C is for Canada Monthly

The October 1912 issue of Canada Monthly, purchased late last year for the humour – black humour – of its cover:

Agnes Deans Cameron's Last Article

"THE THAMES BY CANADIAN CANOE"

In fact, Miss Cameron survived, dodging sailboats and steamers, only to succumb to pneumonia shortly after her return home to Victoria.

"The liveliest, most entertaining, most thoroughly Canadian of the magazines published in Canada" was owned, edited and published by Herbert Vanderhoof, a Chicago publicity agent who made his fortune pushing land in our four westernmost provinces. The District of Vanderhoof – "Geographic Centre of British Columbia" – was named in his honour.

It makes perfect sense that Miss Cameron was one of Herbert Vanderhoof's writers; she spent much of her forty-eight years encouraging western settlement. That trip down the Thames was made possible in part by an Ottawa that was eager to promote British immigration.

Agnes Deans Cameron isn't the biggest name in this particular issue; Isabel Ecclestone Mackay contributes a particularly bad poem. For my money – I paid $2.80 – the most interesting offering is this bit o' verse by Dorothy Livesay's mother:

Most writers in this "most thoroughly Canadian of the magazines published in Canada" are American. Lesser names like Wilbur D. Nesbit, best remembered for "A Song for Flag Day", a jingoistic ode to the Stars and Stripes, populate its pages. Canada Monthly was never intended to be a showcase for this country's writing, but as a means to sell the West. Nesbit's countryman Arthur I. Street contributes "How Many More? What the Business Man Can Make in Canada", in which he appeals to our greed:

An increase of nine and three-quarter millions in population, a million and a half in dwellings, and three-quarters of a million in the number of farms would mean an increase in farm values of nearly two billions. And that's your particular "baby", isn't it? Increase your land values? Isn't that where you make your money? Isn't that the temptation that leads you into a new country?

A century later the West is still chasing that "increase of nine and three-quarter millions in population".

The caption on this accompanying W.C. Sheppard [sic] illustration reflects Street's optimism...

...as do the advertisements.

Twenty-two months later, on August 4, 1914, everything changed. It seems oddly appropriate that the pitch for property in Fraser Lake is followed by this advert for the infamous Ross rifle:

"You Buy a Rifle to Last Your Life-time..."

The cruelest joke of all.

Women of the Unchanging East

A follow-up to Monday's post on Robert Barr's The Unchanging East:

I'm not sure that I've seen a more generously illustrated Victorian travelogue; plates account for over thirty percent of the page count. Unfortunately, not one of the images – photographs all – bears a credit. While I suspect that at least a few of the more touristy shots are nothing but reproductions of postcards, I'm more confident that many of the images  – the grainy one of Black John, for example  – were taken during Barr's travels and troubles. Sadly, there are no images of the author himself, but we do find some portraits of people who figure in the book, including two of genial Maronite dragoman Selim G. Tabet.

However, the vast majority of the portraits are of anonymous women. Postcards perhaps, but these make for the most interesting images in the book. What follows are the finest, beginning with a Damascus girl and ending with an image that I imagine was consulted repeatedly by more than few adolescent Victorian males. Today's teenage boys will be less interested.

Related Post: 

Through the Unchanging East with Robert Barr

Through the Unchanging East with Robert Barr

The Unchanging East; or, Travels and Troubles in the Orient
Robert Barr
Boston: Page, 1900

Robert Barr died one hundred years ago yesterday. I spent much of the morning, afternoon and evening with the man. Yes, I did. The Measure of the Rule (1907) may be Barr's most autobiographical novel, but it's with The Unchanging East that you really get a sense of his character:

When the steamship company sent me their printed rules and regulations, one item therein immediately attracted my attention. It was to the effect that no passenger was allowed to bring liquor on board with him, so this reminded me that certain decoctions were grateful and comforting, as the advertisements say, besides there always being a pleasure in breaking the rules; so I at once brought four bottles from Caledonia in case I should meet some personal friend...

Only a fool or a teetotaler – same thing, really – would pass on the opportunity of joining a man such as this on his travels.

Barr begins in a hansom cab bound for the Manchester docks:

A thick autumn fog, saturated soot in suspension, enveloped the town. The drive from the station proved most unattractive – I should not care to liken it to a trip in Hades for fear of exaggeration, because Hades at least is warm, and I believe the atmosphere must be more clear than that of Manchester.

Mancunians are not alone. The overly sensitive will wish to gird themselves; nearly every place and every people come in for a ribbing on this voyage. Not even the people of Scotland, the land of Barr's birth, are spared. Witness, if you will his comments on that petite Maltanese land mass we 21st-century English speakers know as Gozo:

The island should by right be inhabited by Scotchmen, for it possesses a coin valued at one-sixth of a cent, and if, as the saying has it, the farthing was invented to enable the Scotchmen to contribute to the cause of religion, then the islands of Goza [sic] and Malta should be three times more attractive to us Scotchmen than any other spot on earth.

The only people to draw complete and unqualified praise are "the Druses", whom Barr describes as "a most admirable people, extremely hospitable, ready to share their last crust with any stranger who happens along, invariably refusing money for the services they may render a traveller, and they are always fond of a joke."

Where other fin de siècle travelogues glaze the eyes, Barr's dry humour and observations make this a book that I would not put down. This isn't to say that there is not unpleasantness, but for much of the journey, our author's "troubles" are trivial: street vendors try to take advantage and trips by rail prove uncomfortable. He witnesses no violence, and relays old news of massacre and slaughter with the cold hand of a statistician.

The unchanging east? No longer. Much as I enjoyed the journey, throughout it all I couldn't help but wonder about the grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren of the Syrian women who looked out from the frontispiece.

Object: Two compact, bulky volumes bound in white cloth. Each is 256 pages in length and features 41 plates, one of which captures Black John, "a character the like of which is probably to be found nowhere else than in the Levant."

Access: The problem, of course, is that sets are so often broken up. Only two complete sets are listed online, but both are crummy ex-library copies. Ignore the dealer who describes his offering as "Very Good" – for library discards this is an impossible condition. Putting a set together is a tricky thing in that the work was issued in two separate bindings – one green and one white. Just one copy of volume one is listed online (US$20.00). Volume two (US$18.95 - US$25.85) is three times as plentiful, which is to say that it's not plentiful at all.

Headaches might be avoided by simply buying the single-volume English edition, published in 1900 by Chatto & Windus, except that it seems an even more uncommon beast. The only copy listed online is another library discard. The bookseller is honest – perhaps because it came from a church – describing its condition as "Fair". There was no Canadian edition.

As with so much of our literary heritage that is now in the public domain, print on demand monstrosities abound, Most are offered by folks who don't do the courtesy of indicating exactly which of the two volumes they're crapping out. Pictured right, with a cover photograph of the great northern pines of the Mediterranean, is the excrement offered by infamous Nabu Press.

Twenty-one of our academic libraries, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and the ever reliable Toronto Public Library have copies.

Related post:

Women of the Unchanging East

Allen Emergency Eye Wash

Beginning with the above, London publisher Grant Richards' 1897 first edition of An African Millionaire, six handsome Grant Allen books to flush away the harmful grit left by BiblioBazaar, Tutis and General.

Flowers and Their Pedigrees

New York: Appleton, 1884

Miss Cayley's Adventures

London: Richards, 1899

Flashlights on Nature

London: Newnes, 1899

Florence

Boston: Page, 1901

Belgium: Its Cities

Boston: Page, 1903

Related posts:

Awful Allens

What? No Tutis?

Awful Allens

Further to Tuesday's post. The cover of the Leadenhead Michael's Crag might not be as attractive as Rand McNally's (above), but is it not more interesting? "MR. GRANT ALLEN'S NEW STORY 'MICHAEL'S CRAG'" suggests.... what? Great anticipation? A long wait? Neither would have been true; even as Michael's Crag appeared, the author's next novel, The Scallywag, was being serialized in the weekly Graphic. What's more, it followed hot on the heals of Ivan Greet's Masterpiece etc. (1893), a collection of new and recently published short stories.

Allen was a busy man – in his opinion, the busiest in England – before dying of "liver related problems" at the grand old age of 51, he'd published seventy books. I know of only two that are in print today, The Woman Who Did and The Type-writer Girl, both fine scholarly editions from Peterborough's Broadview Press. These and nearly all the others are available from various print on demand firms. With few exceptions, they appear such nasty things, particularly when placed next to their Victorian counterparts. Compare, if you will, Ferro's 1896 edition of A Bride from the Desert to that offered by print on demand publisher BiblioBazaar.

Let's ignore the line-wrap and focus on the image. Intriguing, isn't it? What, one wonders, does a bamboo forest have to do with something titled A Bride from the Desert? The answer is, of course, nothing. The photo is one of several that BiblioBazaar places on their books. Look for no rhyme, consider no reason. Here the same photo is used on Allen's Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1884).

So, what we have is a cheap POD publisher with a set number of stock images. I get it. But is it not odd that BiblioBazaar uses two of these images, both appropriate for A Bride from the Desert, on their editions of Allen's Venice (1898)?

Ah, yes, Venice, the desert wasteland. BiblioBazaar also offers two different editions dealing with that maritime city we call Paris.

Lest anyone think I'm picking on BiblioBazaar, I end this rant by pointing to this beauty from England's General Books. Though I've never seen the first edition, I'm willing to bet a considerable sum that it is a far sight more attractive than this:

Related posts:
Wings of Delusion
What? No Tutis?

RIP Joshua Slocum

Recognition this morning of Nova Scotia's Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail alone around the world. The mariner wrote about his adventure in the aptly titled Sailing Alone Around the World (1899), a travel classic still published around that same world, but not in his own country.

Slocum loved a good book and was a fervent reader, sometimes at his own peril. Here he is after departing the Cape of Good Hope on his good sloop the Spray:

The wind was from the southeast; this suited the Spray well, and she ran along steadily at her best speed, while I dipped into the new books given me at the cape, reading day and night. March 30 was for me a fast-day in honor of them. I read on, oblivious of hunger or wind or sea, thinking that all was going well, when suddenly a comber rolled over the stern and slopped saucily into the cabin, wetting the very book I was reading. Evidently it was time to put in a reef, that she might not wallow on her course.

It was one hundred years ago today that Slocum and the Spray set sail for the West Indies... and disappeared. Though an optimist, I don't expect we'll ever hear more from him. Slocum's end was probably pretty horrible – he never could be bothered to learn how to swim. No, much more pleasant to think that he simply drifted off while reading in bed.