Drowning by the Dock of the Bay

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

It seems they were forever fishing bodies out of Toronto Bay in the 19th century. Here's a small sad story from the 29 June 1886 New York Times in which authorities dragging the bay for one man found another.

The next day the paper used the the very same headline in reporting the death of a third man.

James McIntyre's young Montrealer of genteel form and dress may have been Henry Jaques, eldest son of Great Lakes shipping magnate G.E. Jaques, whose body was found floating in the harbour in May of 1873. Though initial reports drew attention to head and facial wounds as evidence of foul play, a coroner's jury found otherwise. According to the 28 May 1873 Montreal Daily Witness, his "features were much swollen and discolored from immersion in water", not as "the result of violence." Blame was instead placed upon the dangerous state of Toronto's Hamilton Wharf, from which, it was presumed, Jaques fell.

A Lesson for Sunday

A cautionary tale concerning faith from Thomas Conant's Upper Canada Sketches:

During the winter of 1842-3 the Second Adventists, or Millerites, were preaching that the world would be all burnt up in February, 1843. Nightly meetings were held, generally in the school-houses. One E— H— , about Prince Albert, Ont, owned a farm of one hundred acres and upwards, stocked with cattle and farm produce, as well as having implements of agriculture. So strongly did he embrace the Second Advent doctrines of the Millerites that he had not a doubt of the fire to come in February and burn all up, and in confirmation of his faith gave away his stock, implements and farm. Sarah Terwilligar, who lived about a mile east of Oshawa "corners," on the Kingston Road, made for herself wings of silk, and, on the night of 14th of February, jumped off the porch of her home, expecting to fly heavenward. Falling to the ground some fifteen feet, she was shaken up severely and rendered wholly unfit to attend at all to the fires that were expected to follow the next day.

The apocalypse was to have begun at two o'clock in the morning, at which time the fresh February snow would have turned to blood and started to burn. Obviously, the Millerites were a bit off in their prediction.

Conant was less a year old at the time of the anticipated apocalypse, and so relied on others in penning his sketch. This including a manufacturer named Whiting, who complained that come morning "he could do no business, because the people had not gotten over the surprise of finding themselves alive."

And poor Sarah Terwilligar? The author tells us she broke her leg.

Related post: Another Sunday, Another Lesson

Nineteenth-Century Logrolling

In this hectic week it took me three days to realize that Thomas Conant's cautious praise of James McIntyre was part of an exchange of mutual admiration that began with this awkward verse:

Though the date these lines were sent is unrecorded, we know it must have been before they appeared in Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889). Conant was a frequent contributor to the Globe, and did indeed "give fine sketch of bird and fowl", but his masterpiece, Upper Canada Sketches (Toronto: Briggs, 1898), dealt with much more than ornithology. An entertaining blend of nature writing and history, it gives the Conant family a bit more weight than might be their due. That said, it is worth mentioning that Thomas' namesake, his grandfather, was one of the four people killed during the Upper Canada Rebellion.

The scene was imagined by Edward Scrope Shrapnel.

The artist contributed twenty-six paintings to Upper Canada Sketches, making it one of the most attractive books to come out of nineteenth-century Canada.

Uncollected McIntyre: Mars on Hogs

Five weeks after publishing "The Evolution of the Hog", James McIntyre returned to the pages of the Globe with this mysterious, seemingly untitled poem. His inspiration – "signals sent to us from Mars" – escaped the attention of the newspaper. I've been unable to find even one account of these historic messages from the red planet.

Eighteen hundred and ninety-four, in which this poem was written, is remembered by aresologists as the year in which Percival Lowell studied and sketched the canals of Mars. Could it be that the Cheese Poet was just a tad confused? Whatever the answer, Mars provided an opportunity to touch upon the First Sino-Japanese War, then in its first month, before turning yet again to the ravenous hog.

The Globe, 15 September 1894

Uncollected Mcintyre: The Hog Poet

James McIntyre published a good number of poems in the Globe, most of which have never been republished. The most interesting, "The Evolution of the Hog", published 7 August 1894, was part of a letter in which the poet writes of his maturation of thought concerning the merry, playful, doomed "sweet and tender swine".

JAMES M'INTYRE ON HOGS.

To the Editor of the Globe:

Sir,—In a poem published long ago I predicted the fall of wheat and the rise of the cow and the hog, but I, at the first, felt sad to see my prediction verified; but I am now fully reconciled, seeing the pretty, happy little pigs enjoying themselves along the roads in company with their mother sow and bringing a ten dollar bill each to their owner when they are six months old. It is a common thing to sell 50 of them in one year from a 100 acre farm, realizing $500 from this one source. Many of the improved breeds are like Jacob's sheep, ringstraked, speckled and grisled. The cheese and the pork are the concentrated essence of the farm, and the cows and hogs enrich the land. Sending bulky stuff like hay across the sea impoverishes the soil and brings but small returns in money. Feeding wheat to hogs, the best returns are obtained by chopping it and soaking it in whey or slops.

The Evolution of the Hog.

In these days of evolution

There's a wondrous revolution;

The hog is coming to the front,

And he can now contented grunt.

For every day he gets to eat

The very choicest kinds of wheat;

No more it pays wheat for to sell,

Only 50 cents a bushel.

Farmers find that the best combine

Is to raise good cows and fatten swine.

For on this point each one agrees,

There's nothing pays more like pork and cheese.

Hundreds of pigs you now behold

Where none were seen in days of old,

And little hogs now roam all over,

Happy, rooting 'mong the clover.

And merrily they do dance jigs,

So playful are these little pigs;

And dairymen it well doth pay

To fatten them upon the whey.

For the people love to dine

On young, sweet and tender swine;

For the hog doth lead the van

As the favourite food of man.

Some say land's going to the dogs,

But it's going into cows and hogs,

And there is no cause to mourn,

For they give good and quick return.

Small pigs, more playful than young lambs,

Soon they do make the sweetest hams;

When they are a few months older,

Delicious is their shoulder.

So, 'tis no wonder that the hog,

He is coming into vogue,

For he doth cheerful pay his way

And is entitled to his whey.

JAMES McINTYRE.

Ingersoll, August 4.

The Verse Inside

Newspaper editor John Stephen Willison was an admirer of James McIntyre, which may explain the position of the poet's name above those of Alexander Charles Stewart, Bliss Carman and Charles Sangster in the 23 December 1893 edition of the Globe. What follows is a brief overview of "real Canadian poets" by critic Thomas Conant. All is quite polite. Of McIntyre, Conant cautions:

The great majority of his fellow poets will, I suppose, be disposed to pass him over in silence because he is deficient in grammar and early elementary education. No doubt he has written some lines which would have been better never to have seen the light, and doggerel, I am afraid, they must be termed. Yes, and so have the best of his fellows of the muse done the same to some extent! Not that I mean to be at all ungenerous, but only just to Mr. McIntyre: for he has really the verse in him, and gives us some here and again quite worth while.

The critic is selective in quoting McIntyre's verse, drawing lines from "Prologue to South Ontario Sketches" and "Province of Ontario". I take the same liberty in presenting the first 28 of the latter:

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

"This is certainly from the pen of a man who loves Ontario," observes Conant.

Those in need will find an antidote in "The Flight" by McIntyre's contemporary Susie Frances Harrison, otherwise known as "Seranus":

S. Frances Harrison. Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart, 1891)

Pulp and Its Origins

Thomas P. Kelley, King of Canadian Pulps, as imagined by Henry van der Linde

The Globe & Mail, 9 January 1982.

A holiday from the working month of McIntyre today so that I can go on about No Tears for Goldie.

Apologies.

The most interesting thing about the novel is the story of Ginger Daniels, the young widow who turns up ready to work at the brothel. Hers stands out for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that she never actually becomes a prostitute. So, why include this character at all? She arrives, consumes close to a fifth of the novel with her story, then departs, never to be heard from or mentioned again.

What gives?

I think the answer has to do with the author's habit of recycling material. Plainly put, I believe Kelley was reusing material he'd penned for a romance magazine.

In No Tears for Goldie, the working girls encourage Ginger to tell her story. "You needn't tell much of the first part of your life," says Aunt Maggie, "just begin where you met that husband of yours..." And so she does, sweeping the omniscient narrator aside to speak of her love for a young lawyer named Rod, encounters with his shrew of a mother and the attempt to sabotage their wedding. The account, much more detailed than any other part of the novel, runs one full chapter, ending: "I now know that I would never have to worry about his mother again now that Rod was mine forever - and I was happy."

Happy? Happily ever after, it seems... but the narrator returns in the following chapter, and we discover that Rod died in a car accident ten days into the marriage.

Tragic.

On an unrelated matter, I was curious as to whether Kelley used "Jack C. Fleming" for any other works. True, he claimed to have employed thirty pseudonyms, but in a career that lasted nearly five decades, one might expect considerable repetition. Curiously, the only other works I've found attributed to Jack C. Fleming are mid-20th-century editions of another Canadian book, Musson's Improved Ready Reckoner, Form and Log Book, which was once used in calculating measurements for lumber and other products.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Related post: Heart of Goldie