A Nellie McClung Manitoba Mystery

The Black Creek Stopping-House and Other Stories
Nellie L. McClung
Toronto: William Briggs, 1912
224 pages

We have here a collection of short stories by a writer best known as a novelist.

Scratch that.

Nellie McClung is remembered today as a campaigner for women's rights. I learned this in 1973 when my mum brought home a sheet of newly issued postage stamps bearing her portait.

My mother was born at a time when women in Canada were not considered persons under the law. Strange but true. She wasn't recognized as a person until the month after her second birthday. Nellie McClung worked to made that possible.

I don't remember my mum mentioning that Nellie McClung wrote fiction and am not certain that she knew, though McClung had once time one of the country's bestselling novelists. Her 1908 debut, Sowing Seeds for Danny, sold over 100,000 copies.

Toronto: William Briggs, 1908

The Black Creek Stopping-House and Other Stories was the author's third book and the first of her two short story collections. It was published fifteen years before my mother's birth, sixty-one years before that stamp was issued, and one-hundred-and-thirteen years before today. 

There are eight stories in all. They are interesting enough, though much of that interest has less to do with prose or clever plot than as snapshots of the time in which they were penned. Nowhere is this more true than with 'The Elusive Vote,' which takes place on the final day of the 1911 Canadian federal election:

The story centres on John Thomas Green, "a gentle soul in ill-fitting armor," and attempts by local Conservative Association to secure his vote – or, failing that, preventing him from casting a ballot. It reminded me of Stephen Leacock, as did 'The Runaway Grandmother,' in which a bachelor farmer hires an tenacious elderly housekeeper, bends to her will, and finds his life much improved. Then I remind myself that Prof Leacock was fairly new on the scene as a humorist.

I'm more confident that 'A Short Story of a Rabbit' was influenced by by Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles G.D. Roberts. A young rabbit disregards the warnings of his mother and so learns a valuable lesson.

'The Return Ticket' is also timestamped. The narrator has a chance encounter with a woman who is accompanying her daughter's body back from Rochester, Minnesota to Manitoba's Rose Valley. The only the only truly dark story, it is also the very best.

But it is the title story that dominates:

'The Black Creek Stopping-House' begins with John Corbett strolling into a Salvation Army meeting at Winnipeg's Victoria Hall. He has for no other reason to be there other than the fact that "he would do anything once, and if he liked it he would do it again." Corbett is very taken with the music, the camaraderie, and more than anything Maggie Murphy, the pretty young thing seated by the door selling War Cry: "When he went in he bought one; when he came out he bought all she had left."

Corbett is a card shark. He loves the life, the challenge, the money, and may be the very best. But he gives it all up, ill-gotten gains included, for pretty Maggie Murphy. The two wed and with the aid of oxen move more than 200 kilometres west to what would become Brandon, Manitoba. There they set up a "stopping house," feeding hungry men traveling east and west. The railway comes the following year, thus securing their future.

 
Early in the story, John and Maggie Corbett cede their positions as protagonists to twin Brydon brothers Reginald and Randolph. Are they remittance men? They don't do much of anything apart from waiting for wealthy, appropriately-named Aunt Patience to die. As they mess about, making money tighter, Randolph comes up with an idea to tide them over. Why not encourage young half-brother Fred to come out West?

“Wot’s the matter with us gettin’ out Fred for our farm pupil? He’s got some money—they say he married a rich man’s daughter—and we’ve got the experience!”

Fred sends money, then follows with his elegant, delicate, doll-like wife Evelyn. The daughter of a wealthy lumber baron, she had defied her father to marry for love. Events after the couple's arrival are not happy, and involve deceit, betrayal, misunderstanding, and a wolf of a man named Rance Belmont. I was all in! But then came an unimaginative climax that for a short story, no matter how long, relies far too much on coincidence. The denouement, happy and breezy, sees the Brydon twins receiving their just desserts.

Those familiar with the story will appreciate the pun.

The first ten chapters of 'The Black Creek Stopping-House' were so engaging that I moved my copy of Sowing Seeds for Danny to my night table. The final two chapters were such a disappointment that I moved it back to the shelves.

I thought no more about it until glancing through Nellie McClung's 1935 biography Clearing in the West. In the nineteenth chapter, the author recounts a thirty-mile trip to Brandon with her mother and brother Jack on a sleigh heavily loaded with wheat. According to McClung she was twelve at the time, meaning that the journey was untaken in the December of 1885: 

Though the stay at this "Black Creek Stopping house" is brief, four pages provide a Clearing in the West provides a description of the stopping house, which is something lacking in McClung's long short story:

Mrs. Cobett's stopping house was one big room, with one end used as a kitchen, in which stood a great high-over black stove where Mrs. Corbett with quick movements filled plates with a cut of roast bef and helpings of turnips, potatoes and gravy. Each man, who was helped took a place at the long table coveref with oil-cloth, where he found everything else he needed.
   "Da," Corbett, traversed the length of the table with a blue enamel tea pot and filled the cups that were stationed at every place. Bread and butter, pickles, biscuits and cheese were set at close intervals, along the long table and it took but little time to serve thirty or forty men.

Mrs Corbett's first name is not shared in Clearing in the West. In 'The Black Creek Stopping-House,' Maggie cannot bring herself to address her husband, whom she first knew as "Mr Corbett," by his first name. "Da" is Da is short for "Dad" which is something I'd rather not address, particularly as  they have no offspring .

The Corbetts of 'The Black Creek Stopping-House,' have one employee, a young hireling blessed with the unforgettable name Peter Rocket. The Clearing in the West Corbetts have help in the form of an child  named Peter Rocket about whom twelve-year-old Nellie has a strong opinion:

I could see he was a lout of a boy, who could not even think of two things at once.

   There was an impatient rattling of spoons on cups.
   "Let me do it," I said, and took the smallest pot on the stove and went down the line.
   I could hear Mrs. Cobett's voice above the chatter.
   "Look at that now, there's a girl with a quick turn, and her not more than twelve years old. I'd be a proud woman, if I had a little girl like that comin' along."

Young Nellie's mother is not of similar mind: "When we were in the sleigh again, Mother told told me, I should nt be so forward. It did not look well for a little girl to jump up and pour tea for strange men."

Was there a Peter Rocket? No one by that name is recorded in 1881 and 1891 census records, though the latter does include an English immigrant named John Rocket living in Manitoba. In 1885, that Rocket would've been a fourteen-year-old.  

Similarly, the Corbetts don't match up. The 1881 census features a John Corbett (age 27) and Maggie Corbett (age 21) living in Manitoba, but not close to one another. The sole Margaret Corbett is fifty-nine.

Don't get me started on the Brydon bothers.

Neither the Corbetts nor their Black Creek stopping-house receive mention in 1880 editions of the Brandon Daily Sun. Curiously, the newspaper did not review The Black Creek Stopping-House and Other Stories.

So, I ask, is 'The Black Creek Stopping House' a nouvelle à clef? Did such a place exist? Could it be that the Corbetts are modeled on a couple who had entirely different names? What of Peter Rocket? Is it that the author couldn't remember John Rocket's first name? Did she even know it?

And now, I can't stop thinking about 'The Black Creek Stopping House.'

Dedication:

Trivia (personal): Because I'm working on a book about the Maria Monk hoax, I'm leaving this paragraph from 'The Way of the West' by way of reminder.

Object and Access: A very attractive hardcover, my copy, was purchased eight years ago in Toronto as part of a lot. It once belonged to Florence Adams.

The 1911 census features twenty-six women named Florence Adams, three of whom lived in Toronto. I'm ruling out the three-month-old, but not the twenty-three and twenty-five-year-olds  Of course, it's entirely possible that the woman who once owned the copy never lived in Toronto at all. 

I find no evidence of an edition published after 1919.

First editions begin at $30.00. At $177, the prize is a copy inscribed to one Alice Jordan:

A perfect gift for Xmas 2026.

Living Through Another Cuba

The Tent of the Wicked
Robert Switzer
New York: Signet, 1956
128 pages

We begin in a despot's bedroom. Six soldiers enter, one throws the light switch, and the country's president is ordered out of bed. His mistress is a sound sleeper.

This is the end of the Small Man's rule. He'd been expecting it. 

Where readers expecting it?

In June 1949, on the occasion of the author's eighth short story for Esquire, the magazine reported that publishers had been urging Robert Switzer to write a novel. Did The Tent of the Wicked meet their expectations? Was it shopped around? Whatever happened, it didn't arrive for another seven years – and then only as a mass market paperback. 

That opening scene is also the first in his story 'The Small Man,' which had appeared in Esquire's March 1955 issue. Not identical, but pretty damn close, it runs from the beginning to the first line break: 

cliquez pour agrandir

'The Small Man' is not a long story. This is the rest:

The violent final scene is much the same as another in the novel. Though the paragraphs between don't feature in any way, they do follow the Small Man's changing fortunes.

The publisher's pitch has it that The Tent of the Wicked takes place in "a Latin American country." I can do one better in identifying that country as Cuba. Its hero is Paul Rezzado, a young man who works for a travel agency in "the Capital." Much like Jonathan Richman, he falls in love with a bank teller. Her name is Angela. Their relationship is so passionate, so intense, so maddeningly enduring that Paul feels in need of a break. After pushing his employer for a temporary transfer, he leaves for two months' work in San José and doesn't return for a full three years. When he does, Paul finds Angela married to a plump businessman who is also father to her unborn child. She'd given up waiting sometime around the thirtieth month.

Just as well, really. Angela had been faithful, but not Paul. Besides, there was that old promise he'd made to return in sixty days, not eleven hundred.

Paul goes back to San José, where he befriends a married teenaged prostitute. He calls her "Doll-face," a nickname neither she nor anyone else understands. She vanishes, then reappears with a face that looks nothing like a doll's. The new police official in town had abducted her, raped her, tortured her, and disfigured her before dumping her back onto the street. Paul kills the man taking care that no one knows...  but word gets around. San José sees him as a hero and his fame begins to spread. Other men begin following his example, taking on the authorities like their hero Rezzado. Paul wants none of this, but more men join in and the government feels threatened. He becomes a hunted man until the military surrenders to public will and joins his side.

The novel's second scene takes place in the Presidential Palace where Paul, Provisionary President of the Republic, meets with General Avilia and captains of industry identified only as "the oilman," "the cattleman," "the communications man," and "the banker.":

These men could be designated by their specialities, their near-monopolies, but actually they were inter-involved, the banker owning parts of oil well and the cattleman sharing in silver mines. They did not own everything in the country but, between them, they owned a part of everything and repesented those who owned the rest.

What good can come from a meeting such as that?

The novel's climax owes nearly everything to Switzer's October 1955 Esquire story 'The Death Bringers.'

As the title suggests, there is no happy ending.

Robert Switzer's last known work is the 1961 novel I Was Going Anyway. It's the best Canadian noir novel I've read this year, if not entirely original. Switzer mined three of his old Esquire stories, the earliest being 'Death of a Prize Fighter,' which appeared all the way back in the June 1949 issue. 

'The Small Man' and 'The Death Bringers' were both published in the fifteen months leading to The Tents of the Wicked. Were they segments of a work in progress or simply reused for his debut novel?

I don't expect we'll ever know nor does it matter. The Tents of the Wicked is one hell of a book.

Trivia: In 'The Small Man' the Paul Rezzado character is named Jesus Rezzado. This Anglican caught several echoes of the New Testament in the novel itself.

The Rezzado character in 'The Death Bringers' is named Perez, which is the surname of the man Angela marries in The Tent of the Wicked. 

Object and Access: A paperback original, there have been no subsequent printings or editions. The cover illustration does not reflect a scene in the novel.

As I write eight copies are listed for sale online, ranging in price from US$4.00 to US$33.00. All booksellers are in the United States. A word of caution, the bookseller asking US$33.00, the most dear by far, charges a further US$99.50 to ship what is a slim mass market paperback that weighs less than a sparrow. 

Related posts:

Bringing It All Back Home
Robert Switzer, Esquire

Tales of Terror, Torment, and... Charm?

The Torrent [Le torrent]
Anne Hébert [trans Gwendolyn Moore]
Montreal: Harvest House, 1973
141 pages

Anne Hébert completed Le torrent in 1945, but it didn't reach bookstores until five years later. No Quebec publisher would touch the work, which explains how it is that the first edition was printed privately. A slim collection of five short stories, it was considered too dark, too disturbing and, according to the author, too violent. That's the story anyway. The truth is much more complicated, as detailed in Marie-Andrée Lamontagne's brilliant, exhaustive biography Anne Hébert, vivre pour écrire. (Montreal: Boréal, 2019).

When Le torrent was reissued in 1963, the Quiet Revolution was well underway, which may explain why Éditions Hurtubise took it on, adding two stories. The Torrent was released ten years after that as the fifth title in the all-too-brief Harvest House French Writers of Canada series.

 

Remarkably, Le torrent, was the first Anne Hébert title to be translated. By the time The Torrent was published, she her bibliography consisted of Les songes en equilibre (1942), Le torrent (1950), Le tombeau des rois (1953), Poèmes (1960), and Kamouraska (1970), her masterpiece.

Growing up in Montreal, the 1973 film adaptation of Kamouraska was everywhere.

As a result, I knew Anne Hébert's name at age ten, though another eight years passed before I read anything she'd written. My introduction was 'The House on the Esplanade' ('La maison de l'Esplanade'), the fifth of the seven stories in The Torrent.

The titular house belongs to elderly spinster Stéphanie de Bichette, "a curious little creature [...] with limbs that were poorly formed, and too thin." It dates from the time of New France: "You  know them, those narrow houses with their steep roofs and their rows of gabled windows, the upper ones about as large as a swallows nest." Stéphanie de Bichette lives there with her chambermaid Géraldine, occupying no more than one or two rooms on each floor. The other rooms – there are many – have been gradually been closed off. The two belonging to her younger brothers, who'd both died of scarlet fever when Mlle de Bichette was ten, were the first. Her mother died shortly thereafter. Irénée, the older brother was killed in a hunting accident, and so his room was shut off. Once sister Desneiges entered the Ursuline convent, her room was also sealed. And then there's Charles... Charles was disowned for marrying a girl from the Lower Town. His former room is treated like all the others. When Géraldine enters to clean, she makes certain to place each item in the very same place as when the room was vacated. The chambermaid looks to the day she will be able to do the same with her mistress's room.

I've reviewed two other French Writers of Canada books over the years: The Temple on the River (Les Écœurants) by Jacques Hébert and Bitter-Bread (La Scouine) by Albert Laberge. Both were dark, but not nearly so dark as The Torrent, which has me wondering about its peculiar back cover copy: 

The titular story does indeed "strike with devastating impact." François, the narrator, grows up on a small remote farm, cut off from the rest of the world. It begins:  

As a child, I was dispossessed of the world. By decree of a will higher than my own, I had to renounce all passion in this life. I related to the world by fragments, only at those points which were immediately and strictly necessary , and which were removed from me as soon as their usefulness had ended.

François knows only his mother, a threatening figure. He dares not look at her face; it is unlikely that he would recognize her on the street.

But there is no street. The boy's early years are spent on the farm, and the farm alone. There is such a sense of foreboding in the early pages that nothing is spoiled in revealing that the story features child abuse, animal abuse,  nd almost certainly murder.

Returning to the cover copy, this sentence stands out: "The background of course [emphasis mine], is a small Quebec community with its morally repressive environment."

In fact, The story features no Quebec community of any size. The morally repressive environment is the sole creation of the boy's mother, who keeps a ledger detailing "the wages of sin."

What strikes even more is this: "Included under the title The Torrent, are a group of stories that are charming, except for 'The Torrent' itself..."

There is not one charming story in The Torrent.

'Springtime for Catherine' is set in wartime. A population is forced to flee, discarding the elderly, infirm, and pregnant to fend for themselves in the face of the approaching enemy. Catherine, a servant girl, is awkward and unattractive, but is able to keep up. Endless years of toil with little sleep have prepared her for such a challenge. She is a "foundling," a "dirty little beast," a "Child of Sin;" Catherine is her name, but she's referred to as "The Flea." 

Having taken refuge in a barn, one night the girl is discovered by a drunken soldier. His clumsy hands undress her and for "one spark of time" she is a princess, she feels loved. In the light of the early dawn, she considers the youth and beauty of the sleeping soldier. How much ridicule might he receive for having slept with her? He would soon awaken and discover his mistake: "He must never know that he had made love to the Flea, the servant girl death's head, the joke and scorn of everyone."

And so, Catherine plunges a knife into his throat.

Have I spoiled 'Springtime for Catherine?' Trust me, there's so much more to the story. My intention was to show the absurdity of the cover copy. Were it not for the fact that the same text continues to be used to sell copies today, I wouldn't have bothered.

Besides, I haven't even touched upon 'A Grand Marriage' ('Un grand mariage') which is Anne Hébert's very best short story.

Wish I'd found it at eighteen.

Object: A mass market paperback printed on paper that is far superior to that typically used in that format, fifty-three years later there's not a hint of yellowing. The cover design is by Robert Reid. The cover illustration is by Gilberte Christin de Cardaillac. I purchased my copy this past autumn at the Merrickville Book Emporium. Price: $2.00.

Access: Though Harvest House is long out-of-business, copies are available through the University of Ottawa Press at $14.95 (plus shipping).

Le torrent is currently available from Bibliothèque Québécoise. Two editions are available. I recommend the most recent, published just last year, for its inclusion of an introduction by Natalie Watteyne. Priced at $10.95, you can purchase it by way of Jeff Bezos, but wouldn't you rather going directly to the publisher? Here's the link.

Related post:

A Father's Love on Father's Day

A Pulp Writer's Challenge to Canadians

Original Detective Stories
Volume 1, Number 1
April 1948

Can a magazine written entirely by one person be considered a book? Of course not, but it does come close. Original Detective Stories was published Voyageur Press, which was owned and operated by author Horace Brown. As far as I've been able to determine, he was the only staff member and only writer. The debut issue features two works of fiction – both by Brown, of course – the first being 'Murder à la Carte.' A "BOOK LENGTH NOVEL – NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED," I first wrote about 'Murder à la Carte' fourteen years ago, wondering whether it may have found a second life as the 1950 News Stand Library novel The Penthouse Killings.

After finally managing to find a copy of the magazine, I can now report that 'Murder à la Carte' and The Penthouse Killings are in fact one and the same.

It wasn't so wild a guess; the covers suggested as much.

I have no idea who provided the cover illustration for The Penthouse Killings, though the style reminds me of several other News Stand Library titles. The Original Detective Stories cover is credited to Jackson Heise, a man who began his career as a child. The 1931 census finds him living at 281 Milverton Boulevard in Toronto with his mother and father. Seventeen at the time, Heise had already left school and seems to have been making decent money through his art, earning $520 in the previous twelve months:*

Original Detective Stories features four more illustrations, masthead included.

The contents page is interesting in that it ignores 'On the Blotter,' the very first piece in this very first issue. A four-paragraph, half-page editorial credited to "The Sergeant," whom I have every reason to believe is Brown himself, it begins:

The bane of a policeman's unhappy lot is the one world "Unsolved."

   The aftermath of War, the spiritual and moral letdown that follows brutal conflict has unleashed murder throughout Canada. Many of these cases are sex crimes of the most atrocious sort. 

In fact, the homicide rate decreased in the years immediately following the Second World War.

'On the Blotter' calls for more police funding and "a tightening of the Law in the matter of of detaining known perverts until cure."

Lest you think you have Brown pegged, as a Toronto alderman he became a staunch defender of hippies and a promoter of tenants rights. We have Brown to thank for helping raise money for the Henry Moore sculpture in Nathan Philips Square after the city council had voted it down.

Horace Brown also founded of the Canadian March of Dimes (now March of Dimes Canada). He himself was stricken with polio at the age of eight months and walked with the aid of crutches. The disease influences 'The Scarf' the second of the magazine's two stories, written under the nom de plume "Leslie Allen."** 

The issue has no ads. Its back cover is taken up with a challenge and appeal: 

Canadian readers and advertisers did not respond. Were the magazines themselves to blame or the distributors and retailers? Frankly, I think the fault lies with Brown himself. The venture was unstable from the start. Original Detective Stories' second issue was the last. It appeared in July 1948, three months after the first. 

Brown's magazine empire had one other title in its fold. Like Original Detective Stories, All Star Western Stories debuted in April 1948, published a second issue in July 1948, and then disappeared.
   

Brown believed that Canadians would rally to the support of Canadian publications and publishing.

He wasn't wrong.

We saw this through much of the second half of the last century and into the early years of this one. I worked for a library wholesaler and major chain for the last fifteen of those years and remember well the number of Canadian titles on the weekly Globe & Mail bestseller lists. 

The newspaper's most recent hardcover fiction list features not one Canadian title. The non-fiction hardcover list has just one, Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Not one title is published by a Canadian publisher.

A question for Canadians: We're boycotting American produce, booze, and travel, so why are we not boycotting American cultural product? 

* Sadly, Jackson's father, a piano salesman, was not working. All evidence suggests that the boy was the family's sole breadwinner. According to the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator, $520 in 1931 is roughly the equivalent of $10,425 today, which may explain why the Heise family was sharing the small duplex with young marrieds Timothy and Elma Breuls and the bride's mother. 

** Brown had previously used "Leslie Allen" for his 1946 golfing mystery Murder in the Rough.  

Related posts:

Horace Brown: From Penthouse to Pavement

Horace Brown: Fritzi in Flight or a Coincidence
No Whack on the Side of the Head

Quebec City Noir
Whispering City: Horace Brown's Second Encore

The Urban Leacock

Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich
Stephen Leacock
Toronto: Bell & Cockburn, 1914
310 pages

On my most recent visit to Montreal I purchased a copy of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. It isn't that I hadn't one already, rather that I didn't have this particular edition. A thing of beauty, thus a joy forever, it is illustrated throughout by Seth. 

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2013

It follows the 1999 McClelland & Stewart coffee table book illustrated by engraver Wesley W. Bates.

All to say that Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is still very much a thing in this country. It outshines and outsells the author's fifty other books combined. Throw in posthumous publications, if you like; I still stand by my words.

Much of the appeal of Sunshine Sketches has to do with structure. Unlike previous collections, its twelve stories – each labelled a "Chapter" – share the same characters and Canadian small town setting. It stands with this collection as the closest thing Leacock ever came to writing a novel.*

Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich too has stories presented as chapters. Like Sunshine Sketches, its recurring characters move about a common setting, only this time that setting is urban and American.

The first chapter, 'A Little Dinner With Mr. Lucullus Fyshe,' sets the stage by introducing the elm-shaded, Grecian-columned Mausoleum Club on Plutoria Avenue, located in a metropolis all evidence suggests is also named Plutoria. Fyshe, who is chief director of the People’s District Loan and Savings and president of both the People’s Traction and Suburban Company and the Republican Soda and Siphon Co-operative, has learned that a member of the English aristocracy, Duke of Dunham, is visiting the United States. Fyshe intends to mine some Old World money; the idle rich are always looking for more, it seems. Mergers are particularly effective. Fyshe himself had brought about a merger of four soda-water companies, "bringing what was called industrial peace over an area as big as Texas and raising the price of soda by three peaceful cents per bottle." Things with the Duke don't go quite as he'd hoped, but there is no harm done; Fyshe's wealth continues to grow.

Indeed, the idle rich only get richer, the sole exception being their newest member, Tomlinson, the central figure of 'The Wizard of Finance' and 'The Arrested Philanthropy of Mr. Tomlinson.' Once a struggling bush farmer, he anticipates Beverley hillbilly Jed Clampett, though the gold discovered on his Ohio land is of the traditional kind, not black Texas tea. Tomlinson's newfound wealth is unwelcome and is slowly destroying his family. Son Fred, once a strapping seventeen-year-old, has taken to a sofa in the Grand Palaver Hotel, where he lies in flowered dressing gown next to a pack of cigarettes and box of chocolates with blinds drawn and eyes half-open.

American Magazine, June 1914.
Illustration: F. Strothmann

'The Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown,' the fourth chapter, was inspired by the 1912 Montreal visit of Abdu'l-Bahá, eldest son of founder the Bahá'í faith Bahá'u'lláh. As such, it has become the most notable and notorious. A nouvelle a clèf, here Abdu'l-Bahá becomes "celebrated Oriental mystic" Yahi-Bahi, a leader in the new cult of Boohooism. "Many things are yet to happen before other's begin," is a prophesy this reader has taken to heart.

Not every Arcadian adventure takes place in Plutoria. Come summer those of the city's leisure class make for the country. One such member is Newberry, who worked with Fyshe on the merger that birthed the Republican Soda and Siphon Co-operative. Mr Newberry is a firm believer in "getting right out into the bush and putting on old clothes,":

This was why he had built Castel Casteggio. It stood about forty miles from the city, out among the wooded hills on the shore of a little lake. Except for the fifteen or twenty residences like it that dotted the sides of the lake, it was entirely isolated. The only way to reach it was by the motor road that wound its way among leafy hills from the railway station fifteen miles away. Every foot of the road was private property, as all nature ought to be.
   The whole country about Castel Casteggio was absolutely primeval, or at any rate as primeval as Scotch gardeners and French landscape artists could make it. The lake itself lay like a sparkling gem from nature’s workshop—except that they had raised the level of it ten feet, stone-banked the sides, cleared out the brush, and put a motor road round it. Beyond that it was pure nature.

 American Magazine, July 1914.
Illustration: F. Strothmann

The passage comes from the 'The Love Story of Mr. Peter Spillikins,' which concerns an innocent dimwit and how he came to marry an older woman with four adult sons. My favourite of the eight stories chapters, it begins:

Meanwhile, Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is looked after by Captain Cormorant of the United States Navy. If not Cormorant, there's Lieutenant Hawk:

Or if Lieutenant Hawk is also out of town for the day, as he sometimes has to be, because he is in the United States army, Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is taken out by old Colonel Shake, who is in the State militia and who is at leisure all the time. 

 I do like a good love story.

'The Rival Churches of St. Asaph and St. Osoph' and 'The Ministrations of the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing,' concern Plutoria Avenue's impressive Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches. Rev. Edward Fareforth Furlong, the charismatic youngish minister of St. Asaph, appears throughout Arcadian Adventures. Whether accompanying a fair lady harpist of his choir on flute or dancing "the new episcopal tango" with the daughters of elderly parishioners, he's a popular figure – so much more fun than St. Osoph's Rev Dr McTeague with his lectures on philosophy and focus on Hegel.

Rev James Barclay (1844-1920) of St Paul's Presbyterian Church, Montreal, 
model for Rev Dr McTeague and grandfather of painter Marian Dale Scott.

The balance between the two churches shifts dramatically with St Osoph's appointment of Rev Dr Uttermust Dumfarthing. An unpleasant, unfriendly, judgmental man who is unlikely to acknowledge a parishioner encountered on Plutoria Avenue, he is given to talk of burning souls and eternal damnation and so becomes all the rage. The decline in St Asaph's fortunes, as reflected in near-barren communion plates, is all too evident. Where once Newberry had pushed for expensive expansions of the Episcopalian church – dynamiting the entrance so as to construct a Norman gateway, for example – he and other mortgage-holders grow concerned. There being too much uncertainty, the men work to bring about a merger of the two churches. Creation of this "United Church" is in the hands of Mr. Furlong, senior, who is not only the father of the rector of St. Asaph’s, but  also president of the New Amalgamated Hymnal Corporation, and director of the Hosanna Pipe and Steam Organ, Limited.  He is joined in this good work by Newberry, of course, along with Skinyer, a partner in the law firm Skinyer-Beatem. Mr Furlong lays out the terms to Mr Newberry: 

"All the present mortgagees will be converted into unified bond-holders, the pew rents will be capitalised into preferred stock, and the common stock, drawing its dividend from the offertory, will be distributed among all members in standing. Skinyer says that it is really an ideal form of church union, one that he thinks is likely-to be widely adopted. It has the advantages of removing all questions of religion, which he says are practically the only remaining obstacle to a union of all the churches. In fact, it puts the churches once and for all on a business basis.”
   “But what about the question of doctrine, of belief?” asked Mr. Newberry.
   "Skinyer says he can settle it,’’ answered Mr. Furlong.

In the final chapter, the gentlemen of the Mausoleum Club set their sights on civic politics with Lucullus Fyshe leading the charge for clean government: "He wanted, he said, to see everything done henceforth in broad daylight, and for this purpose he had summoned them at night to discuss ways and means of action."

The enduring popularity of Sunshine Sketches has us associating Leacock with small towns. This makes sense. I will note, however, that the man himself lived most of his life in cities. I won't pretend to have read all his writing, but what I have read tends to be set in urban and suburban settings. For this reason, I tend to think Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich is more representative of Leacock's work.

Of course, as a city boy, I may be biased. What I can say without prejudice is that it is every bit as true as The Theory of the Leisure Class, only funnier.

*  In fact, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town has been described as a novel. Canadian Book Review Annual describes it as such. On the other hand, it also has it that the book is "set in the little Town of Sunshine."

A Bonus: 

The Montreal Gazette, 19 December 1914

Object and Access: A first edition, sans jacket, I purchased my copy forty or so years ago at Montreal's Word Bookstore, not a half-kilometre to the east of McGill University's Stephen Leacock Building. Price: $5.00.

The least expensive copy listed online is a 1989 New Canadian Library mass market edition offered at US$2.80 by a Dallas bookseller who dares charge US$100 in shipping to Canada. At US$778, the most expensive is a Bell & Cockburn first edition in "very good," very rare dust jacket. It is being sold by a Monterey bookseller. Shipping for this copy is US$18.

The book to buy is a jacket-less signed copy of the first UK edition, published in 1915 by John Lane. Price: £375 (w/ £18 shipping). I share the bookseller's image so as to encourage repatriation.

Fifteen-year-old "new" New Canadian Library copies of Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich are available from Penguin Random House Canada at $22. Though I do recommend Gerald Lynch's introduction, at $19.95 you can do better with the Tecumseh Press Canadian Critical Edition edited by D.M.R. Bentley. 

First editions, sans jacket, are listed for sale online at under ten dollars.

Related posts:

Average Leacock for the Average Man

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like
Professor Leacock Sets the Stage
Am I the Only One Laughing with Leacock?

Elinor Glyn's Christmas Ghost Story (and others)

The Contrast and Other Stories
Elinor Glyn
London: Duckworth, 1913
312 pages

As is typical of short story collections, this book is overshadowed by the author's longer works. The Contrast and Other Stories was published in the very same year as Glyn's novels The Sequence and The Point of View. Of these, the former, a story of the romance between "tall, stern and cynical" Sir Hugh Dremont and "pale, sensitive and spiritual" Guinevere, is the more notable for having earned a spot sixty-five years later as volume 17 in Barbara Cartland's Library of Love.

Those character descriptions of Sir Hugh Dremont and Guinevere come from Dame Barbara herself. I must read it, if only to learn Guinevere's surname.

The Point of View failed to reach quite that height, but it has an equally interesting publishing history. The novel was first published from start to finish in the February 1913 number of Ainslee's Magazine. Later that same year, it appeared as a book in the United States, though not in the United Kingdom. My first American edition was purchased three years ago for fifty cents .

New York: Appleton, 1913

The Point of View is one of five "stories" in The Contrast and Other Stories. Spanning 184 of the collection's 312 pages, it cannot help but dominate.

Frontispiece to the Appleton edition.

The heroine of the novel – again, it is a novel – is  21-year-old Stella Rawson, a pretty brown-eyed orphan who was raised by her uncle and aunt, Canon and the Honourable Mrs Ebly. The spring of 1913 finds the three visiting Rome. While dining at the restaurant of the Grand Hotel they notice Count Roumovsky. He's hard to miss. The count dresses in such fine clothes and wears such a slim wristwatch that the Canon and the Honourable Mrs. Ebly take offense. And then there's his hair:

It seemed incredible that such an almost grotesque arrangement of coiffure should adorn the head of a man in modern evening dress. It should have been on some Byzantine saint. However, there he was, and entirely unconcerned at the effect he was producing.

By all appearances, Roumovsky is oblivious to the Eblys' attentions, Stella's included, but when alone with her the following morning he makes his move in arranging an afternoon tryst, which is followed by another, and an evening encounter in which he proposes marriage. Stella is hot for the Russian dandy, but is already betrothed to Reverend Eustace Medlicott, a High Church Anglican who is prepared to leave his life of celibacy. 

It pains me to write that 'The Point of View' is the best "story" in the collection, because I really wanted to focus on 'The Irtonwood Ghost;' Canadian Christmas ghost stories being so uncommon.

Can 'The Irtonwood Ghost' be considered in any way Canadian? I say yes. Elinor Glyn came to Canada at two months of age and left as a nine-year-old. Those are formative years, right?

First published in the 1911 Christmas Issue of Pearson's, 'The Irtonwood Ghost' is the second longest piece in The Contrast and Other Stories. It's on par with the four others in that it is neither more nor less memorable. I read it two weekends back and can't quite recall what it was all about. From what I do remember, it concerns graceful young widow Esther Charters who has been invited to spend Christmas at Irtonwood Manor, located somewhere in the English countryside. Its a good break from her worries, which centre on a century-old marriage certificate that needs be found to secure the property she has inherited from her late husband. Unbeknownst to her, there is an enemy, Ambrose Duval, amongst the other guests. Duval has been on the hunt for the very same certificate, but only so that he might destroy it. The supernatural comes into play in the form of haunting dreams in which premonition plays a part. Oh, and there is a ghost.

'The Contrast' is an odd choice for the title tale in that it is the weakest of the five stories. Irish songbird Pauline is being strung along by a ne'er-do-well while a devoted man, the better in every way, pines from the wings.

In 'Her Advice,' a young wife chooses to confront an older femme fatale whom she believes is threatening her marriage, and instead comes away with advice on how to tend the flames of desire.

The closer, 'Fragments,' concerns an unnamed woman married to Ernest, a man made invalid by war. It is either Glyn at her most experimental or nothing more than notes being passed off as a short story.

I think 'Fragments' is the only one of the five to have a sad ending, though I may be wrong. In the course of its twenty pages, the wife falls in love with able-bodied landowner and dog breeder Sir John Harrington, and he with her. Neither act on that love out of deference to Ernest. The story ends with the wife arriving home one day to find her husband dead. Could it too be a happy ending? After all, Ernest is no longer suffering, and his wife is now free to be with Sir John.

That the ending is so very predictable reflects on Glyn's chief flaw as a storyteller. Once set in motion, her plots follow the simplest course toward a happy conclusion. There is conflict to be sure, as expected with matters of the heart, but there are no obstacles of any significance.

Each story ends with every character happy or at the very least satisfied, the exception being Ambrose Duval of 'The Irtonwood Ghost.' Esther Charters ends up with the lost marriage certificate, not him. On the other hand, Duval is allowed to escape, which must have made him happy.

Even Eustace Medlicott of The Point of View is happy, despite losing his charming fiancée to a Russian count. Bonus: Reverend Medlicott is free to maintain his life of celibacy.

The Point of View ends with the marriage of Stella and Count Roumovsky, but would they live happily ever after? After all, their whirlwind romance takes place in the spring of 1913, a mere fourteen months before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. I wonder how they fared once the Bolsheviks took power.

Soon to become ghosts themselves, perhaps.

Object: Once part of the Hammersmith Public Libraries, it isn't nearly so scarred as one might expect.

At some point it belonged to someone named O. Farnworth.

I purchased this copy, a first edition, earlier this year from an Edinburgh bookseller. Price: £15.

Access: A Quebec bookseller is offering a "Very Good" copy of the Duckworth edition for US$30.00, while another in New York State has listed the same in perhaps lesser condition at US$65.00. Both have blue boards, which I can only assume is a variant.

The only other edition of which I am aware is the Tauchnitz, published in Leipzig in 1913. Just one copy is listed for sale online; this by an Ottawa bookseller:

Half Bound. Condition: VG. 271 pages in very good, clean condition; edges a little yellowed. Marbled endpapers. Half bound with brown leather over marbled boards. Gilt titles and decoration on the spine. Light scuffing on the leather and boards. Edges rubbed. Corners not bumped. VG Size: 4 1/2 x 6 1/2.

Sounds intriguing. 

The Duckworth edition can. be read online here thanks to the Internet Archive.

The Point of View was published in 1913 by Applewood and Authors' Press, then never again. As I write, two online booksellers are offering jacketless copies of the latter online at US$4.50 and US$5.00, but at US$10.00, the copy to buy is this Appleton first:

Sure, that's more than 50¢, but it has a dust jacket. And doesn't it sound spicy?

Related posts:

Freedom to Read Week: Embracing Elinor Glyn
Freedom to Read Week: The Police Raid Britnell's
Guelph: City of Galt, Gay, Glyn, Graves, and Girdles
Three Weeks a Lady

Three Weeks in Thirteen Images