That's Entertainment!

The Woman Who Couldn't Die

Arthur Stringer

Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929

That's her standing near the bow of the longboat. She is Thera, the daughter of the Jarl of Hordoland, a woman of beauty amongst 'herring-slitted wenches with little more charm than a she-cod on a smoking rack.' Not that you can tell from the cover; she's barely perceptible, despite her great height. No, the dust jacket does not do Thera justice, though it does credit her creator, Arthur Stringer, with the most remarkable ability:

A modern Scheherazade could insure the safety of her life by reading to her cruel spouse this amazing story of the Farther North. It would not only hold him spellbound by its bold and unparalleled adventures but also make him cherish forever the woman who had the wisdom to select such excellent entertainment.

Bold-faced silliness befitting a book that is nothing but an entertainment. We begin with twenty pages of italics relating the story of this Viking princess, how she crossed the Atlantic, became lost in the Canadian Arctic and ended up entombed in a giant block of ice. Regular type signals a shift from omniscient narrator to David Law, a jaded journalist on the hunt for stories in late 19th-century Montreal. Mysterious documents are uncovered, a parchment map is produced and the novel shifts once again. Together with a mad scientist and a dimwitted muscleman, Law sets out for the Arctic to find a hidden land of riches and thaw out the lovely Thera, known in 'Eskimo mythology' as 'the Eternal Maiden of Gold' and 'the Golden Woman who Never Died'.

As a young pup, I once counted the number of times Richard Butler spits out the word 'stupid' on the first Psychedelic Furs album. I was tempted to do the same with Stringer's use of 'gold', but growing awareness of mortality prevents further examination. Let's just say it's a lot. Thera's hair, for example, is 'living and liquid gold, gold luminous as a cat's eye by night, gold indiscernibly vivid yet soft, with radiance all its own, like that of a rose-leaf behind which a candle burns.'

This is fiction crafted for readers of Edgar Rice Burroughs, a writer I left behind long ago with other elementary school interests. I will say, however, that The Woman Who Couldn't Die is just as good as the Burroughs I remember. And while my eyes began to glaze over with all this talk of lost worlds, hidden peoples, strange religions and gold, gold, gold, I found the forty or so pages that take place in fin de siècle Montreal to be fascinating. Here Stringer draws upon his past as a journalist for the Herald, not only criticizing the paper, but taking swipes at the Royal Victoria Hospital and the city's establishment.

Write what you know.

Access: Library and Archives Canada doesn't have a copy, but the Toronto Public Library does. It can also be found in a dozen of our university libraries. Those wishing to purchase will find that The Woman Who Couldn't Die isn't terribly scarce, but difficult to find in anything approaching a Good dust jacket. Expect to pay a little over two grams in gold.

Though the book received only one printing, The Woman Who Couldn't Die was reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries. The issue appeared on newsstands in October 1950, the month following Stringer's death.

For your entertainment:

Oh, my misspent youth.

Related posts:

That's Entertainment, Part II

That's Entertainment, Part III
Remembering the Woman Who Couldn't Die

Old Folks

Jean-Louis Lessard has just completed a very fine series on early Canadian writer Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, the seigneur best-known for Les Anciens Canadiens (1863). I first encountered this historical romance as part of a CEGEP course on the literature of Quebec (if memory serves, Hubert Aquin's Prochain épisode and David Fennario's Without a Parachute were also on the reading list), but the words I read belonged to translator Sir Charles G.D. Roberts.

I've always viewed Roberts and his translation, The Canadians of Old, with a dab of derision, an irrational discourtesy that originates with the cover of the New Canadian Library edition used in the course. Those familiar with the NCL's second series design will be grateful that the only image I could find is so small. It was such an ugly book, made all the worse by the inexplicable presence of Roberts' name in place of the author's. Even the title is wrong: Canadians of Old, when it should be The Canadians of Old. Of course, none of this had anything to do with Roberts, who was three decades dead when this particular edition appeared. Like I say: irrational.

To be fair to Sir Charles, his name doesn't even appear on the cover of the handsome 1890 first edition, despite the fact that he was at the time a poet of some acclaim. I don't believe Roberts ever really considered himself a translator. The idea for the book came from New York publisher Appleton, and was accepted at a time when he was in dire need of cash. That said, it wasn't a bad match. Roberts may not have shared Aubert de Gaspé's interest in Boileau and Racine, but both he and the seigneur were readers of Sir Walter Scott. The name of the novel's protagonist, Archibald Cameron of Locheill, provides a good indication of the depth of the baronet's influence. This was raised to the surface in 1905, when publisher L.C. Page reissued the book as Cameron of Lochiel - dropping the double 'l', thus bringing the character's name into line with Cameron of Locheil in Waverley, Scott's hugely successful first novel.

This second title has received a good amount of criticism these past ten decades, but let's again be fair; though adopted in Canada by Copp Clark, it was first imposed on the book by a Boston publisher with an eye on the American market. I'll add that the 1865 theatrical adaptation was titled Archibald Cameron of Locheill ou un épisode de la guerre de Sept Ans au Canada, and that the plot has more to do with Archie than pal and fellow protagonist Jules d'Haberville.

Les Anciens Canadiens holds a unique position in this country as a novel translated by four different hands. The first, by Georgina M. Pennée (The Canadians of Old, 1864), was later revised by Thomas Guthrie Marquis and published in 1929 as Seigneur d'Haberville: A Romance of the Fall of New France. I imagine that Roberts' translation is the most read (the NCL edition sold nearly 1800 copies in the first six months alone); a great shame since it has been surpassed by Jane Brierley's 1996 translation. The only one currently in print, it is highly recommended, as are her translations of Aubert de Gaspé's Mémoires (A Man of Sentiment, 1988) and his posthumous Divers (Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, 1990), which received a Governor General's Award.

Oh, and Prochain épisode and Without a Parachute? Also recommended.

Coincidence?