Another Tie, Another Place

The Canadian and America editions of Neil H. Perrin's Death Be My Destiny, both published by News Stand Library, both bearing covers drawn by the same anonymous hand. How to explain the differences? Do Canadians prefer blondes? Do we choose hard liquor over red wine? Are our ties a touch more garish, our women more modest? Can it really be that our seedy hotels are so luxurious? It all seems wrong... even that bit about the ties.

Still no trigger on that gun, I see.

Update: Over at Fly-by-night, bowdler has posted an image of the uncommon dustjacket that adorned the American edition.

Words of Hate for Maria Monk

Maria Monk was born 195 years ago today in Dorchester, Lower Canada (now Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec). The "Awful Disclosures" published under her name were just one awful part of an awful life that ended tragically in a New York City prison thirty-two years later. Neither the date of her death, nor her place of burial were recorded, but this didn't stop poet John J. MacDonald (a/k/a James MacRae) from putting poison pen to paper. From his self-published Poems of J. J. MacDonald, a Native of County Glengarry (c. 1877):

EPITAPH FOR MARIA MONK

Whoever ye are by this tomb that shall go,
Beware lest ye tread on the filth that’s below,
For under this monument lowly are laid
The mortal remains of a comical jade.

Ye swine that by accident hither come round,
Refrain from disturbing or turning the ground,
Or else you will die from inhaling the air;
Ye feathering songsters, be cautious, take care.

The only exception 'tis proper to make:
That Methodist preachers full freedom may take,
For they loved and accompanied her while she lived,
And from them she special attention received.

In actuality, it wasn't "Methodist preachers", but Presbyterian clergymen who used poor Maria in creating the hoax. There is a difference.

An early, hand-tinted photograph of St Marys, Ontario showing MacDonald's church, Holy Name of Mary (right) and one of the town's two Presbyterian churches (left).

Related posts:

Maria Monk's Immortal Book

Pornography of the Puritan

Maria Monk and the Kennedy Campaign

Burpee's Bad 'St. John the Baptist': Truly Criminal

François-Réal Angers was a truly remarkable man. A lawyer, a gentleman of letters and a strong, articulate voice against slavery in the Republic to the south, he gave light to pre-Confederation Canada. Angers' Les révélations du crime ou Cambray et ses complices; chroniques canadiennes de 1834 (Fréchette, 1837), a fictional account of an outfit known as the Cambers Gang, might just be the first French Canadian novel. Or is it the country's first true crime book? Perhaps it's a nineteenth-century In Cold Blood. I don't know. I've never seen a copy, nor have I looked over the 1867 translation, The Canadian Brigands; an Intensely Exciting Story of Crime in Quebec, Thirty Years Ago!, which is held only by McGill and the Toronto Public Library. Apparently, it more than lives up to its title.

Something for la fête de la St-Jean, "À Saint Jean-Baptiste" is one of Angers' few poems. The above, attributed incorrectly to"F. S. Angers", is drawn from Nouvelle lyre canadienne, published in 1895 by Beauchemin. Respectable verse of devotion, it becomes entirely offensive in Lawrence J. Burpee's incredibly inept 1909 translation.

Songs of French Canada

Lawrence J. Burpee, ed.

Toronto: Musson, 1909

Bonne fête à tout le monde!