and Joe built one themselves. Their chum Biff receives an ice boat from his dad as a Christmas present. Bad Tad Carson and Ike Nash, who are most certainly not chums, have the biggest one by far.

London: Harold Hill & Son, 1953

Is this an American thing? I ask because I don't believe I've ever met anyone who owns an ice boat.

The eighth book in the series, The Mystery of Cabin Island is my third Hardy Boys read. As I'm discovering, backstories often reference the boys' previous adventures. In this case, that previous adventure is book number six, The Shore Road Mystery (1928), which saw the brothers working to expose a gang of car thieves.

One of the cars retrieved was a Pierce-Arrow, belonging to a "queer" antiques dealer named Elroy Jefferson. He was away in Europe at the time and so never had a chance to thank Frank and Joe. Now that Jefferson has returned to Bayport, he rewards them with two crisp hundred dollar bills (roughly $3700 today):

The boys protested, but Elroy Jefferson insisted, and finally they were forced to accept the reward.
   “Now,” said Mr. Jefferson, “if there is anything else I can do for you at any time, don’t hesitate to ask me."

But Frank does hesitate... then asks permission to camp on nearby Cabin Island, which happens to be owned by the antiques dealer. In fact, it was Jefferson who constructed the cabin after which the island is named. Just the previous day, Frank, Joe, Biff, and their chum Chet had landed on Cabin Island in their ice boats, only to be ordered off by a mysterious man named Hanleigh. As it turns out, he's been pressuring Jefferson to sell him the island, but the "queer old chap" won't budge:

I won’t sell him the island at any price, and I told him so. You see, when my wife and son were alive they loved to go there in winter and summer, so Cabin Island has certain associations for me that cannot be estimated in terms of money. They are dead now, and I cannot bear to part with the place.

Jefferson is happy to grant the Hardy boys and their chums Biff and Chet permission to camp on the island, though I must say this doesn't involve camping as I understand it. No tents are involved, rather the four boys settle into the cabin, complete with large living area, kitchen, and bedrooms. Upon arrival, they spy Hanleigh inspecting the cabin's imposing chimney and jotting down figures on the back of an envelope.

What exactly is Hanleigh up to?

The Hardy boys are nowhere near so curious as this reader. After ordering Hanleigh off Cabin Island, the four boys while away the hours skating, skiing, and ice boating. I began to wonder whether Frank and Joe's disinterest in Hanleigh's jottings might best be explained by issues with short-term memory.

Hear me out.

Frank, Joe, Biff, and Chet, spend the following day exploring Barmet Bay on ice boat. Upon returning to the cabin they find that their "grub" has been stolen. The following morning, the Hardy boys set off for in their iceboat for supplies at a general store run by chatty old-timer Amos Grice. Upon learning that the boys are staying on Cabin Island, the storekeep relates a fascinating story about an extremely valuable stamp collection that had been stolen from Elroy Jefferson by his man servant John Sparewell some fifteen or so years earlier.

Back on Cabin Island, Joe comes across a notebook belonging to John Sparewell:

"Sparewell," mused Frank. "Where have I heard that name before?"

It takes a while before Frank and Joe remember the name from the story they'd heard just hours earlier.

There's little in the way of sleuthing here. The mystery of The Mystery of Cabin Island is revealed when the chimney comes down in a winter storm, exposing the missing collection.

The boys are again rewarded, this time to the tune of $200 apiece. Jefferson gives lesser players Biff and Chet $100 each.

My attention had long since been absorbed by Elroy Jefferson as a character, largely because of the repeated use of "queer" in describing the antiques dealer. Now, I do realize that The Mystery of Cabin Island was written at a time when "queer" was commonly used – but not always used – as a synonym for strange or unusual. Still, reading it here did raise a nod, wink, and smile. I could not help but think that Leslie McFarlane was having a bit of fun within the constraints imposed by Hardy Boys creator Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

Leaving aside stereotypes associated with Jefferson's occupation, and that he spends most of the year  in Europe rather than provincial Bayport, I might've thought I was reaching had it not been for Grice's reaction upon learning that the antiques dealer had allowed the boys to camp on his island:

“Yes, that’s just like Mr. Jefferson. Got a heart of gold, specially where boys is concerned. But queer — mighty queer in some ways,” said Amos Grice, again wagging his head. "Do you know" — and he leaned forward very confidentially — "I really think he married Mary Bender because of her postage stamp collection.”
   This amazing announcement left the Hardy boys rather at a loss for words. “He married his wife because of her postage stamp collection!” exclaimed Joe.
   “That’s what I said. You’ve heard of the Bender stamp collection, haven’t you?” he demanded.
   The boys shook their heads.

   “Well, I ain’t a stamp collector and I’ve heard of it. The Bender collection is supposed to be one of the greatest collections of postage stamps in the world. Why, I’ve heard tell that it’s worth thousands and thousands of dollars.”
   “And Mrs. Jefferson owned it?”
   “Yep. Her name was Mary Bender then, and she inherited it from her father. I got parts of the story from people who knew Mr. Jefferson well. It seems he has always been a collector of antiques and old coins and stamps and things, but one thing he had set his heart on was the Bender stamp collection. But he couldn’t buy it. Either Mr. Bender wouldn’t sell or Elroy Jefferson couldn’t raise the money — but somehow he could never buy them."

"Queerest story I ever did hear," says Amos Grice in concluding his account of the theft, adding:

"Mary Bender died just a short time after. And ever since the stamps were lost, Elroy Jefferson ain’t been the same. [...] It seemed to break Elroy Jefferson all up, because that collection was the pride of his heart, and when it disappeared so strangely, he just didn’t seem to take any more interest in anything."

I may be reading too much into this. 

Now, if McFarlane had written "so queerly" instead of "so strangely" I might be more certain.

Caution: Of the four ice boats that feature in the novel, two are destroyed in accidents. Fortunately, no lives were lost.

London: Armada, 1982

That said, it does seem a dangerous mode of transportation.

Object: This one was purchased eight years ago for one dollar. It once belonged to a girl named Pamela who lived on Blasdell Avenue in Ottawa. That she wrote her name and address in the book using a fountain pen gives some indication as to its age. A further clue is found in the book's list of previous Hardy Boys Mysteries, the most recent being The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (1960).

Sadly, my copy lacks the dust jacket. It would've featured this illustration:

The cabin is roughly a sixth the size that described in the text. The chimney is far too short and should be wide enough to easily accommodate a sixteen-year-old boy. The depiction in the original 1929 edition is more accurate, though the cabin is far too close to the water:

Access: The Mystery of Cabin Island was first published in 1929 by Grosset & Dunlop. As I write, two first editions with dust jackets are listed for sale online. The cheaper is going for US$700.

The novel was rewritten in 1966 by Anne Shultes, Andrew E. Svenson, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. This is the version in print today.

I'm not familiar with the revision, though as I understand it involves a missing grandchild, medals, and a smattering of racism. How much of Leslie McFarlane's original remains I cannot say, but I'm guessing it isn't much. 

As far as I can tell, there had been three translations – French (Le mystère de l'Île de la Cabane), Swedish (Mysteriet i jakstugan), and Norwegian (Hardy-guttene og den stjålne frimerkesamlingen) – though I expect all are of the revision.

Related posts:

Here's to Missing Chums

Gone Fishin' (without Frank and Joe Hardy)

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Barnabas, Quentin and the Crystal Coffin
Marilyn Ross [W.E.D. Ross]
New York: Paperback Library, 1970
157 pages

The back cover poses a question: 

Knowing nothing about Betty Ward, I was stumped. What's more, I wasn't at all sure about Collinwood and its evil forces. Dark Shadows, the gothic soap that spawned this novel, was cancelled when I was eight. All I knew about the series came from a Gold Key comic bought when I was nine:

The featured story is titled "The Thirteenth Star." I remember it as my introduction to the Golem. After that, I thought no more about Dark Shadows for a half-century. My interest as an adult has to do with the discovery that Dan Ross, who penned Barnabas, Quentin and the Crystal Coffin and the thirty-one other Dark Shadows novels, was a son of St John, New Brunswick.

My childhood memories of Collinwood being in Collinsport Bay, Maine proved correct. It's the family home of the Collins family, Barnabas Collins being the oldest member. As a vampire, I suppose he might be considered one of the house's "EVIL FORCES," though he proves every bit the gentleman when accompanying pretty blonde Carolyn Stoddard. One of Barnabas's youngest relatives, Carolyn is keen on visiting the ruins of Frene Castle, located on the vast Collinwood estate bordering the town of Collinsport Bay.

Carolyn Stoddard (Nancy Barrett) and Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) in Dark Shadows episode #351, broadcast 30 October 1967.

"Tell me about Frene Castle and the Frenes," says Carolyn. Barnabas begins, is interrupted by six asterisks, and then an omniscient narrator takes over.
      

Aptly named London orphan Betty Ward is at the centre of the story. She and twin sister Georgette have been under the care of Reverend Prit since their parents died. Bumbling and ineffective, he hasn't been the best of guardians. Prit's opposition to Georgette's desire to study art in Paris was easily overcome and he's heard little from the girl since. Betty, who is more on the ball than the clergyman, gleams through letters home that her sister is falling in love with American sculptor Jeremy Frene; still, their elopement takes her by surprise.

Georgette and Jeremy set sail for his home at Frene Castle. Meanwhile, Betty makes for Paris because she wants to investigate whatever went on before the newlyweds departed. The fact-finding mission doesn't make much sense, though it does bring the very best scenes of the novel. My favourite has to do with an artistic dwarf named Dulez who has been commissioned to create a wax sculpture of Georgette for wealthy French Count Lissay, whom she had rebuffed.

Dulez imprisons Betty because a warm, living, flesh and blood likeness of Georgette is much better than a waxwork, right? Won't the Count Lissay be pleased!

Betty is rescued by Quentin Collins of the Collinsport Bay Collinses. He's the novel's most physically attractive male, though as anyone familiar with the television series will tell you, Quentin is both a bad boy and a werewolf.

For reasons unknown, Quentin does his best to dissuade Betty from setting out for the New World and Collinsport Bay. Failing this, he books a passage on the very same ship, then begins terrorizing his fellow passengers.  

Writing propels the plot with sentence structures that would have not passed muster in my high school English classes:

She didn't refer to it again. But when she was back in her own cabin doing the last of her packing she did think of that bandaged hand. And an odd thought flashed through her mind. The sailor on deck claimed he had shot the werewolf in the front right paw. She stood frowning into space for a moment. And this morning Quentin appeared with a bandaged right hand? Could there be any connection between the two things?

     She at once decided there couldn't.

Barnabas, Quentin and the Crystal Coffin is one of thirteen – thirteen! – "Marilyn Ross" Dark Shadows novels published in 1970. That not one is based on the soap's storylines makes the accomplishment all the more impressive.

Betty Ward wasn't a character in the television series. She exists only in this novel, making the question posed on as the back cover a bit unfair.

Carolyn Stoddard, of course, was a character in the television series. She was born and raised raised at Collinwood, yet in this novel had not so much as seen the ruin of Frene Castle. And so, I have a question of my own:

JUST HOW LARGE IS THE COLLINWOOD ESTATE?

Object: A mass market paperback. The novel itself is followed by three pages of adverts for "Other Great Gothics By Marilyn Ross," along with My Life With Jacqueline Kennedy by Mary Barelli Gallagher. My signed copy was purchased last year as part of a lot of twelve Marilyn Ross Dark Shadows paperbacks.

Access: The Popular Library edition enjoyed a single printing. As of this writing, fifteen copies are listed for sale online ranging in price from US$5.00 to US$24.50.

Condition is not a factor.

This collector, who suffered gouging in the purchase of the aforementioned lot of Dark Shadows paperbacks, notes:

• A California bookseller is charging US$50.00 to ship his US$13.41 copy to Canada. 
• A Texas bookseller is charging US$13.01, then asks US$100.00 for shipping.

USPS First-Class International Package Service from their addresses to mine is US$17.00.

Caveat emptor!

Read for Kaggsy and Simon's 1970 Club.

Other titles from 1970 I've reviewed here over the years:

Cry Hallelujah! - Kenneth Orvis

Re-entry - John Wesley White

The Sin Sniper - Hugh Garner

The Sleeping Bomb - James Moffatt

Stephen Leacock - Robertson Davies

Strength Down Centre - Hugh Hood

The Temple of Pederasty - John Glassco

Related posts:

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2023!

Nurse Grant's Heart Probems
Not to Be Confused with Bust Planet

As He Lay Dying

The Jameson Girls
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1956
240 pages

King Jameson is dying and his daughters have gathered for the occasion. Isobel has flown in from New York, where she lives with third husband Eric. Mildred too lives in New York, but with her first husband. She arrived by train.

Isobel and Mildred don't talk.

Fanny, the eldest sister, didn't have travel at all; she lives at the family home with Lily, the fourth and youngest Jameson girl. Meanwhile, King lies semi-coherent in an upstairs bedroom facing framed photographs of his two dead wives.

Hawkrest is a grand house located on a wooded crag overlooking the Niagara River. King bought it not long after the Great War, then moved his family from New York. Before the war, the Jamesons had lived in Chicago, in which King's British immigrant parents had settled.

Hawkrest was ideal for King's burgeoning business as a rumrunner. As the years passed, he began pretending that the house had been in the family for generations. King would point to its antique furnishings, collected by the former owner, describing them as objects ancestral.

The true Jameson family history is slowly revealed. The most solacious details belong to King and his second wife, though Isabel and her many marriages provide competition. In stark contrast, Fanny, the eldest Jameson girl, settled into contented spinsterhood as a child. Mildred, the third Jameson girl, obsesses over marital fidelity, while Lily...

Well, what of Lily? The baby of the family, she's the daughter of King's sexy second wife Hazel, who died behind the wheel. Lily was in the passenger seat. She barely survived and hasn't been "right" since.

The Jameson Girls is backward looking, with the real drama existing only in memory. The reader has arrived too late, and so relies on fleeting references to past events. The present, lighter and more comical, takes place under a gathering cloud. It has two stars, the most recent being American Theodore Fairfield, who is summering in the mansion-cum-B&B across the road. A bigamist gold digger who presents himself as a son of Boston's well-to-do, he sets his sites first on Fanny, then quickly shifts to Lily. She's so pretty, so doll like, so innocent, so malleable, he's afraid he's falling in love.

The second star is  Mrs Pringle, who has taken offense in being referenced as "the maid" by King Jameson's night nurse. She is not "the maid," rather "a family friend" who just happens to have taken care of the house daily, for pay, these past thirty or so years. Fanny is so fearful the insulted, indignant Mrs Pringle will leave that she has taken over most housekeeping duties.

It's not all light, of course. Let's remember there is a man dying upstairs. Of this, Mrs Pringle is well aware:

In a burst of optimism on Saturday she had bought a black hat for the funeral: I hope I haven’t gone and wasted my good money, she thought as she ran water into the sink.

Like most Kirkus reviews, its take on The Jameson Girls (1 September 1956) is very short, yet somehow manages to give away too much. I'll share only the final sentence: "For women only, a more credible than charitable chronicle - and this prying, gossipping [sic], niggling world has its authenticity as well as human curiosity."

My interest in this quote relates to an ongoing discussion with friends regarding the "target audience," and how zeroing in on a specific reader, invariably the one most likely to purchase, can alienate others.

Canadian Forum, December 1956

Nelson, Foster and Scott's promotion was gender neutral. Would the Kirkus "For women only" have brought more sales?

Who knows?

What I can say for certain is that this man is all in on a prying, gossiping, niggling world that has authenticity and human curiosity.

You will be, too.

Not quite a bloomer: This passage, in which Fanny reacts to the revelation that sister Isobel, twice divorced, is having an affair, gives some idea of Jan Hilliard's talent:

The critics rave: For all my searching, I've yet to find an unfavourable review of any Jan Hilliard novel. Vancouver Sun critic Elmore Philpott champions The Jameson Girls in his 4 January 1954 review: "It is a witty, genial, sparking satire about the three daughters of the ex-king of the Niagara river rum runners [emphasis mine]."

Did he read it?

Object and Access: One of just two Nelson, Foster & Scott titles in my collection, the other being Jan Hilliard's A View of the Town (1954), The Jameson Girls is a solid hardcover with brown boards and uncredited jacket illustration. All evidence suggests that it was a split-run with Abelard-Schulman, printed and bound in England. Neither edition was reprinted.

There has never been another.

As I write, one copy of the Nelson, Foster & Scott edition is listed online at US$19.00.

In very good condition with dust jacket, it's a steal at twice the price.

Related posts:

A Crooked Cousin in a Country Cottage

A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic

Growing Up With Mother
Susanna Moodie's Bloomers

Fifteen Favourite Quebec Novels pour la Fête

For the day, a list of fifteen novels by Quebecers – born and bred – all deserving more attention. In each case, the image presented is the cover of the edition I read. Descriptions are short, but clicking on the links will give a better idea as to why they were selected.

Was 1960 the banner year for Quebec literature? 1962? 1916?

Les Anciens Canadiens
Phillipe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé
1863

The second French-language novel – following son Philippe-Ignace-Francois's L'influence d'un livre (1837) – Les Anciens Canadiens is set in the decades surrounding the fall of New France. Steeped in history, culture, and the supernatural, I've read it twice, but only in translation.    

Armand Durand

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
1868

A novel I read in French translation, though it was composted in English. Makes sense in a way because Mme Leprohon was even more popular amongst French readers. Like Les Anciens Canadiens, it leans heavily on what would've then been described as Canadien traditions and culture. A moving tale of love and betrayal.

La Scouine

Albert Laberge

1909

Condemned by Mgr Paul Bruchési, Archbishop of Montreal, as "ignoble pornographie," you can understand the attraction. La Scouine is populated by dislikable, immoral, and hypocritical characters, clergy included. It is, in short, the anti-roman a terre. Sadly, Laberge paid a real price in writing this novel.

The Miracle Man
Frank L. Packard
1911

A gang of thieves and con artists leave New York City for rural Maine so as to get in on the scam pushed by a blind faith-healer, only to find there there is no grift. The 1919 Hollywood adaptation is considered one of the great lost silent films. Since writing my 2011 review twenty-four more seconds have been found. I couldn't be happier.

Similia Similibus
Ulrich Barthe
1916

A Great War nightmare in which Germans invade Quebec City, seize the Legislative Assembly, and slaughter citizens, this novel was almost certainly inspired by propaganda involving supposed atrocities committed in Belgium. Civil servant Barthe's lone novel, it is itself propaganda.

Marion: The Story of an Artist's

   Model
Winnifred Eaton
1916

No other Montreal family has been so remarkable. Though a novel, Marion provides the most intimate glimpse of the Eatons' struggles against racism and poverty. Winnifed was a successful novelist with a career in early Hollywood. Imagine!

Les Demi-civilisés

Jean-Charles Harvey

1934

Another banned book, the villain this time is Jean-Marie-Rodrigue Villeneuve, Archbishop of Quebec, who condemned it for criticizing religion. It does not. What Les Demi-civilisés does criticize is the Roman Catholic Church. The novel has been translated twice, but John Glassco's is the one to read.

Erres boréales
Faurent Laurin [Armond Grenier]

1944

The craziest Quebec novel I've read thus far, in Erres boréales massive heaters have been placed in the Gulf of St Laurence so as to make Quebec a tropical paradise. A travelogue of sorts, the story follows friends as they explore the province, now an independent country with palm trees.

Les Plouffe

Roger Lemelin

1948 

Roger Lemelin's first book, for decades Les Plouffe stood second only to Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'occasion as the best known French Canadian novel. The television series it inspired made for essential viewing. So why is Mary Finch's translation not in print? I blame Bertelsmann.

Le Libraire
Gérard Bessette

1960

The story of a washed up man who somehow manages to get a job in a shop selling stationary, religious items, and books. After a time, the proprietor comes to trust him with selling literature banned by the Catholic Church. Le Libraire was first published in France, not Quebec... 'cause, you know, the Church. 

 

The English Governess
Miles Underwood [John Glassco]

1960

First published in Paris by Olympia Press, The English Governess is both this country's finest and best selling work of erotica. That said, I much prefer Harriet Marwood, Governess, the more elegant version of the love story, published fourteen years later. 

Doux-amer
Claire Martin [Claire Montreuil]

1960

A literary editor is presented with a bad manuscript by a good looking woman. He reworks, remakes, and remodels, crafting a work that is both a critical and commercial success. A novel of obsession, it is vaguely Nabokovian – which is always a plus.

Four Days

John Buell

1962

This writer is far better known for his first novel, The Pyx (1960), but it was the second that caused critic Edmond Wilson to place Buell alongside Marie-Claire Blais as one of Canada's great writers. Of the nineteen novels I've helped return to print, this is my favourite.

The Damned and the Destroyed

Kenneth Orvis
   [Kenneth Lemieux]

1962

Another novel I helped usher back to print, The Damned and the Destroyed is set during the earliest days of Jean Drapeau's first term. Its hero, a Korean War vet, is hired to go after the heroin ring polluting the veins of a rich man's daughter. Lee Child is a massive fan.

Une Chaîne dans le parc

André Langevin

1974

Jack McClelland considered this novel the best to have come out of French Canada since Bonheur d'occasion. Sadly, sales did not in any way match expectations. Alan Brown's 1976 translation received no second printing and has been out of print ever since. The novel is a masterpiece.

Bonne fête!

Related posts:

Gothique Canadien

Armand Durand; or, A Summer Project

Ignoble Phorographie - Translated!

The Miracle Man on Paper and Nitrate Film

Dreaming of the Hun

Glassco's $9500 Library and the Montreal Eatons
Cardinal Villeneuve's Folly
Global Warming as a Nationalist Dream

What's Going on with The Plouffe Family?
Reading Gérard Bessette on His Hundredth
Canada's Olympians (Part III)

Claire Martin at the Start of a Quiet Revolution
Four Days in Darkest Quebec
'A Relentless Story of the Hell of Drug Addiction'
Langevin's Masterpiece; McClelland's Disappointment