The Rise and Fall of a Peacock Philosopher

The Money Master;
   Being the Curious History of Jean Jacques Barbille,

   His Labours, His Loves and His Ladies
Gilbert Parker

Toronto: Copp Clark, 1915
360 pages

I bought my first Gilbert Parker book at a library sale in the mid-eighties. By 1990, it was gone, though I have no idea where. My fault, of course. I'd paid it little attention because Parker himself wasn't paid much attention. His name had never once come up in university courses. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, then my bible, doesn't accord the man so much as one of its 1199 pages, despite popularity and critical acclaim (both now a century past).

I couldn't even remember which Parker I'd owned back then. What I did remember was an illustration and caption depicting a miserable man traveling to Quebec in the company of a beautiful woman who seemed intent on marriage. Imagine my surprise when in researching this recent read I came upon:

The image of the reluctant groom threw me because Parker depicts him as being extremely keen on marrying the woman in the funnel.

The fiancé, Jean Jacques Barbille, is heir to a fortune built over four generations. Having transformed these inherited riches into slightly greater riches, the Canadien has an idea to visit the land of his ancestors, where he expects to be recognized as a man of great importance. Paris disappoints, but folks in the nether regions appreciate his money and so accord deference. Satisfied, Jean Jacques sets off for home with purse depleted, comforted by the knowledge that his various endeavors, save one or two, are moderately successful. 

Whilst crossing the Atlantic aboard the good ship Antoine, Jean Jacques encounters Spanish Amazon Carmen Delores – she of the funnel – and Sebastian Delores, her father. They are on the run because papa – the sinister figure at the funnel's base – had been on the losing side of Spain's most recent power struggle. If anything, young Carmen suffered a far greater loss in that her lover Carvillho Gonzales was executed for his efforts:

Carmen had made up her mind from the first to marry Jean Jacques, and she deported herself accordingly – with modesty, circumspection and skill. It would be the easiest way out of all their difficulties. Since her heart, such as it was, fluttered, a mournful ghost, over the Place d’Armes, where her Gonzales was shot, it might better go to Jean Jacques than anyone else; for he was a man of parts, of money, and of looks, and she loved these all; and to her credit she loved his looks better than all the rest.

In short, Jean Jacques looks a lot like Carvillho Gonzales.

The Money Master is the twentieth book I've reviewed here this year. It follows James De Mille's The Cross and the Lily (1874) and Grant Allen's The Great Taboo (1890) in being the third to feature a shipwreck. Parker's takes place when the Antoine strikes an iceberg off the shore of Gaspé. Jean Jacques sees Carmen safely bestowed on a lifeboat, before giving up his spot to a crying fifteen-year-old boy. This he does, despite being not that strong a swimmer.

Fortunately, the Spanish Amazon is a strong swimmer. When her lifeboat overturns, she makes for a floating chair, and then uses that chair to save Jean Jacques from drowning.

James Cameron take note.

  

Jean Jacques and Carmen marry in the Gaspé, much to the disapproval of the gentle townspeople of St Saviour:

It was bad enough to marry the Spanische, but to marry outside one’s own parish, and so deprive that parish and its young people of the week’s gaiety, which a wedding and the consequent procession and tour through the parish brings, was little less than treason.

But what a story! The romance of it all is so great as to encourage the curious to travel as much as forty miles to catch a glimpse of the couple during Sunday mass. Carmen never corrects the presumption that she was saved by Jean Jacques and not the reverse. 

Jean Jacques Barbille is a man with "a good many irons in the fire." Given the opportunity, he'll sell you insurance and lightning rods. His inherited riches grow not by leaps and bounds, rather by unsteady steps as taken by a toddler.

He fancies himself first and foremost a philosophe. Though he never quite articulates his philosophy, Jean Jacques is quick to share that he spent a year at Université Laval. He carries with him a small volume titled Mediations on Philosophy, which he bought in Quebec before sailing for France.

Jean Jacques is an egotist and something of a dandy, all the while being a good man. He is kind, treats his workers well, forgives debts, and is generous toward the less fortunate. The man's greatest fault relates to the home. He is so taken with his reputation and many business concerns that Carmen feels neglected; this in turn results in the most interesting scenes I've read in an old novel this year...

And, you know, I've read twenty.

Carmen does not feature in the scene, though she does in the next, which is easily the second most interesting scene.

Reading The Money Master forty or so years after having first purchased a copy, I'm at a loss to explain how it is Gilbert Parker is so ignored.

Trivia: Adapted to the Hollywood screen in 1921 as A Wise Fool, the subject of the next week's post. 

Object: The first Canadian edition, it features seven illustrations by French artist André Castaigne, best known for having illustrated the first edition of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra. 'Tis a thing of beauty, purchased ten or so years ago in London, Ontario. Price: $2.50.

I'm also the proud owner of the Hutchinson's UK first edition, which I picked up in fin du millénaire Montreal for 30¢.

Sadly, it lacks its dust jacket (see below).

Access: The novel first appeared serialized in Hearst's Magazine (Aug 1913 - April 1914) and Nash's Magazine (Nov 1913 - Jul 1914).

As I write this, a Riverview, New Brunswick bookseller is offering a Very Good copy of the Copp Clark first edition at two dollars. There's no mention of a dust jacket, so I'm assuming that the bookseller believed it had none. Further west, a bookseller in Whitby, Ontario has a Canadian first with dust jacket!

The asking price is $100.

If you don't have the cash, consider the two dollar copy. It's a steal, particularly if you live nearby and can avoid shipping charges.

Before making your decision, consider Harper's American first with its unusual wrap-around jacket illustration, drawn from one of Castaigne's interior illustrations.

A bookseller in Portland, Oregon is offering this copy at US$35:

At the high end – US$350 – we have the Hutchinson UK first on offer from Babylon Revisited, a favourite bookseller. Must say that the cover illustration pales somewhat when compared to the work of Monsieur Castaigne.

Buyer beware, none of Castaigne's illustrations feature in the Hutchinson.

As always, print on demand copies are not to be considered.

Woodrow Wilson would agree.

Related post:

Acadian Driftwood
Of Cannibals and Christians
Gilbert Parker's Savage Novel
Behold the Translation of a Savage on Film!

Gilbert Parker's Savage Novel

The Translation of a Savage
Gilbert Parker
London: Methuen, [c.1897]
240 pages

I'm writing this after having spent several hours shovelling heavy slushy snow and stacking firewood. It may not be the best time – the mind is less than sharp and the body is tired – but I can't put off sharing my discovery of The Translation of a Savage, which is by far the most unpleasant and problematic novel I've ever read.

The Camden Democrat
6 October 1894

I mean discovery in a personal sense, of course; The Translation of a Savage was a bestseller in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Lippincott's Monthly Magazine devoted much of its June 1893 edition to publishing the novel in full. It was serialized in newspapers throughout the United States, and was thrice adapted by Hollywood. In the introduction provided for his 24-volume Works, Parker remarks on the novel's "many friends – sufficiently established by the very large sale it has had in cheap editions."

Sadly, those friends are long dead, and there is precious little evidence the novel is being read today.*

The Translation of a Savage begins in uninteresting fashion as yet another tale of the Canadian North. Frank Armour is a son of English privilege come to "Hudson Bay country" to further his fortune through mining. In doing so, he leaves behind his betrothed, beautiful Miss Julia Sherwood. The Armour parents aren't terribly keen on favourite son Frank's fiancée because she doesn't come from money; they'd much rather he marry Lady Agnes Martling, who "had long cared for him, and was most happily endowed with wealth and good looks." In their son's absence, mama and papa conspire to prevent the union.

Easily done! They invite Miss Sherwood to Greyhope, their Herefordshire home, then bring in young Lord Haldwell, and Bob's your uncle!

It's quite a blow to Frank, who receives his "Dear John" letter after reading about Julia and Hopewell's wedding in the society pages. He knows to blame his parents for the broken engagement, though as I've suggested, they didn't put in much effort. Nevertheless, brandy in his belly and revenge in his heart, he looks to "bring down the pride of his family" by marrying Lali, daughter of Chief Eye-of-the-Moon. After a brief honeymoon, the bride is dispatched to Greyhope in buckskin dress.

Lali, as portrayed by Mabel Julienne Scott, in Behold My Wife!, the 1920 Hollywood adaptation of The Translation of a Savage.

Lali's arrival in England is preceded by a well-crafted letter in which Frank acknowledges his parents' anxiousness that he wed "acceptably." He takes pains to note that Lali is of "the oldest aristocracy, in America." Because they'd wished him to marry wealth, he has sent them a wife rich in virtues, "native, unspoiled virtues." Frank trusts that they will take his bride to their hearts and cherish her, ever aware of their firm principles of honour. They will be kind to Lali until his return, "to share the affection which he was sure would be given to her."

The letter lands in the second of the novel's fifteen chapters. Twenty-first-century readers familiar with Victorian literature and mores will anticipate the reaction. I did, but was taken aback by a racial epithet entirely new to me. As I'm not one for censorship, I present it here. If you want to read it, click on the image below.

Richard Armour is the hero of this story. Frank's younger older-looking bookish brother, "not strong on his pins," has devoted his life to helping pensioners, the poor, and the infirm. Lali's acceptance at Hopewell is all Richard's doing. He is her defender. With gentle touch, he manipulates his family to her side, and provides the guidance she needs in navigating English society. 

Lali is the heroine. A young bride – her age is never disclosed – she wed Frank for love. Because that love is not blind, Lali quickly comes to recognize the awful truth behind her marriage.

Frank is the villain. After marrying Lali, he remains in Canada, and never so much as writes. His ventures are unsuccessful, in large part because his wife's people come to question what has become of Lali. Frank's people – by which I mean his family – do not trust his judgement. By the time Lali gives birth to a son, seven or so months after arriving at Hopewell, she has won over the Armour family. They recognize how badly she has been treated, and so respect her wishes that they keep the child's existence a secret.

Four years pass before Frank's return, during which Lali has adapted to her new surroundings. The woman he encounters in the halls of Greyhope is very different than the "heathen" he married.

Lali (Mabel Julienne Scott) and Frank (Milton Sills) are reunited in
Behold My Wife! (1920).

That word – "heathen" – is the used by Lali at the novel's climax, in which she is pushed to confront her husband:

Years of indignation were at work in her. “I have had a home,” she said, in a low, thrilling voice, — “a good home; but what did that cost you? Not one honest sentiment of pity, kindness, or solicitude. You clothed me, fed me, abandoned me, as — how can one say it? Do I not know, if coming back you had found me as you expected to find me, what the result would have been? Do I not know? You would have endured me if I did not thrust myself upon you, for you have after all a sense of legal duty, a kind of stubborn honour. But you would have made my life such that some day one or both of us would have died suddenly. For” — she looked him with a hot clearness in the eyes — “for there is just so much that a woman can bear. I wish this talk had not come now, but, since it has come, it is better to speak plainly. You see, you misunderstand. A heathen has a heart as another — has a life to be spoiled or made happy as another. Had there been one honest passion in your treatment of me — in your marrying me — there would be something on which to base mutual respect, which is more or less necessary when one is expected to love. But — but I will not speak more of it, for it chokes me, the insult to me, not as I was, but as I am. Then it would probably have driven me mad, if I had known; now it eats into my life like rust!"

Ultimately, of course, "heathen" is Parker's word, as is the measure of what a woman can bear. Lali existed only in his imagination, and remains with us today solely through the printed page.**

Frank tries to make amends, though His motivation is unclear. Is it, as Lali suggests, a sense of duty and a stubborn kind of honour? Might it have something to do with her "translation" to a woman who has been accepted by Society? Or is it simply because the two have a son? I have no answer, though will direct the curious to an associated theological question (below).

The very definition of a forgotten novel; The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, and The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature don't so much as mention The Translation of a Savage. This old Canadian Studies, English, and History major always saw it as just another of the dozens of Parker titles. I knew nothing about the novel, but feel I should have been made aware.

The Translation of a Savage begins as a story of the Canadian North. Aforementioned racial epithet aside, its attitudes and depictions of First Nations people are typical of Victorian literature; Lali's father, for example, is the very example of the "noble savage." What sets the novel apart is Lali and her translation.

She receives love in the Old World, in the main from the Amour family, making life sufferable, but her story is terrible. The entire story is terrible. Lali would like to return to Hudson Bay country, but feels she is too much changed. The novel's final sentences hint at reconciliation with Frank, but it is in no way a happy ending.

After all the time that has passed since reading those final words – some of it spent shovelling snow and stacking firewood – I'm still not sure what to think. What I can say, without hesitation, is that The Translation of a Savage should be read, studied, and discussed.

* Highly unscientific I know, but I do note that Goodreads features one lone readers' rating (one star), whereas Parker's The Right of Way has fourteen (3.36 stars average).

** I acknowledge that variations of Lali have appeared throughout the years on the silver screen – 1913, 1920, and 1934, to be precise – but Parker had no input in those depictions.

The subject of a future post.

Trivia: Frank receives news of Julia's marriage at Fort Charles – twice "Fort St. Charles" – a Hudson Bay Company outpost not far from the Kimash Hills and the White Valley. All exist only in Parker's fiction, most notably Pierre and His People (1894) and A Romany of the Snows (1898).

Interestingly, in 1907 poet Harmony Twichwell submitted an outline of an opera titled 'Kimash Hills' to her future husband Charles Ives.

Not trivia: In The Works of Gilbert Parker the author writes that the story "had a basis of fact; the main incident was true. It happened, however, in Michigan rather than in Canada; but I placed the incident in Canada where it was just as true to the life."

A theological question (spoiler): The novel ends suddenly with a contrived crise, after which we learn that Lali accepts "without demur her husband's tale of love for her." The suggestion is that this brings the couple together. Then come the last two ssentences:

Yet, as if to remind him of the wrong he had done. Heaven never granted Frank Armour another child.

If this is God's punishment is He not also punishing Lali?

Criticism: In his Works introduction, Parker notes that the novel was well-received. Despite the author's misgivings, Sir Clement Konloch-Cooke was eager to publish it in The English Illustrated Magazine. This was followed by enthusiasm from an unexpected source:  

The judgment of the press was favourable, – highly so – and I was as much surprised as pleased when Mr. George Moore, in the Hogarth Club one night, in 1894, said to me: “There is a really remarkable play in that book of yours, The Translation of a Savage.” I had not thought up to that time that my work was of the kind which would appeal to George Moore, but he was always making discoveries.

Object and Access: The novel made its debut in the June 1893 edition of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. My copy was purchased online late last year from a French bookseller. Price: US$14.65. It was advertised as the 1894 first British edition; indeed the title page suggests as much, but the novel itself is followed by a 40-page catalogue of Methuen titles dated March 1897. Included are seven Parker novels and Robert Barr's disappointing In the Midst of Alarms.

Je ne regrette rien.

This copy, the copy that now rests in my Upper Canadian home, once belonged to Parker's fellow Tory Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, who from 1892 to 1900 was British Ambassador to Spain.

Sir Henry was also the father of prolific novelist Anne Cleeve, author of The Woman Who Wouldn't (1895), written in response to Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (1895).

In its first three decades, The Translation of a Savage went through plenty of editions from plenty of publishers. I'm betting most used booksellers can't be bothered listing them for sale online. Of those who have, the least expensive – an undated Nelson at £2.80 – is offered by a UK bookseller. The most expensive is a cocked copy of Appleton's 1893 American first edition at US$75.00.

Those with an aversion to previously-owned books – I knew one such person – will see that both Indigo and Amazon sell this Esprios World Classics print on demand edition. 

The photograph used on the cover was taken in 1902 at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Wasco County, Oregon, adding further insult.

Related posts:

Born Again Infidel
Getting to the Fenian Raids
Getting to Know the Woman Who Did

Behold the Translation of a Savage on Film!

The Witch is Back; or, Cousin Cousine Cousine

A Daughter of Witches: A Romance

Joanna E. Wood
[n.p.]: Luminosity, [n.d.]
241 pages

Of all the books read these past twelve months, not one haunts so much as Joanna E. Wood's 1894 debut novel The Untempered Wind. It tells the story of Myron Holder, an unwed mother who dares raise a child in Jamestown, a provincial village located somewhere in the Niagara Region. To this reader, it is earliest example of Southern Ontario Gothic, holding every characteristic of the sub-genre; Protestant morality and hypocrisy are paramount.

Types of Canadian Women
Henry J. Morgan, ed.
Toronto: William Briggs, 1903

A Daughter of Witches, is Wood's third novel. It's set south of the border in the New England community of Dole, but make no mistake, this is Wood Country. The accents may differ, but the townsfolk of Dole are every bit as narrow-minded-minded and judgemental as those of Jamestown.

Dole is something akin to a closed community. Its families go back generations, stay put, and generally keep to themselves (see below). From time to time, someone will leave the village and strike out for Boston, the most recent being young Len Simpson.

And now he's dead... so there you go.

Old Lansing has this to say:

"Yes the buryin's to-morrow, and it seems Len was terrible well thought of amongst the play-actin' folk, and they've sent up a hull load of flowers along with the body, and there's a depitation comin' to-morrow to the buryin' and they say there's considerable money comin' to Len and of course his father'll get it. I don't know if he'll buy that spring medder of Mr. Ellis, or if he'll pay the mortgage on the old place, but anyhow it'll be a big lift to him."

No one in Dole is the least bit curious as to how Len acquired such wealth. The general consensus is that he was a disgrace to his family. It's whispered that he drank. 

News of Len Simpson's death coincides with the arrival of Sidney Martin, son of Sid Martin. Decades earlier, Sid left Dole to make a life for himself in Boston. He did something there, no one knows just what, but it is known that he married a woman from a moneyed family.

Sidney Martin's mother and father are now dead. Frail and pale, their son isn't looking too good himself. His countenance and weak physique contrast with raven-haired Vashti Lansing, whose Amazonian beauty and strength – she's first seen wrestling a runaway horse – captures the young man's heart.

The Canadian Bookseller, August 1900

Sidney falls hard for Vashti, but Vashti is in love with her cousin Lansing "Lanty" Lansing. Lanty loves another cousin, fair Mabella Lansing. Cousin Mabella returns his love.

The author passes no judgement on this bizarre love triangle, though she does torture Vashti in having her witness the moment in which her two cousins declare their love for one another.

Vashti is the central character in this romance, yet she is one of least realized characters. I believe this is intentional. Wood describes Vashti as acting on instinct; her will is not entirely her own:

Long ago they had burned one of her forbears as a witch-woman. They said she caused her spirit to enter into her victims and commit crimes, crimes which were naively calculated to tend to the worldly advantage of the witch. Vashti thought of her martyred ancestress often; she herself sometimes felt a weird sensation as of illimitable will power, as of an intelligence apart from her normal mind, an intelligence which wormed out the secrets of those about her, and made the fixed regard of her large full eyes terrible.  

Sidney Martin is so smitten, yet so blind, that he proposes marriage to Vashti on the very same spot Lanty and Mabella become engaged. Vashti's acceptance, which came as something of a surprise to this reader, comes with two conditions, the first being that once married they will live in Dole. The second condition, odd in the extreme, is that Sidney, an agnostic, will become an ordained minister so as to take over from old Mr Didymus, the village pastor.

What is Vashti up to? She does not know herself.

Sidney leaves Dole to study theology in Boston, returning years later as Didymus is dying. The elderly preacher's final act is to marry fiancé and fiancée. 

As the bride had long intended, the newlyweds move into the parsonage and Sidney takes over the ministry. If anything, he is more popular than his predecessor. Sidney's sermons, focusing on the majesty of the natural world, go over well in what is essentially a farming community. This is not to suggest that Sidney and Vashti are immune to town gossip.

As the preacher's wife, Vashti draws resentment in lording over the local ladies, attending their weekly sewing circle in gowns made in Boston. Then there's cousin Lanty – secret object of her affection – who has fallen into drink. Harsh words are spoken of Ann Serrup. "Left at thirteen the only sister among four drunken brothers much older than herself," like Myron Holder in The Untempered Wind, Ann is an unwed mother. Might Lanty be the father?

All this poisonous talk exhausts the patience of Temperance Tribbey, Old Lansing's housekeeper. In one of the novel's many memorable scenes, she takes down Mrs Abiron Ranger:

Temperance spoke with a knowledge of her subject which gave play to all the eloquence she was capable of; she discussed and disposed of Mrs. Ranger's forbears even to the third generation, and when she allowed herself finally to speak of Mrs. Ranger in person, she expressed herself with a freedom and decision which could only have been the result of settled opinion.
     "As for your tongue, Mrs. Ranger, to my mind, it's a deal like a snake's tail it will keep on moving after the rest of you is dead."

Vashti's instinct brings what I believe is intended as the climax. My uncertainty has to do with the scene being nowhere near as memorable as others. It should haunt, but it does not haunt. 

And so, the spoiler:

One Sunday morning, Sidney takes to the pulpit and delivers a sermon unlike any other. More brimstone than pastural, he admonishes his parishioners, pointing out their duplicity, dishonesty, deceit, and deception. Sidney repeats town gossip going back decades, but his words are not his own; they belong to Vashti, a daughter of witches. 

Not a spoiler: 

Vashti's fate is not deserved, nor is Wood's fate as a forgotten novelist.

Bloomer:

"Lanty will take it terribly hard," said the old man musingly. "He and Len Simpson ran together always till Len went off, and Lanty never took up with anyone else like he did with Len." 

Object and Access: A Daughter of Witches first appeared serialized in the Canadian Magazine (November 1898 - October 1899). In 1900, Gage (Canada) and Hurst & Blackett (England) published the novel in book form. I've yet to find a copy of either edition for sale, and so bought this print-on-demand edition.

The Gage edition can be read online here at the Internet Archive.

Related posts:

A Woman Who Did

Getting to Know the Woman Who Did

A Romance of Toronto: CanLit Most Verbose

A Romance of Toronto (Founded on Fact)

Mrs Annie G. Savigny
Toronto: William Briggs, 1888
229 pages

The first chapter, 'Toronto a Fair Matron,' begins:

Two gentlemen friends saunter arm in arm up and down the deck of the palace steamer Chicora as she enters our beautiful Lake Ontario from the picturesque Niagara River, on a perfect day in delightful September, when the blue canopy of the heavens seems so far away, one wonders that the mirrored surface of the lake can reflect its color.

Dale and Buckingham are the two gentlemen friends. In their sauntering, the former teases the latter for being a bachelor. Dale brags that he has not only wed, but has managed to father a child, whilst friend Buckingham prefers the company of his gentleman's club.

I describe this opening scene because it suggests an intriguing read.

Sadly, A Romance of Toronto is not.

Buckingham has joined Dale, Mrs Dale, their child, and pretty governess Miss Crew on a voyage from New York to Toronto. His presence aboard the Chicora is something of a mystery, but then the same might be said of the Dales and young Miss Crew. All may or may not involve a certain Mrs Gower, who has put to pen "a letter descriptive of Toronto." Dale reads it aloud as the palace steamer approaches Ontario's capitol. Four pages are consumed, these being the middle two:

Cliquez pour agrandir.

A Romance of Toronto is not a long novel but it demands a good amount of time and a great deal of concentration and patience. The reader may feel lost in the early chapters, but will eventually come upon a path. That same path will split in two, and then come together in the final pages.

In her introductory note, Mrs Savigny describes A Romance of Toronto as a novel consisting of two plots.

Dale and Buckingham have nothing to do with either.

The first involves young Charles Babbington-Cole. He knows Mrs Gower through his father, Hugh Babbington-Cole. A widower in frail health, Babbington-Cole père was once engaged to a wealthy Englishwoman. Tragically, the union was prevented through conniving and lies told the bride-elect by the sister of his late wife. The Englishwoman instead married her guardian with whom she had a daughter. When the sister-in-law's malfeasance was exposed Hugh Babbington-Cole and the Englishwoman – identified only as "Pearl" – vow that their offspring will one day wed and together inherit her riches.

And so, Charles Babbington-Cole bids Mrs Gower adieu, embarking for England and a storyline that reads like a very bad imitation of May Agnes Fleming; kidnapping, false identity, forced marriage, and a gothic manor house will figure.

The second plot – much more absurd, yet somehow less interesting – concerns Mrs Gower herself. A woman who has has twice worn the black robes of widowhood, she is cornered into accepting a marriage proposal from Mr Cobbe, by far the most repellent of her social set. Mrs Gower tells Mrs Drew how this came to be in 'The Oath in the Tower of Toronto University,' the novel's sixteenth chapter. This is its beginning:

Cliquez pour agrandir.

Several more pages pass in Mrs Gower's telling, but it comes down to this: Cobbe, who has been pestering Mrs Gower to marry him, fools her into believing that they've become locked in the tower overnight. Fearing scandal, Mrs Gower promises to marry Cobbe if he can only find a way out of their situation. The two descend only to find that the tower door isn't locked, and yet she holds herself to the oath.

Is Mrs Gower doomed to marry Cobbe? Is there not a means through which she can be released from her promise? Might the mysterious woman who has been haunting the grounds of Mrs Gower's home hold the key? The situation is made all the more dire when she meets and falls in love with Alexander Blair, a barrister newly arrived from Scotland.

Nothing is spoiled in reporting that all ends happily; the first of the novel's two epigraphs suggests as much.

Mrs Savigny's note makes it plain that A Romance of Toronto (Founded on Fact) is a roman à clef. but who are its models? Her two plots – "one of which was told to me by an actor therein; the other I have myself watched" – are "living facts." Who are the originals?  

A Montrealer, I hope to hear the answer from one of Toronto's fair children.

Trivia: The epigraph attributed to Charles Darwin – "I would like the Government to forbid the publication of all novels that did not end well." – is a false quote. Sleuthing led to the December 3, 1887 number of The Illustrated London News, which cites "Darwin's delightful biography [sic]" as the source. In The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1887), the naturalist writes of the pleasure he receives from novels, adding: "A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily—against which a law ought to be passed."

Mrs Savigny attributes her second epigraph – "What would the world do without story-books" – to Charles Dickens. I've not been able to find this quote or anything resembling it outside the pages of her novel.

Trivia II: The University of Toronto is referred to only once as such; "Toronto University" is used throughout the rest of the novel. I asked Amy Lavender Harris, author of Imagining Toronto, about this. She suggests that "Toronto University" might have been used to connote familiarity.

Bloomers: There are two, both expressed by Mrs Gower. The first is upon learning of Charles Babbington-Cole's departure for England:

"Don't you think, Lilian, that the opposite sex is usually chosen to lend an ear?" she said, carelessly, to conceal a feeling of sadness at the out-going of her friend; for she is aware that the old friendly intercourse is broken, now that he has gone to his wedding.

In the second, Mrs Gower is speaking of the man she loves:

"I am so glad he has come into my life: I feel lonely at times; and he is so companionable, I know. What dependent creatures we are, after all—houses and lands, robes a la mode, even, don't suffice. Intercourse we must have."

Object and Access: A deceptively slim hardcover. Fifty years after publication, my copy was added to the library of the Department of the Secretary of State. One wonders why. Might it have something to do with the suggestion that A Romance of Toronto is a roman à clef? I'm guessing not, but like to imagine otherwise. 

I don't know what to make of the binding, which is markedly different than Harvard University's copy:

I purchased A Romance of Toronto three years ago. As I write this just two copies are listed for sale online. The least expensive – $65 – is "good only." At $247, the alternative is "very fine." Take your pick.

A Romance of Toronto was reprinted in 1973 by the University of Toronto. If anything, that edition is even more rare. Long in the public domain, it continues to be picked over by print on demand vultures. This cover is my favourite by far:

Related post:

Susanna Moodie's Bloomers

An Egotist of Yesterday

A Daughter of To-day
Mrs Everard Cotes (Sara Jeannette Duncan)
New York: Appleton, 1894

392 pages

Of all the novels I've read this year, A Daughter of To-day has the very best opening scene. Miss Kimpsey, a spinster teacher in small town Sparta, Illinois, calls on local society matron Mrs Leslie Bell. Because her visit is unexpected, Miss Kimpsey must wait in the drawing room. The educator casts an eye about noting volumes on loan from the circulating library, the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Doré print, the arrangement of Japanese dolls, and the absence of bows and draperies:

Miss Kimpsey's own parlour was excrescent with bows and draperies. "She is above them," thought Miss Kimpsey, with a little pang.

Miss Kimpsey is concerned for Elfrida, Mrs Bell's fifteen-year-old daughter. In a recent essay, the girl quoted Rousseau, whom Miss Kimpsey believes "atheistical" and "improper in every way."

When told of this, Mrs Bell hides disappointment in learning that the Rousseau quotation wasn't in the original French.

Elfrida Bell, daughter of to-day, doesn't feature in the first chapter; she is only as others see her... No, that's not right. During their meeting, Mrs Bell presents Miss Kimpsey with a cabinet photograph for which Elfrida "posed herself." The girl is seen as she wants to be seen.

Fairly beautiful and somewhat talented, Elfrida is easily the most graceful and artistic fish in Sparta's small pond. An aspiring painter, she's enrolled in a Philadelphia art school. When results don't meet Mr and Mrs Bell's expectations, Elfrida is sent to study under Monsieur Lucien in Paris. Sadly, her Hungarian cloak draws more notice than her work.

Elfrida desires to be seen by others "as an artist and a Bohemian." That she achieves the latter with no effort – it is in her nature – makes it all the more difficult to acknowledge her limitations in the visual arts:

Elfrida was certain that if she might only talk to Lucien she could persuade him of a great deal about her talent that escaped him – she was sure it escaped him – in the mere examination of her work. It chafed her always that her personality could not touch the master; that she must day-after day be only the dumb, submissive pupil. She felt sometimes that there were things she might say to Lucien which would be interesting and valuable for him to hear. 

Misfortune strikes when Mr Bell's midwestern investments go south. Slim funds are sent overseas so as to enable their daughter's return to Illinois. Elfrida instead makes for London, where she looks to reinvent herself as a writer.

It is both trite and apt to describe Elfrida as complex. A young woman who lives for art and the life of an artiste, her behaviour can be infuriating. "'I know I must be difficult,'" she says when sitting for English portraitist John Kendal:

"Phases of character have an attraction for me – I wear one to-day and another to-morrow. It is very flippant, but you see I am honest about it. And it must make me difficult to paint, for it can be only by accident that I am the same person twice."

Nothing comes quite as one might expect. The author takes a great risk in centring the climax on our heroine's reaction to Kendal's portrait.  

A Daughter of To-Day was read in one go on July 22nd, the hundredth anniversary of Sara Jeannette Duncan's death. It was hard to put down. Writing to-day, I realize it was read too quickly. The more I consider, the more I see – much like Elfrida as she casts a critical eye on her portrait.

Trivia (or not): Sara Jeannette Duncan's mother was born Jane Bell. Elfrida's closest friend is named Janet.

Object: My copy, the first American edition, was purchased earlier this year from a Kentucky bookseller. Price: US$24.95. A thing of beauty, the image above doesn't come close to doing it justice. The novel proper is followed by four pages of adverts for Appleton editions of Rudyard Kipling, Wolcott Balestier, Beatrice Whitby, Egerton Castle, Edward Eggleston, and Maarten Maartens.

Access: First published in 1894 by the Toronto News Company (Canada), Appleton (United States). and in two volumes by Chatto & Windus (Great Britain).

Both the Toronto News Company, and Appleton editions can be read online through the Internet Archive.  

The novel was reissued in 1988 by Tecumseh. Print on demand vultures offer this edition.

That ain't Elfrida Bell.

The Prince Classics Robert Barr (Monsarrat mentioned)

 

A brief follow-up to last week's post on One Day's Courtship and The Heralds of Fame.

Prince Classics is new to me, but has quickly become my favourite print on demand vulture. I have it to thank for the introduction to Dutch artist Jac Mars (1919-1992), whose illustration graces the cover of its edition of this Robert Barr novella.

"One Day's Courtship" first saw print in syndication; The Detroit Free Press, for which the author had once worked, was one of the newspapers that paid for the privilege. Set in nineteenth-century Quebec, the novella starts out as social commentary, moves to adventure, and ends as a love story. Jac Mars' illustration, which first appeared in the April 1962 edition of Woman's Realm, has nothing to do with Barr's story. There are no embraces, but one can imagine. My wife, a thirty-year veteran of the fashion industry, informs that the clothing is all wrong, and finds equal fault in Prince Classics' bind-up of "One Days Courtship" and Barr's 1894 novel In the Midst of Alarms:

To those who prefer In the Midst of Alarms on its own, Prince Classics can provide. The image they use, W.T. Brenda's Woman Riding Zebra, first saw print on the cover of Life (30 November 1922).

I remind that In the Midst of Alarms is set in 1866 and concerns the Fenian Raids across the Niagara River into what is today southern Ontario.

No zebras figure.

Longtime readers may remember my disappointment with In the Midst of Alarms. Barr is shaping up to be one of those writers who run hot and cold with me. I didn't think much of One Day's Courtship and The Heralds of Fame (1896), but remain enthusiastic about Revenge!(1896), The Unchanging East (1900), and The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont (1906). Prince Classics offers an edition of the last of these three: 

Don't know about that cover. Valmont looks like a down-on-his-luck gumshoe, whereas Barr describes our hero as "dressed in elegant attire, as if he were still a boulevardier of Paris." Here's Valmont, as depicted in the frontispiece of the first edition:

And then we have Prince Classics' pairing of The O'Ruddy (1903) and The Red Badge of Courage (1895). The latter is familiar to millions as Stephen Crane's great novel of the American Civil War. The O'Ruddy is the novel Crane was writing when he died. Robert Barr picked up his fallen pen and finished the novel. 

I've yet to read The O'Ruddy or The Red Badge of Courage, and so step out on a limb in describing the cover of Tekla (1898) as the most incongruous amongst Prince Classics' Barr offerings. A historical romance it's set in the thirteenth century.

Of all Barr books offered by Prince Classics, the one that most tempts is A Woman Intervenes (1896), but only because it recycles a painting by Tom Dunn. 

It was commissioned for the Pocket Books edition of Nicholas Monsarrat's The Story of Esther Costello.*

I'm getting on, but am not so old as to be familiar with the bibliography of Nicholas Monsarrat. It turns out that The Story of Esther Costello was the author's follow-up to The Cruel Sea. When published, in 1952, the novel caused some pearl clutching. Five years later, The Story of Esther Costello was adapted by Hollywood in a film starring Joan Crawford and Rossano Brazzi. From what I understand, the synopsis Wikipedia editor Sky Captain provides is equally applicable to the novel:

With her marriage to womaniser Carlo Landi (Rossano Brazzi) in ashes, wealthy and childless Margaret Landi (Joan Crawford) finds an emotional outlet in patronizing a 15-year-old deaf, dumb, and blind Irish girl named Esther Costello (Heather Sears). Esther's disabilities are the result of a childhood trauma and are psychosomatic rather than physical. As Costello makes progress with Braille and sign language, she is seen as an example of triumph over adversity. Carlo gets wind of Margaret's new life and re-enters the scene. He views Esther as a source of cheap financial gain and arranges a series of exploitative tours for her under a mercenary manager Frank Wenzel (Ron Randell). One day when Margaret is absent from the Landi apartment, Carlo seduces and rapes the now 16-year-old Esther. The shock restores the girl's sight and hearing. When Margaret learns of her husband's business duplicities and the rape, she consigns Esther to the care of a priest and a young reporter who loves her (Lee Patterson). Margaret then kills Carlo and herself.

Good God.

The Vancouver Sun
4 December 1957

If the November 1896 review is anything to go by, Barr's A Woman Intervenes isn't nearly so unpleasant:

I'm keen on reading one of the two.

You can guess which.

* My thanks to Jim Stephenson for identifying the Avati painting. Thanks also to my old pal Chris Kelly, who suggested the former had been used to illustrate a book titled Backstage: My Life with Clarence Darrow, the Amnesiac, and the Red Ladder. Coffee up my nose.

Related links:

Double Fantasy

Getting to the Fenian Raids

A Conceited, Entirely Likeable Private Detective

The Unexpected Robert Barr
Through the Unchanging East with Robert Barr
Women of the Unchanging East

Armand Durand; or, A Summer Project

Armand Durand; ou, La promesse accomplie

    [Armand Durand; or, A Promise Fulfilled]
Madame Leprohon [Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon;
    trans, J.-A.  Genaud], 
Montreal: Beauchemin, 1894
367 pages

In her time, Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon – Madame Leprohon – was more popular with francophones than anglophones, so does it not make sense to tackle this, her third novel, in translation? I thought so. It was my summer project. That the season ended weeks ago speaks to my inabilities, and is no reflection on the novel itself. The story is simple and has a rushed, rather predictable conclusion – but it is deftly told and is populated by fully-drawn characters who live in a Quebec the author knew well.

The novel begins with Paul Durand, descendant of the earliest settlers of New France, who has come to inherit a large and profitable farm in "the seigneurie of — Alonville we will call it — on the banks of the St. Lawrence."* Handsome and hardworking Paul has put off marriage so as not to impose upon his mother, who had lived many, many years in the Durand family farmhouse... until she didn't.

I shouldn't be so flippant. Mère Durand is depicted as a fine woman. After her death, son Paul looks to be in no hurry to take a bride — but then he encounters Geneviève Audut. Newly arrived from France, delicate Geneviève is employed as governess to a pair of thoroughly dislikable children related to the seigneur. Geneviève herself is a relation —a poor relation — whom no one treats her particularly well. Her charges are the worst: "Mamma says we will never learn anything till we have a tutor, and that she would get us one to-morrow, only she does not know what to do with you. No body will marry you as you have no dot."

After overhearing this little shit, Paul proposes to Geneviève, which in turn sends the women of Alonville into a tizzy:

What could he see in her, indeed, a little doll-faced creature with no life or gaiety in her, to bewitch him in such a manner? What made him marry a stranger when there were plenty of smart handsome girls in his own village that he had known ever since they wore pinafores?

Much to their delight, Geneviève proves a disaster in keeping a farmhouse, but Paul Durand loves her to the end... which comes when she gives birth to the titular character. 

Again, I shouldn't be so flippant. Though I could see it coming, Madame Leprohon's description of Geneviève's death touches the heart.

Believing that his infant son is in need of a mother, Paul marries spinster Eulalie Messier, a plain-featured woman of good character, who had been generally recognized as Alonville's youngest spinster. His new bride loves and cares for the infant Armand Durand as her own, and Paul comes to love her as a result. Eulalie wasn't so old an old maid that she couldn't provide her husband with another son. They name him Paul, after his father.

And then, she dies.

I fear I've made Armand Durand seem gothic, when it is really a mélange of melodrama and literary realism. Its depictions of French Canadian traditions and society, which Mary Jane Edwards suggests is the reason behind Madame Leprohon's popularity, was just one element that kept me reading.

With Eulalie's death, focus shifts to the two Durand boys and their schooling at "the old Montreal College." Armand, the more retiring of the two, is the intellectual. Paul, though younger, is both literally and figuratively the bigger brother. He has confidence and brash. Poor Armand, so pretty and slight, becomes a target of his fellow classmates. "Miss Armand," as he's called, is bullied to a point at which he lashes out, bloodying the brute Rodolphe Belfond, after which the two become fast friends.

As the title suggests, Armand comes to take the place of the main character. Paul fis begins to fade with the end of their schooldays, returning to Alonville to help run the family farm. Armand remains in Montreal, working for a lawyer, with the goal of becoming one himself. It all makes sense, and works well until jealousy rears its ugly head. On visits to Montreal, Paul feels like a country bumpkin, and comes to resent the money their father sends to help support Armand. He begins a campaign of lies, implying that the funds are wasted on drink and dandyism. The scheming reaches its apex when Paul Durand pere lies in his deathbed as Paul fis intercepts letters addressed to his older brother. The upshot is that Armand Durand is disinherited.   

Madame Leprohon's greatest challenge in writing this novel must surely have had to do with events following the father's death. Armand marries Delima Laurin, his landlady's niece. Written this way, the decision seems so rash, and yet this reader understood the proposal of marriage and its timing. Sadly, Armand and Delima soon prove themselves ill-suited. 

I'll write no more for fear of spoiling things... and because I'm hoping you'll read it.

I found Armand Durand to be one the finest Canadian novels of the nineteenth-century.

Am I wrong?

Was something gained in translation?

* All quotes come from Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon's original text.  

Object: A fragile volume printed on thin paper, bound in embossed scarlet boards, my copy once belonged to the Bibliotheque de Chénéville. It was purchased earlier this year from a Gatineau bookseller. Price: C$19.41. I see no evidence that it was a discard. Should I be concerned?

Access: Armand Durand first appeared as a serial on 1 October 1868 in the Montreal Daily News. That same year, the novel was published in book form by John Lovell. That edition can be read — gratis — through this link at the Internet Archive.

The novel is in print today, with introduction by Loraine McMullen and Elizabeth Waterston, as part of Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series. It can be ordered here, thorough the press.

Pay no heed to print on demand vultures. Take it from a Montrealer, this isn't Quebec:

The Tecumseh edition aside, I see no copies of Armand Durand — English or French —listed for sale online.

As might be expected, this once-popular novel has come to be the stuff of academe. The only copy I see in a public library can be found in Toronto.