The Girls Who Got Away

"LISA WENT TO MONTREAL FOR ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE... SHE NEVER DREAMED SHE WOULD FALL IN LOVE WITH A WOMAN!"

Published in 1969 by California's Brandon House, easily the finest American publisher of erotica, for some time I've had an eye out for this title. Last month a Toronto bookseller teased, then disappointed. Here's hoping for success in 2010.

I'm too young to remember the American pavilion, depicted on the cover. That said, I see no evidence that any of its displays featured a bed... or lesbian sex, for that matter.

 

Fact-Checking Gordon Sinclair

Bright Path [sic] to Adventure

Gordon Sinclair

Toronto: Harlequin, 1954

Was Gordon Sinclair ever so dashing a figure? I remember him from Front Page Challenge. Not nearly as sharp as Pierre Berton, lacking Betty Kennedy's class and poise, to my young eyes he was just a boorish little man in a loud sports jacket.

What I didn't know, sitting there on the floor in front of my family's Viking colour television, was that Sinclair had written a number of commercially successful books. Royalties from the first, Foot-loose in India (1932), paid for his faux-Georgian manor in Islington. Bright Path to Adventure was, perhaps, less successful. Still, in 1945 the Globe and Mail reported that it had sold 10,000 copies in just two months.

The Globe and Mail, 1 December 1945

At this distance, it's difficult to explain the popularity. Bright Path to Adventure is such a slapdash effort; a book that seems to rely on the author's memory alone. Sinclair offers up a collection of tales, which like the cover, are worthy of Men's Adventure, Man's Action and other muscle-flexing magazines of the post-war era. What jars is that such a prominent, respected journalist cares so little for truth or accuracy. Reading Sinclair's words is much like to listening to a half-drunken stranger at a dinner party going on about some article he once read in school. Everything is sketchy. Sinclair devotes several pages to the case against Jack Fiddler without once mentioning his name... or the name of his co-accused... or the name of his supposed victim; nor does he report the year or location of the alleged crime. He describes all, laughably, as a case of "cannibalism and voodoo".

We move from dinner party to campfire with a ghost story. It seems that one dark September night a car containing two unidentified female teachers from an unnamed girls' college broke down, unaccountably, on an unspecified Kansas highway. The journalist tells us that the pair took shelter in an abandoned farmhouse (location undisclosed) where they encountered the ghost of a fisherman. Then they learned from an innominate local that the farm had once belonged to a nameless man whose heart had been broken by a son who had gone off to sea. Sinclair writes that the apparition left behind some mysterious vegetation, "a type of seaweed only found on dead bodies." This, according to an anonymous professor of botany, who was "frankly dubious but curious. He showed the foliage to others who agreed that this type of seaweed could never have been found anywhere near the Kansas prairie."

Never.

Reportage from "Canada's most widely travelled journalist".

Object: Though it drops the Stanley Turner illustrations found in the McClelland and Stewart first edition, Bright Path to Adventure is fairly thick for a Harlequin. Curiously, this edition also drops the letter S from the title; Sinclair's bright paths becoming a single trail. Full page adverts for Raymond Marshall's Lady... Here's Your Wreath and Come Blonde, Came Murder by Peter George only contribute to buyer's remorse.

Access: The Toronto Public Library has a copy, as do a bunch of Canadian universities. A quarter century after Sinclair's death, signed copies of the Harlequin edition can be bought for as little as US$5. Good signed copies of the McClelland and Stewart edition can be had for under US$20. Unsigned copies are cheaper still.

A Merry Christmas to All

Bought for Its Beauty

The March of the White Guard

Gilbert Parker

New York: Ferro, 1902

Does it not seem appropriate that Gilbert Parker's true first name was Horatio? His was, after all, an Algeresque life. Here we have a man, the son of rural Ontario storekeeper, who rose to become one of England's most powerful MPs. Parker was knighted by Edward VII, received a baronetcy from George V and became a member of the Privy Council; all while penning novels and short stories that made him one of the popular writers of his day.

I don't know that I've ever met anyone who has read anything by Sir Gilbert. Perhaps my great-grandparents did... who knows where their libraries ended up. This copy of The March of the White Guard was purchased seven years ago in a Vancouver bookstore. The price – one dollar – tempted, but what sealed the deal were W.E.B. Starkweather's illustrations. Artwork extends beyond endpapers and plates to elements that decorate each page, making an otherwise bland read an enjoyable experience.

What an anonymous 1902 New York Times review describes as "a stirring tale of life and adventure in the Hudson Bay district" begins hundreds of miles to the west with the receipt of a letter addressed to the Chief Factor of Fort Providence. Rose Lepage writes in desperation that her husband, Varre, has gone missing while exploring the Barren Grounds. Enter contemplative sub-factor Jaspar Hume, who shows considerable character and bravery in agreeing to lead what seems a futile rescue party. The reader's estimation of Hume grows considerably after a lengthy monologue (below), which Hume addresses – uncharacteristically, we're told – to his faithful dog, Jacques.

The next morning Hume sets off with a crew of four misfits: slow Scotsman "Late" Carscallen, Métis Gaspé Toujours, the perpetually grunting Cloud-in-the-Sky and Jeff Hyde, the bully of Fort Providence. Together they are the White Guard; so named for their decision to dress in "white blanket costumes from head to foot".

The modern reader will wonder that this was ever considered appropriate attire for a northern rescue party. Sure enough, the panorama of snow, ice, sun and white blanket costumes overwhelms, bringing on snowblindness, and very nearly felling Hume.

Most of The March of the White Guard takes place north of the 61st parallel during deepest winter, a landscape and time rendered with considerable skill by the appropriately named Mr Starkweather. Strange then, that the cover features five dandelions. Are these in some way meant to represent the five members of the White Guard? Dying weeds shedding seeds? I just don't get it.

Access: Common and cheap, Very Good copies of the 1901 first edition – as above, but with tawny boards – can be had for under US$10.

It's been some time since I criticized the less than reputable online booksellers, and even longer since my last real swipe at print on demand folk. Against the spirit of the season, I offer the following observations.

The cover of the Dodo Press edition features a summertime scene in which two buckskin-wearing men stand in a deciduous forest, while that of Read How You Want reproduces a painting of an unidentified cardinal. Both are just as mysterious as Starkweather's (though I will acknowledge that Parker twice refers to Gaspé Toujours as a "Papist").

Sadly – and inexplicably – the always interesting firm of Tutis Digital Publishing does not include The March of the White Guard amongst its sixteen Parker titles. That said, their cover treatments of Sir Gilbert's other works do not fail to entertain. My favourite is Tutis Classics' Michel and Angele, a historical romance of two Huguenot lovers during the reign of Elizabeth I. (Over at Caustic Cover Critic, JRSM points to the company's use of the same image on a couple of Jack London books.)

Kessinger Publishing always plays it safe by slapping on covers reminiscent of a no name corn flakes box. The company couples The March of the White Guard with The Trespasser, presenting what is, in effect, the eighth volume of the 23-volume Works of Gilbert Parker. For US$65.17, an American bookseller will happily sell you a "Brand New", "Never Used" copy identical to that which Amazon lists for US$21.24.

Merry Christmas, ExtremelyReliable of Richmond, Texas.

Update: Martin W kindly points out that the "unidentified cardinal" on the cover of the Read How You Want edition is actually Pope Innocent X, as painted by Diego Velázquez.