Thomas P. Kelley's Elusive Gorilla's Daughter

The Gorilla's Daughter
Thomas P. Kelley
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950

160 pages 

Note: The Gorilla's Daughter is the most sought-after Canadian paperback. It is also the most notorious, though I would argue this has everything to do with the cover. Because copies are so scarce, and access so limited, I'll be relaying the story of the gorilla's daughter from beginning to end. There will be spoilers. Criticism will be kept to a minimum.

Blonde and beautiful Diana Lynn, nineteen-year-old daughter of archeologist and big game hunter Professor Theodore Lynn, is abducted by Bontu, a five-hundred-pound male gorilla, whist on safari in Equatorial Africa. She'd heard stories of native women who had been carried off by "the hairy men of the trees," but had dismissed them as products of "the wild imagination of the village natives, the witch doctors and the porters." Now, she knew different. Or was she having a nightmare?

But, no, it isn't a bad dream; rather a living nightmare.

Fortunately, the wild imagination of Thomas P. Kelley spares the reader the worst, instead skipping ahead a year to the point Diana gives birth to the "hideous offspring of their union!"

Do you think this impossible? I did, but was soon set straight:

"Oh, you fool. You blind fool. Do you not know history as you should? Can't you realize that the ancient Druids of England mated humans with animals? Don't you realize that the ancient Roman Emperor Caligula, chose a beautiful and snow-white mare for his mistress?"

Blade Runner being my favourite film, and Taffy's Snake Pit Bar being a favourite hangout, this particular example stood out: 

"If you know anything about Egyptian history, you will realize that the great Queen Hetshepsut, always employed an asp – yes, a slimy reptile, a snake – for her moments of love. History can't deny that."

Can't it? In my defence, I minored in Canadian history. For what its worth, I have read Marian Engel's Bear, and do not recall a pregnancy.

Bear
Marian Engel
Toronto: Seal, 1977

Returning to The Gorilla's Daughter, as the title suggests, the "OFFSPRING of MAID and MONSTER" is female, possessing a "shapely form like that of her mother," but with the face of her father. Diana names her Tara... "Tara, the gorilla's daughter!"

Fourteen years pass, during which mother and daughter cement the closest of bonds. Though Tara is unable to communicate verbally, except in the language of the gorillas, she is taught to write and proves herself every bit as intelligent as her English educated mother. Tara grows strong while her mother grows weak. No longer blonde or beautiful, Bontu's abuse has taken a great toll and her body is giving out.

Escape attempts are long in the past; Bontu was always quick to recapture and punish her. Diana will come to accept that she can never return to London society:

In Tara's fifteenth year, there occurs an event that changes everything. Bontu has been relocating his tribe ever eastward so as to avoid encroaching white trophy hunters. When one evening a safari comes uncomfortably close to Bontu's tribe, Diana sees an opportunity. She moves in on the camp late at night, has Tara kill a sentry, then awakens a member of the party. It is at this point that she learns that her dear father spent his remaining years searching for her, before dropping dead of a heart attack. Her fiancé, was similarly dedicated, until scandal arose. A blackmail attempt by bespectacled, ugly, fat Lancashire scullery maid led to his suicide.

The only positive thing Diana takes away from the meeting is a rifle, which she then uses to kill Bontu.

Ill health claims her shortly thereafter.

Tara inherits the rifle and remains with the tribe, which is taken over by a gorilla named Targash. He's neither better nor worse than her father. For three years, Tara stays out of his way until the day Targash kills Taka, the semi-lame gorilla who is her crush. The tribe leader had wanted her for his mate, but the grieving gorilla's daughter stabs Targash to death, thus becoming "Tara, Queen of the tribe of Tara!"

Two more years pass, during which the white men continue to encroach. Tara is running out of territory in which to relocate when Patak, the eldest member of the tribe, tells her of a land of gurgling streams and abundant fruit surrounded by a ring of mountains where the white hunters do not venture.

Here the narrative shifts abruptly to focus on handsome Bob Wickson. The son of American steel baron Andrew J. Wickson, he's "one of those fortunate young men who has too much money" and not much to do. Looking for adventure, he heads for Cape Town where he encounters an old drunk who tells him a story of Atlantis which has the survivors of that mythological sunken continent settling in the heart of Africa where they built a city of untold wealth encircled by "The Forbidden Mountains."

He has a map to sell.

Bob buys it for £2500 – roughly £138,000 today – telling himself that there's one chance in a hundred that the drunk is telling the truth.

I thought this wildly optimistic.

The gamble pays off quickly and the Forbidden Mountains are found in the very next paragraph. As they approach, there is unrest amongst Bob's native guides and porters. It's left to his chief gun-bearer to enlighten:

"The men are afraid, they do not want to go any further. We are approaching the land of the evil spirits, Bwana. Our ancestors have told it is a terrible place of death and destruction, where huge beasts ten times larger than the biggest elephant, fly through the air and devour everything they see!"
   To say that young Bob Wickson was annoyed, would be putting it mildly. 

Bob instructs his men to wait and continues alone. Coincidentally, this is very same instruction given by Tara to her tribe upon reaching the mountains that very same day. Once inside the ring, she finds a paradise as described by Patak... and then she spots Bob from her perch upon a tree:

Tara shoots the panther, saving Bob's life, and jumps to the ground.

Hey, she has a nice personality.

Tara finds Bob intriguing and attractive, despite his short narrow nose. She falls in love, and asks him to be her mate. Bob accepts the proposal, though his motivation is unclear. I suggest it has something to do with a recognizing that Tara will protect and keep him alive.

Soon enough, the pair are captured by the short-legged, long-armed, white-haired descendants of Atlantis, and it is only though Tara's strength that they are able to escape. In fleeing, Bob sprains his ankle and is carried to safety in the gorilla's daughter's arms. She will later save him from another panther and from being sacrificed at the Temple of the Flaming God.

For Tara, the Forbidden Mountains has everything she has desired, Bob most of all. And so, she leads her tribe in the slaughter of the Atlanteans, crushing skulls, and tearing off limbs:

The tribe of Tara made no discrimination as to sex – wives meeting the same fate as their husbands – while infants and children were raised upwards by shaggy paws which dashed their heads against the massive and towering pillars. Screams and shrieks arose, then frantic cries for mercy. But the beasts  of Tara could not understand the words, and mercy was a thing unknown to them.

Curiously, Bob expresses no reaction to the carnage. What's even more strange is that he uses the occasion of the victory to break his engagement to Tara:

"Well, Tara, the truth is that you are not a human. To be sure, you have the most glorious human body that ever trod the earth. But – but your face is that of a beast. Oh, don't you see – you're a freak, a grotesque freak – part human, part beast. If we were ever to go to my country, people would shudder at the sight of you!"

Tara is, of course, only able to write her response: "But your promise. You promised that you would be my mate and that we would have four children!"

She says nothing more, rather collapses on the alter upon which Bob was to have been sacrificed.

Eight days later, Bob's ankle has all but healed. He manages to climb the range and return to his camp, only to find that his guides and porters are gone. The fortunate young man with too much money has two hundred miles to traverse without arms, support or supplies. As the terrible truth sets in, Tara reappears to guides and protect him on a trek that would otherwise result in certain death.

They walk in silence for nearly a week, until they near a friendly native village. Tara turns but Bob can't bear to let her go:

Half-beast or not, he realized that in this strange creature he has found nothing but goodness – loyalty, unselfishness and honesty. Yes, perhaps she was some queer quirk of nature, but there was something in her that was fine, FINE!

He encircles Tara in his arms and holds her body to his, a motion that in her tribe signifies acceptance of a mate. Their embrace is broken by a charging lion. Tara whips out her knife and is killed saving her mate.

FIN 

I lie.

There's more to The Gorilla's Daughter. The novella continues a further three pages in which it is revealed that the narrator learned the story from Bob during a long night spent smoking ciggies atop the Great Pyramid of Giza. There's also a subplot concerning a failed campaign by Mrs C. Anthony Van Carlson of the Boston Carlsons to marry daughter Gloria into the Wickson family. 

This is not their story, it is the story of Tara, the gorilla's daughter.

Bonus: The Gorilla's Daughter ends on page 127, falling far short of the standard News Stand Library title. Padding is provided by a thirty-page science fiction story titled 'Awaken the Dead!' by Halls Wells.

Set in 1947, it concerns a wealthy Wall Street investor who, at age ninety-two, is doing his darnest to stave off death. To this end, he has himself refrigerated so that he might be thawed out when there are cures for his ailments.

Halls Wells that ends well, except for Harley D. Haworth.

About the cover: Is the woman meant to be Diana or Tara? Either way, the illustrator errs in that both are blonde. In fact, Tara is described as having platinum blonde hair.

Object and Access: A typical NSL mass market paperback.  The rear cover copy does indeed consist of excerpts, the lone difference being "blonde." Kelley uses "blond" throughout the novel. I prefer the former.

Library and Archives Canada, McMaster University, and the University of Calgary have copies, but that's it.

My three decade pursuit of The Gorilla's Daughter has failed to yield so much as a sighting. I have bowdler of Fly-by-Night to thank for sending me scans and photocopies.

As of this writing, no copies are listed for sale online.

Related post:

Exclamation Marks Abound!

There's a New Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street

Whenever I'm asked to talk about Ricochet Books, I make a point of mentioning Al Palmer's Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street. The title never fails to raise a smile, and often bemusement. Montrealers of a certain age – mine, for example – remember Dorchester as a boulevard, not a street. My daughter has known it only as boulevard René-Lévesque, as it was rechristened in November 1987, two years after the former premier's November 1985 death.

In November 1949, when the novel first appeared, Dorchester was a centre of Montreal's nightlife. Five years later, scores of building were razed under moralizing mayor Jean Drapeau. The street became an eight-lane boulevard with no curb appeal. I'm not sure this  Montrealer has walked so much as four or five blocks along its barren sidewalks.

The corner of René-Lévesque and Beaver Hill, November 2022

The heroine of Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street is Gisele Lepine, an eighteen-year-old farm girl "fresh as the cool clean air of her Laurentian village." She was first depicted by D. Rickard on the cover of the first edition.

Draw your eyes away from Gisele, if you can, and you'll see on the right a sign for The Breakers, which was modeled on Slitkin & Slotkin, a Dorchester bar and grill located between Drummond and Mountain.

When first published, Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was being sold as 'The Best Selling Novel of Montreal,' though it had yet to move a copy.

I expect it did better than the average average New Stand Library title because three months later it published an edition intended for the American market. For this cover, NSL turned to Sid Dyke, who would later do work for Harlequin. The title was unchanged, though the cover image relies on the reader to put it together. 

This scene, with Gisele and her newspaperman lover Jimmy Holden, does not feature in the novel. I should add that at no point is the Laurentian country girl shown to be a smoker.

What's most fascinating in the publisher's short-lived excursion into the American market was the decision to use dust jackets. They covered entirely different illustrations, some of which had been made exclusively for export to the United States. Such was the case with Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street.

This jacket illustration hid Dyke's Sugar-Puss:

Sadly, the illustrator is unknown. A clue as to who it might be is found in the bright lights of the big city. The Breakers is back – it doesn't feature in the Dyke illustration – but look to the left and you'll see The Gayety. When Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was published, it was the club in which Lili St. Cyr performed.

The Gayety is never mentioned in the novel, so how did the nightclub make it into this illustration? Was the artist a Montrealer, or just one of the thousands who visited Canada's sin city? What to make of the fact that the Gayety was on St Catherine not Dorchester?

This summer, as stock in the Ricochet's Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was reaching an end and reprint was imminent, I suggested replacing the cover. We'd been using a version of the original altered by J.W. Stewart.

Why not one of the two others? 

We settled on the dust jacket. Brian Morgan did some cleaning and punched up "ON DORCHESTER STREET."

This is all to say that Ricochet's new Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street has just been released.

Consider it the 75th anniversary edition. 

Related post:

'THE NEONS GO UP IN MONTREAL' 

A Poet's Pulp Novel

The Winter of Time
Raymond Holmes [Raymond Souster]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949
160 pages

Anyone looking for a good story is sure to be disappointed. The plot is so thin, so unsurprising, so uninspired, that I have no hesitation in sharing it in full.

This shouldn't take long.

It is March 1945. Harry Byers, our hero and narrator, leaves Halifax for a war that everyone knows is all but over. Bournemouth, his destination, is the primary reception depot for RCAF personnel. Harry has barely set foot on English soil before being pressed by a new pal to go on a double date with WAAF gal Helen Noble. They hit it off and are engaged within days. Germany surrenders. Harry and Helen wed, honeymoon in Scotland, are separated due to respective service obligations, but are reunited in London. To borrow from F Scott Fitzgerald, Harry did "get over," but he never sees action.

Not that kind anyway.

Come Christmas, Harry is back living with his parents in Toronto. War bride Helen is with her parents in London, awaiting passage on a ship to Canada. They write each other daily, though Harry struggles to fill the pages. In one of her early letters, Helen announces that she's pregnant. The news encourages Harry to return to his boring old job at a Bay Street brokerage. When not writing letters and sending provisions overseas, he goes out drinking with old friend Paul Hannah. One memorable evening, he ends up in the back of Paul's 1938 Ford with new friend Vera (Harry never learns her last name). Pretty Betty Anderson is another new friend, but she's far too good a girl for him to make a move.

The baby, a boy, arrives in August. All seems fine until Harry receives a cablegram that Helen is very ill. He flies to New York, then across the Atlantic, arriving in London too late. After the funeral he's back in the air, leaving his son in the care of his in-laws. Harry stays in New York for a couple of weeks, visiting pal Pete Adams and taking up with Clair Thompson, a tall brunette who looks good in a sweater and slacks. He never tells either of his dead wife. After that, it's off to see Montreal writer friend Walter Green in Montreal, then he catches a train to Toronto. Once home, Harry makes a play for Betty, but she tells him she's taken. He goes on a bender with Paul, which ends in a car accident that should've killed them both. They decide to rent a cottage up north, and maybe work on a book, but the plan is cut short by Clair's sudden appearance in Toronto. She tells Harry that she's pregnant, so he proposes: "I guess I thought about the two of us getting married since the first time we met, so the it doesn't sound strange or something unexpected, now."

And that's pretty much it.

The New Stand Library cover copy paints The Winter of Time as a sprawling epic:

What veteran, accustomed to regimentation and suddenly thrown on his own resources to take his place in the way of life for which he had fought, didn't experience a strange mixture of hope and despair, relief and nostalgia, determination and frustration, joy and bitterness, as did Harry in these two symbolic years?

But can we really expect so much from so slim a volume?

It's best to approach The Winter of Time as a first novel that attempts much while adhering to strict confine enforced by the publisher's standard 160-page format. As evidence, look no further than the final three pages, in which Clair turns up unexpectedly in Toronto, announces that she's expecting, and becomes engaged to Harry. This rush of events, typical of News Stand Library endings suggests a writer who realizes the sudden need to wrap everything up. Souster proves himself superior to other NSL authors by applying the brakes with a closing descriptive paragraph that has Harry raising the blinds of his apartment "for no reason" and looking down on sunlight playing on once cloud-covered Sherbourne Street.

Three things make The Winter of Time worth reading, the first being the collision of life during wartime with the impetuous folly of youth. Harry and Helen decide to marry on their third date. The stuff of Las Vegas misadventure today, it was not so unusual at the time, particularly given the circumstances. My grandparents, who lived to celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary together, were one such couple. It has been claimed that service leads to maturity, but this is not the case with Harry. A married man in his mid-twenties, he cheats on his pregnant wife of one year with a woman he doesn't even like. Keep in mind, Harry is the narrator of this story.

The novel's greatest riches in come in the details, like the experience of taking a train to London on VE-Day or what it was like going to see Bert Niosi at Toronto's Palais Royale:

There were a lot of girls checking their coats and purses. They had come stag, mostly in two's. They were the usual girls you saw at the Palais, girl who were now in the city and did not have a steady boy-friend. And most of them were nice kids, jus out for an evening of dancing.They were the prey of all the fast boys who thought they were God's gift to women. The fast boys were interested in only one thing, and every one had his own system of leading up to it, the only difference being that some were more subtle than others.

Palais Royale, Toronto, 1946

There are many more references to many more drinking establishments. I was most taken aback by mention of Montreal's Blue Bird Café, which a quarter-century later would be the site of one of the city's greatest tragedies.

As a child, I first read about it in the pages of the Montreal Gazette. It has haunted me ever since 

Students of Canadian literature, not true crime, will be more interested in the odd turn the novel takes in the last third, immediately after Helen's death. It begins with Harry's visit with Pete, a Montrealer who is studying at Columbia:

Pete is a good guy and he has written some damn fine poetry. Poetry with guts that was still only grudgingly accepted in Canada. He had been very frankly critical about my work but mine was so close to the thing that he was tying to do himself that I knew he was honestly interested in it, and that was something very rarely found in another writer.

This is the first indication that our hero holds literary aspirations. The second comes on the very same page when Harry describes his address book as being filled with names of publishers and old girlfriends. From this point on, references to thing literary are frequent; Joyce, Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Morley Callaghan abound. Harry tells Pete he is impressed by his recent New York-themed verse, though just when and where he read it is a mystery. He is convinced his friend could be a great poet, the kind of poet Canada has needed for a long time, but never produced. As Harry tells Clair, "I'd hate to see his fine talent turned into something unnatural and a mockery after those university professor bastards and C.A.A. parasites got their claws into him."

The digs against the the world of academe and the Canadian Authors Association continue in Montreal:

"I think the whole writing game is a little overrated," I said. "Here in Canada, though, the odds are so much against any decent writer that he's practically buggered before he even starts. I guess we should all be college professors and join the C.A.A."

   "I'm seriously thinking of joining," Walter said, "All I've got to do is get rid of my artistic conscience and any pretensions of doing any more honest writing."

Walter is Walter Green: "He was a few years older than I was, and for some years had been writing almost the only honest proletarian writing in Canada, if there really is such a thing as 'proletarian writing.'"

Is Pete Adams modelled on Ralph Gustafson? An even more interesting question is whether Jewish Montrealer Walter Green was inspired Ted Allan. Could be. Souster had to come to News Stand Library somehow. Allan's pseudonymous NSL pulp Love is a Long Shot was published two months before The Winter of Time. Garner, we know, came to NSL through Allan's recommendation. His Waste No Tears appeared eight months later under the name Jarvis Warwick. 

 

The Winter of Time is not to be read for its plot, but it is to be read. It's a shame that it had to end so soon.

I wonder when Harry would've told Clair about his dead wife and newborn son. 

On drinking in Toronto:

The bottled beer came and we ordered two more pints. The beer was very good. I was just beginning to appreciate it. You could tell it was Montreal beer. The best beer.

On drinking in New York: 

The beer was very amber and clear, lighter than Canadian beer. It was milder and pleasanter to drink, I thought, than our beer if you were only interested in a cool drink and did not want to feel happy after two or three glasses.

A query: Are we really meant to believe that the Sunday Times received an advance review copy of a Canadian pulp novel?

Object and Access: A typical News Stand Library book, except that it has fewer mistakes than most. I caught one sentence that cuts off after the first word. Clair appears variously as "Claire" and "Clare."Buses is misspelled "busses," but that's a common error.

Well done!

D Rickard's cover is strange, even by News Stand Library standards. At no point in the novel does our hero walk down Bloor Street. Neither of the two girls he knows in Toronto has black hair. And doesn't that gal look an awful lot like Rickard's rendition of Gisele Lepine from Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street (1949). And aren't their dresses very similar?

As of this writing, just one copy is listed for sale online. Price: US$195.00.

I received my copy as a gift last Christmas.

The Winter of Time was reissued at some point – when, I'm not sure – by the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box. Whether that edition is still available is up for question as my query has gone unanswered.

Related posts:

Pulp Noir à Montréal

The Return of Hugh Garner's Neglected Novel

'THE NEONS GO UP ON MONTREAL'

Whispering City: Horace Brown's Second Encore

Arriving in bookstores as I write, the eighteenth Ricochet Books title. Whispering City is based on the Quebec City film noir of the same name. First published in 1947, it is one of the most sought after post-war Canadian paperbacks. A lone copy of that only other edition is listed online at $305.90.

The new Ricochet edition will set you back $15.95.

I provide a new intro.

Copies can be purchased through the usual online booksellers and at the Véhicule Press website.

Related posts:

Quebec City Noir

Horace Brown: Saturday Matinee

The Legs of Mary Roberts

Murray and the Argonauts

Arizona Argonauts
H Bedford-Jones
New York: Doubleday, 1923
120 pages

Note: Arizona Argonauts is a novella infused with racial epithets.

Reader discretion is advised.

The cover is deceptive. Arizona Argonauts is not a western. The scene depicted comes from another writer's story. The main characters in this novella drive automobiles.

The first chapter is very strong. It begins with a conversation between Piute Tompkins and Deadoak Stevens, men of prominence in the dried-up former mining town of Two Palms, Arizona. There are two topics, the longest running involves their five-year-old investment in wells, pumping machinery, cement irrigation pipe, pear trees, and almond trees. They hope to see some return in another five years.  Of more recent interest is Tom Lee, a "Chinee" who is staying at Piute's hotel. The proprietor sees his lodger as a mystery:

"Ain't he? He is. Him, and that girl, and what in time they're a-doing here."
   "Even so," echoed Deadoak, as he rolled a list-less cigarette. "Who ever heard of a chink ownin' a autobile? Not me. Who ever heard of a chink havin' a purty daughter? Not me. Who ever heard of a chink goin' off into the sandy wastes like any other prospector? Not me. I'm plumb beat, Piute!"

The second chapter – there are thirteen in total – is even better. The focus here is Sandy Mackintavers. Six weeks before Piute and Deadoak's conversation, Sandy had been a player in New Mexico. A man whose "unscrupulous fingers had been clutched deep in a score of pies, sometimes leaving very dirty marks about the edge." However:

Somewhere a cog slipped; he had been indicted for bribery. That had broken the thick crust of fear which had enveloped him, had released his enemies from the shackles of his strong personality. Overnight, it seemed, a dozen men went into the courts against him, backed by the evidence of those who had taken his money and had done his dirty work.

Now broken and very nearly broke, Mackintavers drives aimlessly with the remnants of his once significant wealth tucked in his sock. He stops to offer two tramps a ride. The more talkative of the pair is skilled surgeon Douglas Murray. Two years earlier, Mackintavers paid the good doctor an even thousand dollars to remove his appendix. Murray was on top of his game back then, earning big money hand over scalpel:

"It was success that downed me — too much work. I had to keep going twenty hours a day to save human lives during the influenza epidemic. It started me working on dope. I knew better, of course, but thought myself strong.
   "The dream book got me at last, like it gets all the fools. One day, in the middle of an operation, I broke down. I had to have a shot quick, and I got it. I had to do it openly, if the man on the table were not to die; so I did it."

Though Murray managed to conquer "the dream book," the addiction left his reputation in tatters and emptied his wallet. The doctor's travelling companion is a reformed safecracker named Hobbs. Murray discovered Hobbs lying in a ditch, performed a roadside operation, and the two have been fast friends ever since. Mackintavers finds himself in the company of two men who, taken down a peg or three, look to become better people. Having recently suffered his own comeuppance, he's all of a sudden keen to follow their example.

Mackintavers, Murray, Hobbs meander into Two Palms, where they are immediately taken for a trio of rubes. Piute and Deadoak conspire to unload a worthless piece of land. Mackintavers, who knows a thing or two about mining, takes the deal. And then Tom Lee makes a more generous offer. 

Arizona Argonauts is the first thing I've ever read by Bedford-Jones. Because he was so very prolific – the man published twenty-five novellas and short stories that same year – I'd made the mistake of thinking he couldn't be any good.

I should've known better; no one publishes that much without some degree of talent.

Bedford-Jones weaves a really good story of mystery, intrigue, violence, and romance. His dialogue is sharp and characters uncommon. Murray is one of two who've struggled with drug addiction, the other being "yellow man" Lee.

The racist epithets and attitudes are jarring. They come from Piute, Deadoak, and an unnamed desert rat  who Murray happens to overhear in conversation with the owner of an ice cream parlour:

As I was sayin', Bill, it was the gosh-willingest thing I ever struck! Think o 'me purposin' mattermony, right off the bat like that — and a good-lookin' girl, I'm sayin'! And when she was feelin' around for the right words to accept me, prob'ly meanin' to fish around an' make me urge her a mite, I seen her ol' man come walkin' along. In about two shakes I seen he was a chink."

   "Yes?" The proprietor tipped Murray a wink, and set forth the ice cream.

   "What then?" "I faded right prompt," said the desert rat. "Right prompt! I dunno — It kind o' dazed me fer a spell. When I got into Two Palms next day, I was tellin' Piute Tomklns about it, and he up an' says them two was stayin' at his hotel — the chink and the girl, which same bein' his daughter, he allowed it was all right an' proper. I judge Piute was soakin' them right heavy, else he wouldn't ha' stood for chinks boardin' on him. Piute has his pride — .

Piute, Deadwood, and the desert rat speak as men of a time sadly not yet passed. Murray doesn't share their vocabulary, but he does share their racism, and so is troubled by his attraction to Claire, Tom Lee's daughter. As the novella progresses, and the doctor gets to know Lee, he undergoes a transformation.

It's trite to put it this way – "undergoes a transformation" –  but the words are apt. Murray comes to recognize his prejudice and believes it's been conquered. And yet the doctor is surprised to feel relief upon learning that Lee is Claire's adoptive father.

Arizona Argonauts first appeared in the May 1920 edition of Short Stories. Did its early readers focus on issues of  race? I'm guessing not. The budding romance between Claire and Murray is just one of the story's many threads. What I can say for certain is that Arizona Argonauts is not at all what I expected.

Appearances can be deceiving.

Object and Access: A cheap early American paperback with blank back cover. I believe my 1923 copy marks the novella's first appearance in book form. A 1924 Doubleday edition can be read online here at the Internet Archive. Date aside, the only difference I see is the inclusion of an illustration (above) not found in the former. As might be expected, the scene does not feature in the novella.

Library and Archives Canada and three of our academic university libraries have one or another of Doubleday's editions.

The Nick Eggenhofer illustration used by Doubleday comes from 11 April 1922 edition of Short Stories. It would appear to depict a scene in George Clifford Shedd's story 'The Man from Mirabito.'

The very same issue features 'The Silent City,' a short story credited to  H Bedford-Jones and "W.C Robertson" (which is thought to be one of Bedford-Jones's pseudonyms). 'Guilty,' by fellow Canadian Theodore Goodridge Roberts also features.

Related posts:

Romance Amongst the Racists

Ontario, Opium, and Cocaine

Martha Ostenso's Forgotten Masterpiece?

And the Town Talked
Martha Ostenso
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949
159 pages

The town is Bloomhill; the talk is of Elsbeth Payson. A few days before her eighteenth birthday, young Doctor Frederick Stowell catches Elsbeth at the Van der Water house. Priscilla Van der Water, a former "acrobatic dancer" now married to a brickyard foreman, is giving the girl a lesson on how to do a split. Stowell is horrified; Elsbeth lives in wealthy North Hill, and girls from North Hill do not visit Patchtown, Bloomhill's working class neighbourhood. The doctor orders her away, but she stands her ground: "Did you know, Freddie, that even for classical or professional ballroom dancing you should be able to do what's known as a 'split'?"

Elsbeth Payson's dream is to become a professional dancer. Her late mother approved, which is how she came to know Priscilla Van der Water in the first place. Her father, also late, looked to set his daughter off on a more conventional path, and so left almost everything to his two spinster sisters.

Almost everything. 

On her birthday, Elsbeth is due to receive an inheritance of three thousand dollars (roughly $68,350 today). She intends to take the money, travel to New York, and study dance. A long-held plan, it comes off almost as Elsbeth had always envisioned, except that she's accompanied by pregnant Patchtowner Sadie Miller, whose fiancé was killed in one of Bloomhill's frequent industrial accidents.

Spanning 1933 and 1936, And the Town Talked is a Depression-era novel. I was interested in tensions between Bloomhill's classes, particularly after reading this early passage:

But And the Town Talked isn't much concerned with the plight of the proletariat. Though treated with sympathy, they're all pretty much the same: hard-working, cheerful, largely content with their lot in life. The exception is bad boy Cecil Andrews, who left Bloomhill's Patchtown for a life as a professional musician. He's a complex character, but only in relation to the others – Elspeth included.

Because And the Town Talked is my first Martha Ostenso – I have not read Wild Geese – I cannot speak as to whether it is "in her vigorous and inimitable style." I can say, without reservation, that Ostenso's writing in this novel is on par with most News Stand Library authors. The plot is rushed at times, particularly in the concluding pages, which may have something to do with writing to word count.

And the Town Talked first appeared, marginally longer, in the February 1938 edition of McCall's.* Later that same year, Ostenso published Mandrake Root, which was subsequently translated to Norwegian, Hungarian, and Czech. Other novels followed: Love Passed This Way (1942), O River, Remember! (1943), Milk Route (1948), The Sunset Tree (1949). Her last book has my favourite title: A Man Had Tall Sons (1958). All were published by Dodd, Mead, but not And the Town Talked, which somehow ended up with a cheap paperback house located in the suburbs of Toronto, and is missing from nearly all her bibliographies.

And this is why I read it. 

Is And the Town Talked a masterpiece, as News Stand Library claims? Most certainly not!

Is Wild Geese a masterpiece, as academics have claimed? Here's hoping.

I'm moving my copy to the night table.

* Thanks to bowdler of Fly-by-Night, who spared me the task of comparing the McCall's and News Stand Library versions. His finding is that the latter cut short four of the novel's twenty-two chapters.

Object: A typical News Stand Library production, meaning that there is certain to be some sort of flaw. In this case, centre margins are so tight as to make it nearly impossible to read. 

My copy was purchased earlier this year. Price: C$60.

The cover – uncredited – misleads in that Elsbeth has no child. Is she babysitting? Or is that meant to be minor character Sadie Miller?

Access: As of this writing, no copies are listed for sale online. It's held by Library and Archives Canada and six of our academic libraries.

The February 1938 McCall's can be read through this link to the Internet Archive. 

Related post:

About Those Old New Canadian Library Intros

(with some stuff on Martha Ostenso's Wild Geese)

Dope. Danger. One Doll.

Lost House
Frances Shelley Wees
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949
192 pages

Frances Shelley Wees runs hot and cold with me. I liked The Keys of My Prison so much that I selected it for reissue as a Ricochet Book. I did the same with M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty, but disliked No Pattern for Life, This Necessary Murder, and Where Is Jenny Now?*

So, Lost House? Hot or cold?

The prologue is frozen solid. This takes the form of a brief conversation between the head of  Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigations Department and one of his detectives. Apparently, a man known as "the Angel" is up to something in a place known as "Lost House." The detective is dispatched to see what's what:

He rose. "Very well, sir, I'll have a go at it."

Action shifts to British Columbia, where newly-minted physician David Ayelsworth is exploring "the forest primeval" astride his horse Delilah. What David finds is a half-submerged body by the shore of a lake. The doctor's attention is then drawn to the sound of a young woman chasing a dog. She falls, twists her ankle, and he comes to her aid. The injured young woman is Pamela Leighton, who lives at nearby Lost House.

Harlequin's cover reminds me of nothing so much as Garnett Weston's Legacy of Fear (New York: W S Mill/William Morrow, 1950), which also features a grand house in a remote corner British Columbia.

Interesting to note, I think, that both pre-date Psycho.

The mysterious D. Rickard is credited with Harlequin's cover art. I make a thing of his rendition because Rickard's Lost House isn't at all as described in the novel. Wees's Lost House rests on a walled island linked to the mainland by causeway and drawbridge. An immense structure, an exact replica of an English country manor, it was built by an eccentric Englishman who sought to further his wealth through a local silver mine. The mine proved a dud, the Englishman died, and all was inherited by Pamela Leighton's mother. Improbably, Mrs Leighton manages to maintain the estate by taking in paying guests during the summer months. This year, they include:

• James Herrod Payne, novelist;
• Shane Meredith, tenor;
• Archdeacon Branscombe, archdeacon;
• Lord Geoffrey Revel, lord.

There's a fifth male guest, an unknown who is being cared for by Mayhew, the resident doctor. The patient was brought in one night after having taken ill on a train stopped at Dark Forest, the closest community.

(That Lost House has an infirmary speaks to its immensity. That Lost House staff and guests are close in number speaks to Mrs Leighton's financial difficulties.)

There are also four female guests, Lord Geoffrey's mother being one, but it's the males that command our scrutiny; after all, we know the Angel to be a man.

Which is the Angel? Which is the Scotland Yard detective? It's impossible to tell. The focus is so much on David and Pamela, and to a lesser extent Mrs Leighton and Dr Mayhew, that the guests are little more than ghosts. The reader encounters them from time to time, but as characters they barely exist. Lost House fails as a mystery for the simple reason that Wees provides no clues. The Angel could be any one of the male guests. Indeed – and here I spoil things – much of the drama in the climax comes when he passes himself off as the Scotland Yard detective. And why not? There's nothing that might lead the reader or the other characters to suspect otherwise.

As the novel approaches mid-point, Pamela apologies to David. "I've dragged you into a dreadful mess," she says. "I've spoiled your holiday..."

This isn't true; David's involvement has nothing to do with her. He's at Lost House because the body he found by the lake turns out to be that of a missing Lost House staff member.

Lost House is a dreadful mess. The novel's disorder may have something to do with the fact that it first appeared serialized in Argosy (Aug 27 - Oct 1, 1938). Its fabric is woven with several threads that are subsequently dropped, the most intriguing involving Verve. A new brand of cigarette. Verve is a frequent topic of conversation, as in this early exchange between Pamela and David:  

"You've been smoking a tremendous lot." Her eyes were on the big ash tray before her.

   "Yes."
   "I like Verves," she decided, looking at the tray. "Not as much as you do, apparently... I don't smoke very much though. But when one is a bit tired, a Verve seems to give one exhilaration. Doesn't it?"
   "Yes," David said after a moment, "I... think it does."

   "You say that very strangely."
   "Do I ?" He shifted in his chair. "perhaps I'm a little lightheaded. I've sat here and smoked twenty of them in a row, and they do give one exhilaration. That's... the way they're advertised, of course. But other cigarettes, other things, have been advertised that way, too. Only... this time... and the whole world is smoking Verves. They've caught on extremely well. The whole world."

   She said, troubled, "You are queer."

   "Sorry." He crushed out the cigarette carefully and locked his hands together.

More follows, including a suggestion that the cigarettes have some sort of additive, but the subject is dropped in the first half of the novel. In the latter half, it's revealed that the Angel is using Lost House to store marijuana bound for the United States and United Kingdom. It seems a very lucrative trade. Might the drug have something to with Verve? The question is asked, but never answered.

Lost House was the second ever Harlequin, but the publishers pushed it like old pros.

Dope? Sure.

Danger? Ditto.

Dolls? Well, Pamela is described as attractive in the way prospective a mother-in-law might approve. Wees makes something of her playing around with "the soft pink ruffles of her skirt" when speaking to David in the final chapter. That's sexy, I guess. But Pamela's just one doll. The female guests at Lost House include a sad middle-aged widow who has yet to throw off her weeds, elderly Lady Riley, and two older spinster sister twins who live for knitting. 

Pamela's mother often appears in a lacy negligee, though only before her daughter. Is Mrs Leighton the the other doll?

Back cover copy continues the hard sell:

Pamela does not "land at David's feet, showing more in the process than a nice girl would normally show to a strange male." She wears a heavy skirt that approaches the length of a nun's habit. I add that she has sensible walking shoes.

Lost House is not "a fashionable British Columbia retreat for wealthy guests from all over the world;" it is nowhere so exotic, attracting only the dullest the English have to offer.

At end of it all, I found Lost House neither hot nor cold. It's lukewarm at best, despite Mrs Leighton's negligees.

*In fairness, as a romance novel, No Pattern for Life doesn't fit the Ricochet series. I recommend it as a strange romance.

Trivia I: In the preface to the anthology Investigating Women: Female Detectives by Canadian Writers (Toronto: Dundurn, 1995), David Skene-Melvin writes that the novel's royalties helped finance "Lost House," Wees's home in Stouffville, Ontario.

Trivia II: Like Wees, David is a graduate of the University of Alberta. He and his father practice medicine at the University Hospital, Edmonton. 

University Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta, c. 1938

Object: A very early Harlequin, my copy is a fragile thing. The publisher used the same cover in 1954 when reissuing Lost House as book #245, marking the last time the novel saw print. 

Access: Lost House was first published as a book in 1938 by Philadelphia's Macrae-Smith. The following year, Hurst & Blackett published the only UK edition. In 1940, the novel appeared as a Philadelphia Record supplement.

As of this writing, one jacketless copy of the Macrae-Smith edition is being offered online. Price: US$50.00. I'm not sure it's worth it, but do note that the image provided by the bookseller features boards with yellow writing. I believe orange/red (above) to be more common.

The Whitchurch-Stouffville Public Library doesn't hold a single edition of Frances Shelley Wees's twenty-four books.

Related posts:

A Rival for Margaret Millar?

The Return of Frances Shelley Wees
Domestic Suspense in Small Town Ontario
M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty: Title, Cover, Confession

This Necessary Read
Where is Jenny Now?
Fumbling Towards Legacy