31 December 2022

'The Dying Year' by S. Frances Harrison



THE DYING YEAR
               The old year dies! Of this be sure,
                     The old leaves rot beneath the snow.
                     The old skies falter from the blow
               Dealt by the heavens that shall endure
                     When sky and leaf together go.

               And some are glad and some are grieved.
                     Much as when some poor mortal dies;
                     The first sensation of surprise
               Is lost in sobs of his bereaved.
                     Or cold relief with dry-dust eyes,

               That view his coffin absently, 
                     And wonder first how much it cost,
                     And next, how came his fortune lost,
               And how will live his family.
                     And how he looked when he was crost.

               But tears—no, no—they only surge
                     From those who knew him. They were few;
                     He had his faults; he seldom knew
               The thing to say, condemn, or urge;
                     Tis better he has gone from view.

               So neither do we weep—God knows,
                     We have but little time for tears!
                     A time for hopes, a time for fears,
               A time for strife, a time for woes
                     We have—but hardly time for tears.

               O it were good, and it were sweet.
                     If we might weep our fill somewhere,
                     In other world, in purer air,
               Perhaps in heaven's golden street,
                     Perhaps upon its crystal stair!

               For "power and leave to weep" shall be
                     The golden city's legend dear;
                     Though wiped away be every tear.
               First for a season shall flow free
                     The floods that leave the vision clear!

               So if we could we would, Old Year,
                     Conjure a tear up when you go,
                     And pace in solemn order slow
               Behind your gray and cloud -borne bier,
                     Draped with the wan and fluttering snow.

               Yet what is it, this year we miss?
                     An arbitrary thing, a mark;
                     A rapid writing in the dark;
               Dead wire, that with a futile hiss
                     Strikes back no single answering spark.

               There is no year, we dream and say,
                     Again, no year, we say and dream,
                     And dumbly note the frozen stream,
               And note the bird on barren spray.
                     And note the cold, though bright sunbeam.

               We quarrel with the times and hours,
                     The year should end—we say—when come
                     The last long rolls of March's drum.
               And too—we say—with grass and flowers
                     Should rise the New Year, like to some

               Gay antique goddess, ever young,
                     With pallid shoulders touched with rose,
                     Firm waist that mystic zones enclose,
               White feet from violets shyly sprung.
                     Her raiment—that the high gods chose.

               And yet the poet, born to preach
                     With yearning for his human kind,
                     His verse but sermon undefined,
               Will fail in what he means to teach,
                     If he proclaim not, high designed,

               The Old Year dies! It is enough!
                     And he has won, for eyes grow dim
                     As passeth slow his pageant grim,
               And many a hand both fair and rough
                     Shall wipe away a tear for him—

               For him, and for the wasted hours,
                     The sinful days, the moments weak.
                     The words we did or did not speak,
              The weeds that crowded out our flowers,
                    The blessings that we did not seek.
—From S. Frances Harrison's Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891)

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26 December 2022

The Very Best Reads of 2022: Ladies First


Late last night, as Christmas festivities drew to a close, I pulled Victor Lauriston's The Twenty-first Burr (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) from the shelves. It seemed appropriate way to end the holiday. One hundred years earlier, my copy was presented by the author to a woman named Olive Shanks.


I enjoyed the first four of its twenty-eight chapters, but know I won't be finishing the novel before year's end, meaning it's time for the annual Dusty Bookcase recap of best reads, books to be revived, etc.

This was a year unlike any other in Dusty Bookcase history. For the first time, women wrote a majority of the titles; twelve of the twenty-two reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes and Queries.

Sara Jeannette Duncan's A Daughter of To-day and Joanna E. Wood's The Untempered Wind stand well above the other twenty. Both are available in Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series, which goes some way in explaining how it is that only male authors feature in my annual selection of the three books most deserving of a return to print:

Philistia
Grant Allen
London: Chatto & Windus,
   1901

It was publisher Andrew Chatto who encouraged Allen to try his hand at fiction. This debut novel, first published in 1884, furthers the author's writing on philosophy,  naturalism, religion, and socialism. Ironically, its ending was spoiled by Chatto's intrusion. 

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global
   Publishing, 1947

A noir thriller set in Quebec City, Whispering City pre-dates Hitchcock's I Confess by five years. Both have their weaknesses. Brown's adaptation of the former – likely the first novelization of a Canadian feature film – improves upon its source material.


Stephen Leacock
Toronto: S.B. Gundy, 1915

Leacock's legacy suffered a blow this year when McGill announced that the building named in his honour, would be renamed after a venture capitalist who had pledged $13 million to the the university.

It's the stuff of a Leacock story.


As series editor of Véhicule Press's Ricochet imprint, I was involved in reviving Arthur Mayse's 1949 debut novel Perilous Passage. 'Telling the Story,' the introduction provided by the author's daughter, Susan Mayse, is one of my favourite in the series. Reprinted in Canadian Notes & Queries, it can be read through this link.

Recognition this year goes to England's Handheld Press for its reissue of Marjorie Grant's 1921 novel Latchkey Ladies.


I knew nothing of Marjorie Grant or Latchkey Ladies before reading this March 22 review in The Times. 

Finally, sadly, I report that the New Year's resolutions made last December didn't go far:

  • I resolved to focus more on francophone writers, yet read just one: Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (and then only in translation).
  • I resolved to feature more non-fiction, and yet this writer of non-fiction reviewed nothing but fiction.
  • I resolved to keep kicking against the pricks. This was easily done. Witnessing the  miscreants of the Freedom Convoy roll past on its way to Ottawa gave extra incentive.
This December I make no resolutions.

Here's to the New Year!

Bonne année!



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25 December 2022

'Christmas' by S. Frances Harrison



CHRISTMAS
      Who will sing the Christ?
                  Will he who rang his Christmas chimes
                  Of faith and hope in Gospel ray,
                  That pealed along the world's highway,
                  And woke the world to purer times—
                              Will he sing the Christ?

                  Or that new voice which vaguely gives—
                  One day its song for Rome—the next,
                  In soul-destroying strife perplext
                  For England's faith and future lives
                              Shall he sing the Christ?

                  Or the sweet children in the schools,
                  That hymn their carols hand-in-hand
                  All purely, can they understand
                  The wisdom that must make us fools—
                              Can they sing the Christ?

                  Or yearning priest who to his kind
                  From carven pulpit gives the Word,
                  Or praying mother who has erred,
                  And blindly led her erring blind—
                              Have they not sung the Christ?

                  "Lord! I of sinners am the chief!"
                  One, seated by his Christmas fires,
                  Hearkens the bells from distant spires,
                  But hangs his head in unbelief—
                              He cannot sing the Christ.

                  Grant to such, Lord, the seeing eye!
                  Grant as the World grows old and cold,
                  All hearts Thy beauty may behold.
                  Grant, lest the souls of sinners die—
                              That All may sing the Christ.

—From S. Frances Harrison's Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891)

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!



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19 December 2022

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2022 (plus gifts!)



This year will be forever remembered as the one in which Sexpo '69 was added to my collection. An elusive book, published in 1969 by Brandon House of North Hollywood, I spent at least two decades on its trail. My pursuit ended this past summer. The book set me back over one hundred dollars.


I'm betting it was worth every penny and that Lisa and considerate, gentle, sophisticated Bobbie will not disappoint.

"What?" I hear you say. "You mean you haven't read it!"

No, I have not. Too busy.... so busy that I didn't visit the Strand during last month's trip to New York. I did find time for Trump Tower, but only because it was so close to my hotel. I expected to be underwhelmed, and was more than underwhelmed. This was during the weekend of the New York City Marathon, and yet the place was nearly deserted. 


The length of my tie is not a political statement.

Each of this year's ten best book buys was found online, which is a sad state of affairs given recent travels. These are the remaining nine:

Behold the Hour
Jeann Beattie
Toronto: Ryerson, 1959

Jeann Beattie won the Ryerson Fiction Award for Blaze of Noon (1950), her debut novel. Behold the Hour, her second and last, is set in the early days of CBC television. I didn't think much of the novel, but illustrator Ken Elliott's dust jacket is a favourite.


Mrs Everard Cotes (Sara
   Jeannette Duncan)
New York: Appleton, 1894

Not at all what I expected.

What did I expect? At twenty-one, I read Duncan's classic, The Imperialist, but remember nothing.

Not only a beautiful volume, but one of the year's two best reads.
One-Way Street
Dan Keller [Louis Kaufman]
London: Hale, 1960

Flee the Night in Anger, Keller's first novel, is unique as the only post-war pulp to be set in both Montreal and Toronto. There's a fair amount of travel back and forth. This second and last novel, a very attractive hardcover, begins with a man arriving in Toronto from Montreal. Will he return? The title may provide a clue.

Leonie Mason [Joan Suter]
London: C & J Temple, 1947

Following East of Temple Bar (below), Murder By Accident was the second novel by Joan Suter. Both were published the year she divorced her first husband, left England for Canada, married again, and began writing as Joan Walker. The author hid her first two novels. Why she did is a mystery. This novel is another.

Martha Ostenso
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Ted Allan and Hugh Garner were published by News Stand Library under pseudonyms – not so Martha Ostenso! And the Town Talked first appeared in a 1938 edition of McCall's. Where it doesn't appear is in any Canadian reference book.
The Blowtop
Alvin Schwartz
New York: Dial, 1948

The author's first novel. Published twenty years before he gave up the United States for Canada, it is set in Greenwich Village and concerns fallout stemming from the murder of a local pusher. Did I read somewhere that one of the characters is based on Schwartz's friend Jackson Pollack?

Joan Suter
London: C & J Temple, 1946

Another favourite cover, it graces the hidden debut novel of a woman who would one day win the 1954 Stephen Leacock Medal for Pardon My Parka and the 1957 Ryerson Fiction Award for Repent at Leisure. I liked the novel for its depiction of a time and place in which one could make a decent living as a writer.

Frances Shelley Wees
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949

As Ricochet Books series editor, I've returned two Wees novels to print. Lost House, a gothic thriller involving drug runners in remote British Columbia looked to be a possible third. Sadly, it is not one of the author's best.

The second book ever published by Harlequin!
A Question of Judgement
Phyllis Brett Young
London: Allen, 1970

Phyllis Brett Young published six books between 1959 and 1969 — and then nothing in the remaining twenty-seven years of her life. One wonders what happened. A Question of Judgement, her last, was first published in 1969 by Macmillan of Canada. This British edition, which appeared the following year, has the better cover.

This year the Dusty Bookcase received several gifts and review copies.


I'd long been an admirer of Dick Bourgois-Doyle's exploration of Leacock Medal winners. After reaching out, the author not only sent a signed copy of What's So Funny? (Burnstown, ON: Burnstown Publishing, 2016), but invited me to speak on Joan Walker and Ted Allan. 


Quebec history and literature enthusiast Helen Meredith gave me this copy of Kurt W. Stock's All Quiet on the Russian Front (Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1973), which she spotted at a Montreal Salvation Army Thrift Store. Another in the Simon & Schuster's short-lived "series of original Canadian books." I'd never seen a copy.


Novelist Lee Goldberg, publisher of California's Cutting Edge Books, sent three newly-reissued novels – initially published between 1948 and 1961 – with Canadian settings: Muriel Elwood's Heritage of the River, Robert McCaig's The Burntwood Men, and The Tall Captains by Bart Spicer.


Karyn Huenemann of Canada's Early Women Writers gave me a copy of The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) by Theosophist and mystic L. Adams Beck. Like Sexpo '69, The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories sits near the top of my TBR pile.

Here's looking forward to next year's book purchases.

Here's hoping some will be found in physical book stores.

Related posts:

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