23 March 2011

Poet Names Newspaper Editor as Lucifer's Heir

The New York Times, 28 March 1875
John J. MacDonald's hate for Charles Chiniquy spreads. Here the target is John Dougall, whose paper the bigoted Montreal Witness, published the the former Catholic priest's lectures.
For the Editor of the 'Montreal Witness' Let unscrupulous liars here gather and weep For the child of the devil who here is asleep; And if justice will govern when Lucifer dies, He’ll inherit the title of “father of lies.” But such honor might more than his deeds recompense, For although he was willing he had not the sense That would carry his purpose to such an extent; He could only retail what the rest would invent.
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21 March 2011

A Mildly Eccentric Man Turns Nasty



Much of this past weekend was spent working on a limited edition chapbook of verse by John J. MacDonald – a modest fundraiser for the St Marys Public Library. MacDonald, better known as James MacRae, one of William Arthur Deacon's unfortunate 'Four Jameses', was a patron. Indeed, Deacon tells us that MacDonald "spent a pleasant old age" in the library, where he poured over "books on controversial subjects like political economy and religion."


In the three years I've lived in this little town, I've done a bit of digging into MacDonald's life, but until last week knew nothing of his verse beyond the few scattered snippets Deacon had chosen to reproduce in The Four Jameses. MacDonald's writing – all self-published – is not exactly easy to find. Poems of J. J. MacDonald, a Native of County Glengarry, the c. 1877 volume from which the chapbook is drawn, has almost vanished. Held by a handful of academic universities, it's much more common in microfiche – which is to say that it isn't common at all.

The exposure to MacDonald's writing has been something of an eye-opener. Nothing in Deacon prepared me for the quantity of venom in MacDonald's verse. Drops are found throughout, even in otherwise innocent and inoffensive poems like "The Scattered Family", a sentimental thing about home, hearth, and momma and papa:

We left our sweet home distant climates to range,
To meet there with nothing but infidels strange,
Who know not our feelings, who know not our hearts;
Such is often the fate who from parents departs.

We left all the pleasures of birthplace and home,
To wander about, for a living to roam,
Cast on the wide world – so unfriendly, so cold
Where honor and virtue mean riches and gold.

How bitter is life, full of sorrow and woe,
When children from father and mother must go!
When brothers must part from the sisterly smile,
To live with the stranger, the wretched and vile.

Now, is that any way to talk about one's neighbours?

MacDonald lived amongst the wretched and vile of St Marys and its environs for over sixty of his nearly eighty-eight years. "Among the townspeople he was reported to be mildly eccentric," writes Deacon, "which probably means nothing more than a strongly marked personality intensified by a touch of the artistic temperament, without which no poet is properly equipped... I like to picture him as he has been described to me – sitting in the Library, lost in a book, and, as the theme grippd him, conducting audibly an animated debate with himself, and finally becoming quite excited as the argument progressed."

What better to argue over than politics, especially when religion, hellfire and damnation are added to the mix:

Epitaph for a Grit Politician

As your victim with Government money has got away,
We Canadians, Satan, would thank you sincerely
If you kindly consent to return to Ottawa,
When you come for the next of the clique you love so dearly.

There's plenty of hate in this poetry, most of which is inflicted upon Charles Chiniquy. The protestant convert and conspiracy theory kook is the focus of "Father Chiniquy’s Prayer", "Lines Written on a Bill Announcing One of Chiniquy’s Lectures" and this poem, in which he imagines the man's death:

For Chiniquy

Here lies the priest who changed his creed
To get what custom calls a wife,
But solemn vows most strongly plead,
He never led a married life.

St. Peter, if your dome he seek,
Refuse to open heaven’s door,
For he would scarcely stay a week,
When for a wife he’d hell explore.

Dear reader, please in mind to bear,
That in the realms of bliss above,
There is no wife permitted there
To Man, however strong his love.


The former Father was a healthy sexagenarian when MacDonald published these poems – he would live for a further two decades. Although Chiniquy isn't mentioned by name, it is clear that he is also the subject of this final fantasy:

For a Fallen Priest

Ye passers by here pause to mourn
Around this melancholy urn,
Where loathsome maggots careless feast
Upon the poor degraded priest.

No more the hungry passions rave;
The appetites no longer crave
Their usual supply of ill,
And all around is solemn still.

The soul – that slave of fear and dread,
Of shame, remorse, and pride – is fled.
Oh! Poor, immortal soul, couldst thou
Reveal what’s thy religion now.

For some time now I've been pushing for recognition of MacDonald in this, my adopted hometown, all the while describing him just as Deacon does: a mildly eccentric man. Now I'm beginning to wonder... is it really so strange that his books aren't found on the shelves of the library in which he "spent a pleasant old age"?

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17 March 2011

D'Arcy McGee's Query (with a response)



The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Montreal: D & J Sadlier, 1870

A response from 'Thomasine' (Miss Olivia Knight), originally published in a 1860 edition of The Nation (Dublin).
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13 March 2011

Getting to the Fenian Raids



In the Midst of Alarms
Robert Barr
New York: Stokes, 1894

With St Patrick's Day on the horizon thoughts turn to the Fenians. And why not? Their ill-considered incursions helped induce the birth of this country. Tragicomic, the Fenian Raids seem suited for satire, so why is that after nearly fifteen decades this forgotten novel stands alone in using those troublous times as a backdrop?

Never having before read Barr, I had more than modest expectations for this book. After all, the writer was very much respected in his day. True, he was "popular", but so were his friends Joseph Conrad, Henry James and Arthur Conan Doyle. And consider this: as a volunteer soldier, Barr helped defend the Niagara frontier during the raids. Sadly, nothing of his experience seems much in evidence here.

The novel begins well with a strong chapter focused on the reunion of old school chums Stillson Renwick and Richard Yates in a Fenian infested Buffalo hotel. Fifteen years have passed since their last meeting, during which Renwick has become a proper, polite professor at the University of Toronto. Yates, in stark contrast, has quit Canada for a fast-paced life as a New York journalist. He is a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer and overall bon vivant, a man whose drive has very nearly put him behind asylum gates. A change of pace is required – so he's been told – and the journalist has decided a week or two of camping with his passive pal Renwick is just the thing to cure his ills.

The next day, the pair crosses the Niagara into Canada, leaving behind all intrigue and excitement for woodland pleasures. "The Odd Couple Go Camping" isn't much of an idea; Barr seems to recognize as much by introducing Kitty Bartlett and Margaret Howard, two attractive farmers' daughters for the men to pursue. Further pages – chapters, in some instances – are devoted to topics such as soap making, bread baking, and the dueling roles of the rural blacksmith and village grocer in the years preceding Confederation. All quite accurate observations, from what I can tell, but it does become a bit tiresome. The chapter devoted to the mid-19th-century public library policies of Canada West bores even a bookish fellow like myself.

But where are the Fenians in all this? They're rarely mentioned; no one takes the threat of invasion seriously. "They won't venture over", predicts journalist Yates, the man with his ear closest to the ground. "They fight with their mouths. It's the safest way."

When the Fenians do finally invade, well over half-way through the novel, encounters are fleeting. Renwick and Yates are captured, marched to the Fenian camp, have a brief exchange with "General" John O'Neill, and are released. The professor and the journalist are far away when the fighting begins. Barr's description of the absurd comedy of errors that was the Battle of Ridgeway is limited to a dispassionate, two-page factual account that reads like something ripped from an old high school textbook.

"The farce is known as the Battle of Ridgeway, and would have been comical had it not been that death hovered over it," Barr concludes.

Too soon?

Bloomer: "Touch a man on his business, and he generally responds by being interested."

Object: A small volume with microscopic type, this "SECOND EDITION" features five substandard illustrations by C. Moore Smith.


Small wonder that later editions featured scenes imagined by the talented Harrison Fisher.


Access: Our academic libraries succeed while our public libraries fail. Those of Fort Erie, Port Colborne and Welland, all key communities in the Battle of Ridgeway, lack copies. In Canada, only the taxpayers of Toronto and Vancouver are properly served. The novel is much more common south of the border.

In the Midst of Alarms was a bestseller in its day, and was reprinted for many years thereafter, but there isn't much evidence of this online. The armful of 19th-century copies currently listed range between ten and thirty dollars. As might be expected, print on demand farms dominate, displaying editions of ugliness and ineptitude. Nabu Press is the worst offender, offering the booklover a choice of covers depicting the snow covered mountains of southern Ontario and the ancient ruins of Fort Erie.