'A Child's Song of Christmas' by Marjorie Pickthall

On this Christmas Day, verse by Marjorie Pickthall from The Drift of Pinions (Montreal: University Magazine, 1913). 

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

Related posts:

'A Mother at Christmas' by Edna Jaques

'A Christmas Fantasy' by Bernard Freeman Trotter
'When Christmas Comes' by Verna Sheard

Great War Christmas Verse from a Century Past

'Christmas 1916' by Robert Stanley Weir

A Century-Old Prayer for Christmas
Timely Verse from a Christmas a Century Past
Christmas Greetings from Gay Page

'Christmas in Heaven' by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

Arthur Stringer Pines for Christmas
Miss Machar's 'The Call of Christmas - 1914'

Christmas Verse by the Master of All Poets

Just in Time for Christmas!

The new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrives at a busy time of year, which suits me just fine. I usually race through each issue, reading it from cover to cover, but am now forced to slow the pace and savour.

And so, all I've read thus far is Seth's regular column 'The Landscape.' The beginning raised a smile of self-recognition:

There are still a few places in Ontario where one can find shelves (or piles) of old second hand books for sale that have not been curated. Randomly acquired, roughly heaped into sections, and priced not by author and title but by paperback or hardcover status alone. These places are dwindling fast but I still know a few prime spots. Don't expect me to name them or tell you where they're located though. s if. I don't want you going there. These are my secret places. My old books! Keep out.

Seth's focus this time is The Canada Permanent Story, 1855-1955. "These corporate books weren't really meant to be perused," he writes, yet Seth has done just that, sharing this endpaper illustration:

My own contribution concerns Garnett Weston, whose books and film work consumed much of my summer. They also consumed a fair amount of my income. I've yet to find a Weston in any of my secret places.

Garnett Weston
1890 - 1980
RIP

It's not entirely true that I've only read Seth's column. Among the other contributions is 'Telling the Story,' in which Susan Mayse remembers her father Arthur Mayse's writing career. I commissioned the  piece as the forward to the forthcoming Ricochet Books reissue of Arthur Mayse's 1949 novel Perilous Passage.

There's so much more to look forward to, including writing by:

Stephanie Bolster

Alex Boyd

Kornella Drianovaki

Megan Durnford

Stacey Easton

André Forget

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Ronald L Grimes

Brett Joseph Grubisic

Luke Hathaway

David Huebert

Mark Anthony Jarman

Kate Kennedy

Aris Keshav

M Travis Lane

Rohen Maitzen

Dancy Mason

David Mason

Jeff Miller

Nofel

J R Patterson

Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Patricia Robertson

Naben Ruthnum

Cal Sepulia

Drew Tapley

Rob Taylor

Carl Watts

Bruce Whitman

Given that it's the season... Anyone looking for a last minute Christmas gift can't do much better than a subscription to Canadian Notes & Queries. I bought a couple. You can, too!

The link is here.

Related posts:

The Dead of a Dead End Street
Legacy of Fear

Just Kids

Sometimes a Fantasy

The Tenants were Corrie and Tennie
Kent Thompson
Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1973
200 pages

Describing The Tenants were Corrie and Tennie as a good debut novel seems faint praise, but I'd have said the same had it been a second or third novel. The narrator is William A Boyd, a disgruntled American schoolteacher who, lured by the charms of New Brunswick, purchases a rundown Fredericton duplex. His idea is to retire, occupy one half, and live off the rent of the other.

It all seems a bit crazy. Boyd is well south of forty and has little in the way of savings (though he'd claim otherwise). Taking ownership means taking on a substantial mortgage. And then there's the furnace, which heats both sides of the duplex. Boyd, who takes pride in his new role as a landlord, was ignorant of this fact. And he's never experienced a Fredericton winter.

The first order of business is to raise the rent on the tenants he's inherited. After they move out, as he knew they would, Boyd places a classified ad in the Daily Gleaner. He considers just one response, from Harrison Tennyson ("Tennie") Cord, who has just taken a position as Associate Professor of English at the University of New Brunswick:

The letter was headed by the letterhead, which of course served as a return address: "River Idyll Motel: Cabins and Cottages – Reasonable Prices." Tennie had neatly inked in the date under the slogan. But it was a mistake to use that stationary provided by the hotel. I should never have done that myself, even if it meant buying more paper. The very address had a touch of panic to it. 

Boyd has his failings as a landlord – which become increasingly evident – but is astute when it comes to tenants, whether current or prospective. Corrie and Tennie move in, bringing with them their three young children. As a newly transplanted American, Boyd shares something with the Cord family. Early in the relationship, Corrie and Tennie invite him to their November Thanksgiving dinner. The experience of the American expat weighs heavily on our narrator:

An immigrant from the United States to Canada comes always under the shadow of history – or to be specific, the shadow of Benedict Arnold. Arnold, who was considered to be a traitor to both king and Congress (an American easily forgets the first treachery)...

These words come from The Alien's Guide to Survival. Boyd's philosophical work-in-progress, it deals also with democracy, human behaviour, economics, religion, consumerism, and aesthetics. This passage gave me pause:

By ugly, I mean that which is offensively temporary. it is perfectly illustrated by the K-Mart Shopping Plaza  (at the top of Smyth Street Hill in Fredericton, New Brunswick). It is self-evident that ugliness debases men. Unless he is made of very stern stuff indeed, a man will act under the influence of his surroundings. Put a man in prison - and he will act like a prisoner. Surround a man with the shoddy goods of contemporaneity, and he will act in proportion to their measure.

K-Mart Shopping Plaza, Frederiction, 1968

I last visited New Brunswick's capital in pre-adolescence, so can't pretend to know the city. That said, I do recommend The Tenants were Corrie and Tennie to Frederictonians. Boyd address, 696 Rodman Street, may not exist, but I'm betting it's recognizable. The landlord guides the reader through places that no longer exist. My favourite is Hurley's Music Store. It's there that Boyd – remember, he's a Yank – first hears Anne Murray:

I was eating a hot dog with relish and mustard when I heard this song which a youngster was playing – probably listening to the record on the pretence of buying it. Finishing my hot dog, and my coffee I inquired of a clerk about the song. That was a rather pleasant tune, I said. "Why," he said, as if surprised I didn't know, "that's Anne Murray."
   "Anne Murray?" I said.
   He had divined that I was something of a stranger, and explained yo me thatAnne Murray had gone to the University of New Brunswick, "up the hill" and that she had graduated in 1966.

Boyd is so struck by the sweet songbird of Springhill that he not only buys the album (What About Me), but lays out a further $66.95 (nearly $415 today) in the purchase of a stereophonic record player in order to play it.

Who can blame him? The title track is wonderful:

The Tenants were Corrie and Tennie is of a time when Canadian nationalism was at its most fervent. I was alive, but far too young to be a reliable witness. Still, remembering my own university years, when American professors were prevalent, I found this exchange between Tennie and Manners, a fellow UNB academic, interesting:

"You can't seriously mean you're going to deport all the Americans. Look you hired us to do a job. You can't turn us back when the job is finished!"
   "Why not?" repeated Manners. "That's what one does to itinerant labour."

This takes place at a party Tennie hosts when his wife and offspring are away (Corrie's mother has died). It was here that this reader began to suspect that Boyd – an unreliable narrator, at best – was becoming unhinged. He descends into madness, his focus being Corrie. I was probably a bit late in picking up on this. Looking back, I now doubt she really waved her bra at him on wash day, declaring it "whiter than white." 

I really should give it a careful second read.

It's just hard to find the time these days.

About the author: Kent Thompson taught literature and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick. Born American, Canada was his home. Kent Thompson died this past summer.

Kent Elgin Thompson
2 February 1936, Waukegan, Illinois -
13 August 2021, Annapolis Royal , Nova Scotia

Object and Access: A slim novel bound in brown boards. The jacket illustration is credited to Jock MacRae. The colour and font do disservice.

Though there was but one printing, used copies are inexpensive (if uncommon). 

A Good Old Soldier

Old Soldier
Frederick Niven
London: Collins, 1936
250 pages

Stewart Reid lives in a small flat with his wife and two young sons in Edinburgh's east end. Minnie sleeps in the one bedroom; the boys share a "concealed bed" in the parlour. Stewart's days begin in a cot next to the stove in the camped kitchen. The missus can't abide this thrashing about under the covers.

Read nothing into that.

Stewart loves Minnie. Minnie loves Stewart. Their lives are happy. Each Friday night, Minnie meets her man as he leaves work. He hands her his pay packet. She withdraws a shilling and he has a dram at the local. Minnie enjoys a bottle of lemonade.

Stewart's shilling comes through his employ at Mackenzie Bothers, one of Edinburgh's most respected  jewellers. He works in semi-darkness below the shop floor, polishing silver with fellow old soldiers. Robert Mackenzie, the sole surviving Mackenzie brother, prefers veterans for the task. It's easy to see why. Stewart follows direction and is dedicated to the job at hand. When tasked, he can be trusted to deliver goods to Edinburgh's finest homes, doing so with fine military bearing. What's more, Stewart Reid lives by routine. While this is disturbed somewhat by his annual summer holiday, Minnie maintains an even keel.

"He's a man who needs a woman to look after him, or a sergeant," says Todd, the oldest of the old soldiers.

Old Soldier is a quiet novel. Nothing much happens. After several dozen pages, one looks about in search of a plot device. Might it be Mackenzie Brothers' flirtatious charwoman Nell Drummond, she of the swinging skirt? Could it have something to do with cold Rev Dr Churchkirk's refusal to be held accountable for the debts of his wife and daughter? How about paymaster Beck's suggestion that Stewart's holiday allotment be held back, lest the old soldier spend it on... you know, his holiday?

Wait, it's the holiday itself, right?

But no, Old Soldier is a tale of everyday life. Its hero is a man who ventures out on a Monday, does drudgery, and suffers an indignity or two for the love of his wife and boys. On Tuesday, he rises in his kitchen cot and prepares for the same. Stewart becomes complaisant. The reader becomes complaisant. When something of significance does happen – remarkably late in the novel – the reader may be caught off guard.

I know I was.

These things happen to other people. Not to me. Not to Stewart Reid.

And yet he continues on, an old soldier.

Dedication: To the author's wife, journalist Mary Pauline Thorne-Quelch.

Object: Purchased last year for £3.00 from a bookstore in Wallingford, England, my copy once belonged to the Newlands Circulating Library of Fiction, 16 Stafford St, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh. I'm sad to report that the address is now taken up by a Frontiers store.

I found this piece of ephemera glued to page 187:

The novel is followed six full-page adverts for other Niven titles: The Flying Years, Triumph, Mrs. Barry, The Rich Wife, The Paisley Shawl, and The Three Marys.

Access: As far as I've been able to determine, the novel enjoyed just one edition and one printing. A bookseller in Tamworth, England offers an ex-library copy at £8.00.

That's it.

It can be read online here courtesy of the Faded Page.

Related posts:

The Dustiest Bookcase: N is for Niven

Three Little Women and One Big Spoiler