Wild Wild Geese

Wild Geese
Martha Ostenso
New York: Dodd, Mead. 1925

358 pages

The winner of the inaugural $13,500 Dodd-Mead-Famous-Players-Pictorial Review Prize, Wild Geese was a sensation. Consider this from my book's copyright page:

There were many, many more printings to come.

In 2009, the year the Dusty Bookcase began, I would not have considered Wild Geese eligible for inclusion. Wild Geese was neither neglected nor forgotten.

It is now.

Look no further than the late New Canadian Library for evidence. An early addition – #18! – the novel was something of an NCL staple. Today, aging copies printed in 2008 await purchase in Penguin Random House's Ontario warehouse.

The 1961 first NCL edition (left); the 2008 final NCL edition (right).

Wild Geese was not on the syllabi of my Canadian Literature courses. I felt I'd dodged a bullet. A young man living in cosmopolitan Montreal, I had no interest in stories of struggling farming families on the prairies.

Wild Geese is a story of a struggling farming family on the prairies. Caleb Gare is the patriarch. Hardworking, cold, cruel, and miserly, he is a character we've seen before. Angela is Caleb's cowed wife. Drained of all joy, she too is familiar. Caleb keeps their four children close, but not to his heart. He sees them as little but unpaid labour and is ever ready to smother all aspirations and dreams in order to keep them on the farm. None have ventured farther than ten miles, except to bring cattle to Nykerk, a larger small town than nearby Yellow Post. Caleb does not allow his wife and children to attend services in the Yellow Post church. He brings home sermons which he alters to serve his purpose.

Twenty-year-old twins Martin and Ellen are the eldest and so have suffered the longest. Martin shares his father's dedication to farming, but nothing more. When not attending to the crops and livestock, he works at improving the various outbuildings. Martin has been salvaging wood and fragments of old windows with the hope of one day constructing a proper home for the family. Ellen is broken. She sees a blurred world through second-hand glasses as she stumbles about, all the while thinking of Malcolm, a boy who once kissed her. Charlie, by far the youngest of the four Gare children, is something of a ghost. As a character, he barely exists, yet is Caleb's favourite. Between the twins and Charlie stands Judith, the problem child. Caleb considers this daughter during a late night survey of his land: 

Caleb lifted the lantern and examined the wick. Things would turn out to his liking. He would hold the whip hand. Judith, yes, she was a problem. She had some of his own will, and she hated the soil . . . was beginning to think she was meant for other things . . . getting high notions, was Judith. She would have to be broken. She owed him something . . . owed the soil something. The twins, they would stay—no fear of their deserting. Martin and Ellen would not dare to leave; there was no other place for them. And Amelia, she was easy . . . yes, yes, she was easy, Amelia was!

Caleb's hold on Amelia has to do with a secret.

As a young man he'd pursued Amelia only to place a distant second to gallant Des Jordan. Tragically, Jordan's life was soon cut short by a bull. Unmarried Amelia gave birth to a son who was handed over to Catholic priests. How Amelia ended up Caleb's wife is left up to the imagination. I expect her family's extreme poverty had something to do with the marriage..

Only Caleb knows about the child. For more than two decades he has used this knowledge to render Amelia subservient. She lives in fear of exposure and the disgrace it will bring her and the children she's had with Caleb.

Twenty-four-year-old Martha Ostenso
Canadian Singers and Their Songs
Edward S. Caswell, ed.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1925

Into this toxic household comes Lind Archer, the new schoolteacher. She will be lodging with the Gares as their home is one of the closest to the school (and because Caleb, a trustee, will be getting money from the school board). Martin and Emily avert their eyes during Miss Archer's first meal in the Gare home, but not Judith; she is intrigued. Later in the evening, circumstance forces Judith to share her bed with the new teacher:

She watched Lind taking off her trim outer clothing. When she saw that she wore dainty silk underthings she glanced at her more covertly. She made no comment.

   After both girls had undressed, Judith picked up a string of amber beads Lind had placed on the stand near the bed.

   There was also a pair of ear rings of the same limpid yellow substance.

   “Wild honey! Drops of wild honey!” Judith exclaimed in a whisper. “Just the color of you!”

The arrival of pretty young Miss Archer, her jewelry, tailored clothing, and dainty dainties provide a glimpse of a world quite unlike her own. In an early scene, Judith removes her rough work clothes and lies naked beside a pond. Thoughts turn from her father, Lind, hunky neighbour Sven Sandbro, then back to her father: 

Oh, how knowing the bare earth was, as if it might have a heart and a mind hidden here in the woods. The fields that Caleb had tilled had no tenderness, she knew. But here was something forbiddenly beautiful, secret as one’s own body. And there was something beyond this. She could feel it in the freeness of the air, in the depth of the earth. Under her body there were, she had been taught, eight thousand miles of earth. On the other side, what? Above her body there were leagues and leagues of air, leading like wings—to what? The marvelous confusion and complexity of all the world had singled her out from the rest of the Gares. She was no longer one of them. Lind Archer had come and her delicate fingers had sprung a secret lock in Jude’s being. She had opened like a tight bud. There was no going back now into the darkness.

   Sven Sandbo, he would be home in May, so they said. Was it Sven she wanted, now that she was so strangely free? Judith looked straight above her through the network of white birch and saw the bulbous white country that a cloud made against the blue. Something beyond Sven, perhaps . . . Freedom, freedom. She dipped her blistered hands down into the clear topaz of the pool, lifted them and dipped them and lifted them, letting the drops slip off the tips of her fingers each time like tiny cups of light. She thought of the Teacher, of her dainty hands and her soft, laughing eyes . . . she came from another life, another world. She would go back there again. Her hands would never be maps of blisters as Jude’s were now, from tugging a calf out of a mud-hole. Jude hid her hands behind her and pressed her breast against the cold ground. Hard, senseless sobs rose in her throat, and her eyes smarted with tears. She was ugly beyond all bearing, and all her life was ugly. Suddenly she was bursting with hatred of Caleb. Her large, strong body lay rigid on the ground, and was suddenly unnatural in that earthy place. Then she relaxed and wept like a woman. . . .

Given the year of publication, it's unsurprising that the homoerotic elements of the novel were not remarked upon by reviewers. They were most certainly not acknowledged decades later in Carlyle King's inept 1961 New Canadian Library introduction. 

In a later passage, Lind admires Judith in turn:

Lind thought how wildly beautiful she looked in the unnatural glamour: the able grace of her tall young body; her defiant shoulders over which her black hair now fell; the proud slope of her throat and breast.

This is likely the most homoerotic passage in Canadian literature up to 1925:

Afterwards Judith came up to Lind in the loft and sat down on the bed, watching the Teacher wash her face and neck and long smooth arms with a fragrant soap. Lind turned and surprised a peculiar look in the girl’s eyes. Judith grew red and leaned back on the pillows.
   “It makes my mouth water to watch you do that,” she said. “It’s so—oh, I don’t know what it is—just as if somebody’s stroking my skin."

   “Why don’t you use this soap, Judith? I have lots of it. I’ve told you so many times to use anything of mine you like. Next time you expect to meet Sven—” Lind lowered her voice and smiled roguishly at Jude—“let me fix you all up, will you? Nice smelling powder and a tiny drop of perfume in your hair. He’ll die of delight, Judie! Just die.”
   Judith chuckled and ran her hands over her round breasts.
   “It doesn’t take perfume to kill him,” she murmured.
   Lind looked at her, stretched full length across the bed. What a beautiful, challenging body she had! With a terrible beginning of consciousness, like a splendid she-animal, nearly grown.

   “Let me comb your hair, Lind, will you?” Jude asked.

   The Teacher sat down on the floor beside the bed and Judith loosened the long skeins of bronze hair that fell all about her shoulders. Judith loved to run her fingers through it, and to gather it up in a shining coil above the white nape of Lind’s neck. Lind talked to her about things of the outer world, as she often did when they could be alone together. But presently Ellen’s voice came up from below, the thin, usual protest. Judith fastened Lind’s hair up with a single pin and left her. Lind thought that her step was a little lighter than it had been.

Far more erotic than anything in 1928's The Well of Loneliness, is it not?

I don't mean to suggest that Wild Geese be categorized a lesbian novel. This straight cis male saw Judith's attraction toward "the Teacher" as something other. In Lind, overall-wearing farm girl Judith sees the fantastic. It isn't that she wants to be with Lind, rather that she wants to be like Lind or perhaps even wants to be Lind.

Both young women have romantic relationships with men. Judith and Sven's begins in the backstory; Lind's is with...

I'm hesitating...

Lind's is with Mark Jordan, the son Amelia had with Del Jordan. I'm sharing this only because it is revealed early on. 

This can't be considered a spoiler, right?

It's interesting that Lind is so often referred to as "the Teacher." I don't believe she has a great deal of influence on the events that lead to the climax, though her "dainty hands" push gently toward the inevitable. From the first page, a dark cloud hangs over the Gare farmland. Caleb is calculating, manipulative, and cruel, crossing and at times threatening his neighbours.

He will reap what he sows. The day of reckoning is coming.

Ten months ago, I posted a list of what I considered the best Canadian novels of the 1920s. I listed nine because I'd not yet read Barney Allen's They Have Bodies and The Magpie by Douglas Durkin, Ostenso's future husband.

Still haven't.

In any case, I was certain that one would make it an even ten.

Martha Ostenso beat them to it.

Wild Geese is one of the best Canadian novels of the 1920s or any decade.

Trivia I: Wild Geese bested over 1500 other submissions to win the Dodd-Mead-Famous-Players-Pictorial Review Prize. The US$13,500 awarded Martha Ostenso in 1925 is the equivalent of roughly US$240,000 today.

Trivia II: Wild Geese has enjoyed no less than three movie adaptations, the earliest being the 1927 lost silent film of the same name. The most intriguing is the second, Ruf der Wildgänse (1961), which IMDb claims is the first Austrian movie to be filmed almost entirely in Canada.

I don't doubt it.

The novel was last adapted in 2001, as the made for Canadian made for TV movie After the Harvest starring Sam Sheppard.

Object: An attractive hardcover in printed boards, I really like the endpapers:

I purchased my jacketless copy for roughly fifteen years ago. I can't quite remember where, but I do recall paying one dollar.

Access:  The novel first appeared in the August and September 1925 numbers of Pictorial Review. 

That autumn, Wild Geese was published in hardcover by McClelland & Stewart (Canada) and Dodd Mead (United States). Hodder & Stoughton's British edition appeared as The Passionate Flight, the novel's working title.

Wild Geese is still available Penguin Random House, but there's no need to give Bertelsmann SE & Co KGaA any more of your money; plenty of used copies are listed online at prices ranging from C$4.00 (the 1989 NCL edition) to £77.00 (first UK edition, sans jacket). The best buy is a copy of the 1925 McClelland & Stewart first Canadian edition, avec jacket, at $13.00.

In Canada, the novel entered the public domain in 2014. It can be read here – gratis – through the wonderful faded page.

There have been several translations: Norwegian (Graagass), German (Ruf der Wildgänse), Danish (Vildgæs), Spanish (Almas sometidas), Polish (Krzyk dzikich gęsi), and Slovinian (Klic divjih gosi), 

I read Wild Geese for the 1925 Club, the tenth anniversary club of clubs dedicated to reading and reviewing books published in a specific year. 

Remarkably, of the 43 books from 1920s that have been covered on this blog over the years, Wild Geese is only is only the second to have been published in 1925. The other is:

The Black Magician - R.T.M. Scott

Related posts:

About Those Old New Canadian Library Intros

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

The Nine Best Canadian Novels of the 1920s

Martha Ostenso's Forgotten Masterpiece?

A 49-Year-Old Fifty Shades? S&M from M&S?

The Pan Jalna (and the careening Jalnawagon)

Don't Kill the Dog

The Heart of the Ancient Wood

Charles G.D. Roberts
New York: Wessels, 1906
276 pages

A bestseller in its day, a college text in mine, I read The Heart of the Ancient Wood for my very first CanLit course.

Last week I read it again.

Because I remembered liking the novel, I was really taken aback. The lengthy, gentle, gassy scenic opening is just the sort of thing that sets this sexagenarian's surprisingly healthy teeth on edge.

Your tastes may differ, but I think we can agree that "Not indolently soft, like that which sifts in green shadow through the leafage of a summer garden, but tense, alertly and mysteriously expectant, was the silence of the forest," is not a captivating first sentence.

The Heart of the Ancient Wood unfolds so very, very slowly with descriptions of the wood, its creatures, their sounds, their scents, their habits, their habitats, the trees, the sky, and the air until a "grey man figure" appears. The cock-partridge, the nuthatch, the bear, the wild-cat, and the weasel all react differently. The wood-mice quiver with fear, while the hare looks on with "aversion, not unmixed with scorn" while noting the man's lumbering gait:

“Never,” thought the hare, disdainfully, "would he be able to escape from his enemies!”

Eventually, the man figure reaches a clearing, pushes through blackberry and raspberry canes, then picks his way between the burned stumps of a desolate pasture, before at long last reaching "the loneliest cabin he had ever chanced to see."

The man figure's name is David "Old Dave" Titus. He has come to prepare the cabin. But for what purpose?

The answer comes in the third chapter, "The Exiles from the Settlement," with the arrival of Kirstie Craig (née MacAlister) and her young daughter Miranda, as announced by "the dull tanky tank, a-tonk, tank of cowbells." The pace picks up with Kirstie's backstory. A "tall, erect, strong-stepping, long-limbed woman," she'd lived her entire life in a place identified only as "the Settlement." Some seven years earlier Kirstie had chanced to be in a store when in walked a man unlike any other she had ever seen. This was Frank Craig, dilettante, musician, poet, and artist ("when the mood seized him strongly enough"). A prime specimen of a fish out of water, Frank had been advised to forgo city life for the restorative nature of country air. 

Before he had breathed it a month he had won Kirstie MacAlister, to whom he seemed little less than a god. To him, on her part, she was a splendid mystery. Even her peculiarities of grammar and accent did no more than lend a piquancy to her strangeness. They appealed as a rough, fresh flavour to his wearied senses.

They soon married. Kirstie gave birth to a daughter, Miranda, within the year.

Theirs seemed an ideal marriage, and maybe it was, but there came a time when Frank became restless. He talked about business in "the city" (also unidentified) that needed attending to. Kirstie saw her husband off on a rattling mail-wagon. The next paragraph is my favourite in the entire novel:

But – he never came back. The months rolled by, and no word came of him; and Kirstie gnawed her heart out in proud anguish. Inquiry throughout the cities of the coast brought no hint of him. Then, as the months climbed into years, that tender humanity which resents misfortune as a crime started a rumour that Kirstie had been fooled. Perhaps there had been no marriage, went the whisper at first. “Served her right, with her airs, thinkin’ she could ketch a gentleman!” – was the next development of it. Kirstie, with her superior air, had never been popular at best; and after her marriage the sufficiency and exclusiveness of her joy, coupled with the comparative fineness of speech which she adopted, made her the object of jealous criticism through all the country-side. When the temple of her soaring happiness came down about her ears, then was the time for her chastening, and the gossips of the Settlement took a hand in it with right good-will. Nothing else worth talking about happened in that neighbourhood during the next few years, so the little rumour was cherished and nourished. Presently it grew to a great scandal, and the gossips came to persuade themselves that things had not been as they should be. Kirstie, they said, was being very properly punished by Providence, and it was well to show that they, chaste souls, stood on the side of Providence. If Providence threw a stone, it was surely their place to throw three.  

This, I thought, was the reason my younger self liked the novel. Stories of gossip, jealousy, and their consequences appealed to me back then, just as they do today. Here's another favourite passage:

Some one else had heard from some one else of some one having seen Frank Craig in the city. There was at first a difference of opinion as to what city; but that little discrepancy was soon smoothed out. Then a woman was suggested, and forthwith it appeared that he had been seen driving with a handsome woman, behind a spanking pair, with liveried coachman and footman on the box.

Sadly, these elements and all their intrigue vanish completely, leaving the reader with more purple prose and a near absence of plot.

So as to escape bitter tongues, Kirstie makes a home for herself and little Miranda in the cabin. It's a rather idyllic if modest existence with remarkably few challenges. Good ol' Old Dave, Kirstie's only friend, drops by on occasion; otherwise the only human contact mother and daughter have is with each other. Miranda becomes an object of curiosity to the woodland creatures and is curious in return. The girl's main focus is a female bear, "far the most human of all the furry woodfolk," that her young mind identifies as a "nice, big dog." There is a chance encounter early in the novel, after which Kirstie insists the girl stay within sight of the cabin.

I remember The Heart of the Ancient Wood being included in the syllabus as an introduction to the "realistic animal story." We students were told the genre was originated in Canada by Roberts and his rival Ernest Thompson Seton... or some such thing. As a proud Canadian, this too may have appealed. As a city boy, its likely that I found the depictions of the furry woodfolk interesting, even as I recognized the anthropomorphism. And so, I suppose my memory could be right about liking the novel at the time.

Now, I very much dislike it.

A brief summary of the major plot points, right to the end, follows. 

Kirstie and Miranda survive their first winter at the cabin without difficulty, aided in part by an early spring. The bear emerges from hibernation and a few days later gives birth to a male cub. He's so very weak, but under his mother's care the cub becomes the most playful, curious, and cute of little guys before being crushed by a hunter's trap. That same awful day, the grieving she-bear comes upon Miranda as the girl is about to be set upon by a panther. The bear saves the girl and escorts her back to the cabin. Kirstie is rightfully wary, yet comes recognize the bear, Kroof, as a protector and companion. As Miranda grows into adulthood, she becomes at one with the creatures of the ancient wood, and they in turn grow to both trust her and accept her as their superior. This includes the panther.

One afternoon, Miranda comes upon a young man sleeping beneath a tree. In an echo of the scene years earlier involving Kroof, a panther is about to spring. As a student of Kroof, Miranda manages to order it away. The young man turns out to be Young Dave, son of Old Dave. The two haven't seen each other since the day Craig mother and daughter left the Settlement. Young Dave is immediately taken with the mature Miranda and soon becomes a frequent visitor. Kirstie likes Young Dave, but her daughter runs lukewarm and cold. Her reaction has something to do with the fact that the young man is a hunter, where she and her mother are vegetarians. I'd suggest it also has something to do with Miranda being unaccustomed to people, never mind a man who is more or less her own age. 

Young Dave pitches woo, but to no avail. He goes so far as to take Miranda on an excursion away from the cabin, deftly navigating dangerous rapids in order to deliver much needed medicine to a young mother and her ailing son. If anything, the visit pushes Miranda farther away, though this has to do with the older woman's assumption that the girl is Dave's fiancée.

A fair percentage of the closing chapters involves play between the two with Young Dave doing his best to ingratiate himself and making a bit of progress only to be pushed away.

Will they or won't they?

As with sitcoms, the question is increasingly tiring with each passing year. The resolution was not one I saw coming. You'd think I would've remembered. 

What happens is that Young Dave is walking through the ancient wood one day on yet another visit to the cabin when he chances upon a small male bear cub. He kills the cub with a shot to the head, skins it, cuts out the choicest portions, and continues on his merry way.

The reader already knows that the cub was Kroof's. Did Dave?

To this point, Young Dave has been portrayed as quick and intelligent. He's met Kroof many a time with Miranda over the years, is aware of the unusual relationship they share, and knows there are no other bears in the area. And yet, and yet, and yet, he kills without so much as a thought that the cub just might be the Kroof's.

Kroof finds what's left of her son, a red carcass "hideously affronting the sunlight, "walks around it twice, and then sets off on Dave's trail:

She was not blinded by her fury. Rather was she coolly and deliberately set upon a sufficing vengeance. She moderated her pace, and went softly; and soon she caught sight of her quarry some way ahead, striding swiftly down the brown-shadowed vistas. There was no other bear in all the forests so shrewd as Kroof.

She catches up with Dave as he's washing in a small steam so as to make himself presentable to Kirstie and Miranda. The hunter makes for a beech tree and begins climbing with the bear following. Miranda arrives on the scene and tries to call Kroof off. In desperation, she picks up Dave's rifle and fires:

The bear’s body heaved convulsively for a moment, then seemed to fall together on the branch, clutching at it. A second later and it rolled off, with a leisurely motion, and came plunging downward, soft, massive, enormous. It struck the ground with a sobbing thud. Miranda gave a low cry at the sound, turned away, and leaned against the trunk of the hemlock. Her face was toward the tree, and hidden in the bend of her arm.

Have we had enough?

The very next sentence is the worst:

Dave knew now that all he had hoped for was his.

I will not be reading this novel a third time.

Personal note: In the midst of reading The Heart of the Ancient Wood, I stumbled upon this beautiful poster. 

Good thing I put off the purchase for a couple of days. Knowing her fate, how could I put that image of Kroof on my wall.

Object and Access: A later edition, my copy was purchased for $2.50 sometime in the early 'eighties at Montreal's Russell Books. It's title page makes a big deal of it being illustrated, but the only illustration appears on the frontispiece. The first edition, published in 1900 by Silver, Burdett & Co, features a total of six, including the one found in my Wessels edition. All are by English-born James Weston (1841-1922), a man remembered more for his landscapes than his book illustrations. Looking at those he provided for this novel, I can see why, though I am partial to this:

The Heart of the Ancient Wood first appeared – in its entirety – in the April 1900 issue of Lippincott's Magazine. The novel has enjoyed numerous editions through the decades and as number 110 was once a New Canadian Library staple. It's currently available only as part of the Formac Fiction Treasures series.  

The novel has enjoyed a Polish translation (Vsrdci pralesa, 1925).

Black panthers are not native to Canada.

As always, print on demand vultures are to be avoided. That said, I was tempted to purchase this, if only because the cover features a detail Gustav Kimt's 'Church in Unterach on Lake Attersee.'

Related posts:

Blue Plaque Special: Maritime Edition
Portrait of a Former Mistress

Magic Mushrooms and Bad, Bad Boys

A 'Japanese' Nightingale: Winnifred Eaton at 150

A Japanese Nightingale

Onoto Watanna [Winnifred Eaton]

New York: Harper, 1901

226 pages

Onoto Watanna was her own creation. She was not a Japanese princess; she was not Japanese at all. Onoto Watanna was Winnifred Eaton, a Montrealer born to a former Chinese circus performer and an Englishman who struggled to support his family through painting and people smuggling.

Winnifred made a better life for herself. She sold her first short story as a teenager. Dozens more followed, as did thirteen novels. There were stage and film adaptations. Winnifred spent six years working as a scriptwriter in Hollywood.

A Japanese Nightingale was Winnifred Eaton's second novel and first big commercial success. She claimed it had sold 200,000 copies.

I don't doubt it.

The novel landed at the height of the Japanese Craze; the very same craze that encouraged Winnifred Eaton to cast herself variously as "Kitishima Taka Hasche," "Kitishina Taka Hasche," or "Tacki Hashi,"a young woman from Yokohama writing under the nom de plume "Onoto Watanna."

It's all a bit confusing. 

A Japanese Nightingale itself is not at all confusing. A simple tale, at its centre is Jack Bigelow, son of American wealth, newly graduated from an unnamed university, who is whiling away his time on the outskirts of Tokyo. What drew him to the far east isn't clear, though it likely has something to do with his English-Japanese college chum Taro Burton. Looks like they were going to have a time together in Tokyo, but then Taro begged off. That Jack went off without him seems odd.

Never mind, the important thing is that Taro had warned him not to take a Japanese wife:

Taro Burton was almost a monomaniac on this subject, and denounced both the foreigners who took to themselves and deserted Japanese wives, and the native Japanese, who made such a practice possible. He himself was a half-caste, being the product of a marriage between an Englishman and a Japanese woman. In this case, however, the husband had proved faithful to his wife and children up to death...

From his earliest days in Tokyo, Jack had been visited by Ido, a nakōdo (read: matchmaker), who'd brought prospective wives for consideration. The wealthy American had found the efforts entertaining. One afternoon, Ido offers a young woman whom Jack had recently seen perform on a pleasure island in Tokyo Bay. 

Jack toys with Yuki cruelly before sending her away, just as he had Ido's other proposed brides. However, the heart will out. The American is haunted by the encounter. He starts on a quest to find the woman he'd rejected. Once found, he marries her.

Because the plot is so simple – twist included – it would spoil things to describe much more. It is important to the plot that, like Eaton herself, Yuki is "half-caste" – much is made of her blue eyes – and so is looked down upon by her fellow Japanese. More impactful to the plot is the clash of cultures, particularly as it concerns Oriental and Occidental understandings of marriage (here I employ the terms of the time). Reading in 2025, one hundred and fourteen years after publication I found interest in the married couple's reluctance to be open and share with one another.

In this one way, A Japanese Nightingale is a contemporary novel.

I finished A Japanese Nightingale last night. Today marks the sesquicentennial Winnifred Eaton's birth, which most likely took place in the family's rented row house on rue d'Iberville.

Once a bestseller, she has become Montreal's most neglected novelist.

Lillie Winnifred Eaton (née Winifred Lily Eaton)
21 August 1875 - 8 April 1954
RIP

Trivia: Adapted by Broadway and Hollywood, both subjects of the next post.

Object: A beautiful hardcover, issued without dust jacket with illustrations credited to Genjiro Yeto. The books features three colour plates and subtle illustrations on each of its pages. It is one of the most beautiful volumes in my collection.

Access: Easily found, the least expensive copy listed online is Constable's UK first. Price: £8.00. The Harper first edition can be had for under twenty-five dollars. 

The edition I read can be enjoyed online through this link to the Internet Archive.

The novel has been translated into Swedish (En japansk näktergal, 1904). German (Japanische Nachtigall, 1920), and Polish (Słowiczek japoński, 1922).

Related posts:

By Any Other Name: Onoto Watanna's Hyacinth

Beauty Ignored and Neglected
Glassco's $9500 Library and the Montreal Eatons

Alberta Gothic

"A good kidnapping story always has wide appeal."

If You Want to See Your Wife Again...
John Craig
London: Cassell, 1973
223 pages

Struggling writer Dan Cramer once had a good gig. He spent two years working on Women's Editor, a daytime soap starring "beautiful blonde Jill Mason." That good gig looked to be steady until department store scion and sponsor Richard Bannister came along, married Jill, and brought the soap to a sudden end.

No star, no show.

After cancellation, Dan devoted twelve months to a script that drew the attention of Hollywood – until it didn't. Casting director Laurel Plunkett went back to working on television commercials – until she assaulted an advertising executive with a box of Crunch 'n Crackle crackers. Women's Editor producer Josh Darwin did much better in landing the interview show Dialogue with Darwin, but he is not happy. A mover and shaker, ever eager for a new project, he shares his latest idea over drinks with Dan and Laurel. Josh wants to produce a movie – a really good movie (or maybe TV special) – about a kidnapping:

"For the sake of argument suppose the three of us kidnap Jill. Start from there and use your imagination. How would we do it? What would we do to throw the police off the track? What complications would arise?"

Josh suggests they meet the next week to hash out ideas over dinner, but Dan does one better in writing a complete screenplay. The producer is so impressed that he suggests the three act out the script for real.

The premise is sound. Dan is desperate for money, Laurel has started down the same path to poverty, and both share resentment toward Jill for up and marrying rich Richard. The scene in which they decide to go along with Josh is impressive in that it is so convincing. Craig has a real talent for dialogue, something recognized in contemporary reviews.

If You Want to See Your Wife Again... is a dark comedy. Being a charitable sort, I blame laughs that fall flat on the passage of time; it has, after all, been more than a half-century since publication. The distance brings new perspective and an appreciation of the novel as one documenting the years of swingers and sexy stewardesses. Its plot is reliant on the post, pay phones, newspapers, radio, and department stores. I was so caught up in the atmosphere that I did not anticipate the twist.

I should have.

I did anticipate the final page, which features a marriage proposal.

The laziest of endings, it is the most common in Canadian literature.

One day I'll make a list.  

Trivia (personal) I: If You Want to See Your Wife Again... follows Every Man for Himself (1920) and Die with Me Lady (1953) as the third novel I've read that takes place in part on the Toronto Islands.

Trivia (personal) II: After leaving university, my first writing job was for Time of Your Life, a cheap daytime soap aired on CTV. I was one of five writers. The most unbelievable thing about If You Want to See Your Wife Again... is the idea that Dan alone would write five episodes a week.

Trivia (impersonal) III: Adapted to the small screen in 1972 as Your Money or Your Life. a CBS Tuesday Night Movie starring  Ted Bessell, Elizabeth Ashley, and Jack Cassidy. You can watch it here on YouTube. I haven't yet been able to make it past the first four minutes, but will not be defeated!

About the author: John Craig is credited with over a dozen books. The author bio for If You Want to See Your Wife Again... is one of the most unusual I've ever read.

Paul Craig competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, but as not awarded a medal. Younger brother John qualified for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but did not participate due to the boycott.

Object and Access: My first British edition appeared in stores two years after the true first, published in 1971 by Putnam. A Dell mass market paperback (above) followed in 1974, after which the novel fell out of print.

There have been four translations: French (La malle et la belle) German (Geschäft mit der Todesangst), Spanish (Quieres ver a tu mujer otra vez?), and Danish (Men i sm a sedler!), all published between 1972 and 1974. The French appears to have enjoyed at least two editions, one of which features this curious cover:

The only automobiles that figure in the novel are Laurel's beat-up MG (she's a horrible driver) and a VW Beetle. The artist seems to have been unfamiliar with North American pay phones.

Related posts:

A Foggy Night in Hogtown

Dope Rings in Canada! Oh, My!

The Case of the Queer Antiques Dealer

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

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

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

London: Harold Hill & Son, 1953

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What exactly is Hanleigh up to?

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

Hear me out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I may be reading too much into this. 

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

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

London: Armada, 1982

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

Here's to Missing Chums

Gone Fishin' (without Frank and Joe Hardy)

No Holiday Amusement

Beyond the Rocks: A Love Story
Elinor Glyn
New York: Macaulay, [1922]
327 pages

In the afterglow of Valentine's Day comes a tale of forbidden love between a nineteen-year-old newlywed and a somewhat older extremely handsome lord who is not her husband. Its heroine, Theodora Brown, is the daughter of Captain Dominic Fitzgerald, who is himself extremely handsome. Twice a groom, twice a widower, the captain has fathered three daughters, Theodora being the youngest and fairest of them all. Such is Theodora's devotion to dear papa that she agrees to be the first to wed, the groom being Josiah Brown, a fifty-two-year-old English grocer who has amassed a great fortune through a chance investment in an Australian mine.

Not to disparage Captain Fitzgerald, but the union benefitted him financially. He's a bit of a rogue, and has never been much good with money, which explains why his daughters were raised in Bruges and not Mayfair.

The Browns' honeymoon on the Continent was not a success. Josiah took ill, though he did manage to consummate the marriage. Mercifully, the author provides no details, though she does make it known that Theodora found it "a nightmare, now happily a thing of the past."

The deed was done, but as backstory ends and action commences the Browns have yet to make for home; Josiah has been advised by physicians to make a gradual reentry to England. As young Theodora whiles away the hours, days, and months her limited orbit brings her within the sights of  Hector Bracondale, the aforementioned extremely handsome lord.

As portrayed by Rudolph Valentino in the 1922 film adaptation, he really is extremely handsome. Gloria Swanson, who played Theodora, is extremely beautiful.

Ten years Theodora's senior, Lord Bracondale seems the sort of fellow you'd keep away from your sister, his engagements with the opposite sex being nowhere near as innocent as hers:

Usually when he had been greatly attracted by a married woman before, he had unconsciously thought of her as having the qualities which would make her an adorable mistress, a delicious friend, or a holiday amusement, There had never been any reverence mixed up with the affair, which usually had the zest of forbidden fruit, and was hurried along by passion.

Will Hector not settle down? His mother, Lady Bracondale has been pressuring her son to marry dull and heavy heiress Morella Winmarleigh. This campaign has been going on for so long that London society sees the two, who are anything but a couple, as more or less engaged. Hector himself had been or less resigned to marrying Morella at some point in the distant future... but then came Theodora.

Beyond the Rocks is to be enjoyed more for the writing than the plot. There are many slow patches, though it picks up from time to time. Nearly every character, members of the English upper class and aristocracy, is portrayed as dull and uninteresting. This middle class Canadian found it intriguing that pretty much every one of their number was having it on with someone else's spouse. The lone interesting figure of their set is Colonel Lowerby. Commonly called "the Crow," he is a man of strong opinion, as exemplified in this exchange with Anne, Hector Bracendale's sister:

“It is too bad, Crow," said Anne. “You take it for granted that Hector has the most dishonorable intentions towards Mrs. Brown. He may worship her quite in the abstract.”
   “Fiddle-dee-dee, my child!" said Colonel Lowerby. “Look at him! You don’t understand the fundamental principles of human nature if you say that. When a man is madly in love with a woman, nature says, ‘This is your mate,’ not a saint of alabaster on a church altar. There are numbers of animals about who find a ‘mate’ in every woman they come across. But Hector is not that sort. Look at his face —look at him now they are passing us, and tell me if you see any abstract about it?”

Lowerby is the most forthright character in the novel.

The most generous and kind are Theodora and Josiah Brown.

It culminates in tragedy, though I very much doubt that the author saw it as anything other than a happy ending.

Fun fact: Gloria Swanson, whom I'd assumed to be too old to play nineteen-year-old Theodora, was all of twenty-one when the film was shot.  Coincidentally, it was her twenty-first feature.

Object: A bulky hardcover in crimson boards with black type containing three "illustrations From [sic] the Paramount Photo-Play." A fourth illustration, not from the Photo-Play, appears as the frontispiece:

The jacket features an ad directed at Valentino fans.

Access: Long out of print, the cheapest copy of Beyond the Rocks listed online is what I assume to be the photoplay edition, sans jacket, at US$5.00. Copies of the Duckworth first UK edition begin at US$18.00. Copies of the Harper first American start at US$27.60.

My photoplay copy, with jacket, was purchased last year from a Minnesota bookseller. Price: US$35.00. I paid nearly the same amount in shipping.

It was worth every American penny.

Don't have the time to read 327 pages? Not to worry, the August 1906 edition of The Novel Magazine whittles it down to a couple.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

As far as I know, there has been just one translation, Za úskalím, first published in 1912 in the Czechoslovak Republic, and then again in 1914. 

Remarkably, it was republished a third time eighty years later. The cover is, um, not as good.

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
Elinor Glyn's Chrustmas Ghost Story (and others)