11 November 2009
08 November 2009
Remembering Peregrine Acland
Peregrine Palmer Acland
(1891-1963)
As Remembrance Day approaches thoughts turn to Peregrine Acland, whose Great War novel, All Else is Folly, I wrote about back in March. A very fine work, praised by Ford Madox Ford, Bertrand Russell, Frank Harris and our own war-time prime minister Sir Robert Borden, of all the out-of-print books read this past year, this is the one I would bring back. It remains a mystery to me that this novel has been so neglected.
One might make a similar statement regarding the author. Very little has been written about Acland, much of it sketchy and inaccurate. The biographical note that accompanies We Wasn't Pals, the Great War anthology edited by Barry Callaghan and Bruce Meyer, lists no dates of birth or death, and mistakes his only other book, the poem The Reveille of Romance, for a novel.
Once a newspaperman, Acland's own writing has him in Alberta working as a cowboy before the war – an unlikely occupation for a the son of the Deputy Minister of Labor. Greg Gatenby's remarkable Toronto: A Literary Guide, tells us that after the war Acland worked as an ad man in New York and Toronto, and was a member of Mackenzie King's private staff during the Second World War. A Torontonian, he died in the city of his birth, having lived the final years of his life in an apartment at 100 Gloucester Street.
I can't claim to have done any real research on Acland myself, though I did seek out his Attestation Paper – easily done through Library and Archives Canada. I've also come across a a smattering of wartime writing published in the Globe and Pearson's Magazine, along with the above photo, which was used in a McClelland and Stewart advert for All Else is Folly. The scarring almost certainly comes from the severe wounds he received during the Battle of the Somme, and is similar to that suffered by his protagonist Alec Falcon.
Acland was awarded the Military Cross; his "conspicuous bravery at the front" was reported in the dailies. The novel drawn from his experiences was published in three countries, received glowing reviews, and soon went out of print. What recognition has Acland received since? After the adverts for All Else is Folly had run, his name disappeared from the Globe and Mail, the newspaper for which he'd once worked; even his death went unreported. It's all so shameful, really.
Update: Field Punishment No. 1 reveals that the Globe and Mail did indeed report on Peregrine Acland's death, succeeding where this blog failed. Once again, it seems that I've been let down by the Globe and Mail search engine.
Update: Field Punishment No. 1 reveals that the Globe and Mail did indeed report on Peregrine Acland's death, succeeding where this blog failed. Once again, it seems that I've been let down by the Globe and Mail search engine.
04 November 2009
Not Very Occult
The Inner Shrine: A Novel of Today
Anonymous [Basil King]
New York: Grosset & Dunlop, n.d.
On 28 July 1912, the New York Times published a letter from one Parker Mann of Nestlewood. Under the heading "WHO WROTE IT?", Mr Mann reports: "A friend has told me of a lady who gave her a most circumstantial account of the writing of 'The Inner Shrine' by the lady's uncle, a gentleman named Wilson. This gentleman, it seems, is now dead."
Coming four years after the novel first appeared in Harper's, the letter just added to a very large, ever-swirling mass of misinformation, speculation and rumour. From the start, the publisher played it all up, at one point announcing that no less than 34 names had been mentioned in print as the possible author. In the United States, The Inner Shrine became the biggest selling book of 1909.
Two weeks after Mann's letter, the truth was out – the anonymous novelist was not a man named Wilson, nor was it Edith Wharton or Henry James, but Basil King, a retired clergyman from Canada's Maritime provinces.
The reverend wasn't a complete unknown. Once a popular pastor, he'd turned to writing novels when his failing eyesight forced early retirement. The first three, published under his name, were well-received and had achieved modest sales, but nothing like that enjoyed by The Inner Shrine.
Well-crafted, if wordy, the novel is a drawing room drama of the sort familiar to readers of William Dean Howells (whose daughter, Mildred, was amongst those named as the author). Like the reverend's previous works, it focusses on matters moral; in this case the trials of a woman whose reputation is sullied by a boastful, self-centred aristocrat. Really, what it all comes down to is some guy saying he slept with a girl, when he didn't.This was, of course, a different time; one in which stepping into a motor is to invite accident and these are words of woo: "I've become even more deeply conscious than I was before of the ineradicable nature of what I feel for you."
Ah, yes. There's also a minor scandale that devolopes when a suitor displays effrontery in touching a young lady's muff.
No ribald comments, please.
The Inner Shrine is an entertaining, if disappointing, read. King was known as a writer with a great interest in spiritualism, and so, I was expecting a good deal of weirdness. All starts off well, with a very strong first chapter in which a mother is kept awake by a seemingly inexplicable "presentiment of disaster".
She soon learns that her son is dead.
At a lighter moment, one character tells another of her belief that "there are forces at work here that you and I don't see."
Yet, there's otherwise no evidence of the reverend's interest in the otherworldly."How very occult!" is the response.
Or am I wrong? Could it be that the author had a preminition that his anonymity would be a big deal? The novel includes this brief passage, apropos of nothing:
Do you remember what Sir Walter Scott said, in the days when the authorship of Waverley was still a secret, to the indiscreet people who asked him if he had written it? 'No,' he answered 'but if I had I should give you the same reply.'
Oh, those indiscreet people... always so curious to know who wrote that book they so enjoyed.
Object: My copy, a Grosset & Dunlop reprint, owes its look to the 1909 Harper and Brothers first edition. Cheaper paper, black cover type instead of gold, it drops four of the eight plates, but has the advantage of some interesting adverts for other Grosset & Dunlop offerings. Much as I enjoyed The Inner Shrine, I can't help but think that these two would've been more fun:
01 November 2009
Meighen as Monster
Arthur Meighen wasn't such a bad looking fellow, and as depicted by the good folks at Crayola he appears quite harmless. Would that the same could be said about his statue, which is a frightening fixture, something akin to a permanent Halloween decoration.
This is Ottawa's reject. Commissioned at the same time as a statue of rival Mackenzie King, it was meant to stand with those of Macdonald and Laurier on Parliament Hill. King's is just north of the East Block, while Marcel Braitstein's statue of Meighen may be found 600 kilometres away in the corner of a small park on a minor street in the town of St Marys.
Why this is so is best explained in Ottawa Boy (General Store, 2000), the biography of Lloyd Francis. Here the late MP for Ottawa West recalls a 1968 visit to a Public Works warehouse to see these tributes:
The statue of Mackenze King was conventional and posed no problem. The one of Arthur Meighen was grotesque, with his arms spread and his face turned to the sky as if he were contemplating Armageddon. The plight of a Liberal minister of Public Works was clear: If he caused the statue to be erected, there would be an outcry, but if he did not, he would be accused of slighting the memory of a distinguished Conservative prime minister.
According to Francis, that Minister of Public Works, George James McIlraith, found a way out of the fix by seeking recommendations from senators Eugene Forsey, a Liberal, and Grattan O’Leary, a Progressive Conservative. Both advised against erecting the Meighen statue. None of this prevented John Diefenbaker from sounding off, describing the statue as "the greatest monstrosity ever produced – a mixture of Ichabod Crane and Daddy Longlegs." A bit over the top, but at the same time appropriate, given Meighen's early career as a schoolteacher.
Meighen's statue remained warehoused until 1987, when efforts of some dedicated locals brought it to town. I've yet to find a single person who cares for the thing. The elongated legs and bulbous face attract the most comment, but what I find disturbing are those hands... those hands... The hands of a murderer, I'd say.
Incidentally, the Crayola people have robbed Meighen of the last ten years of his life; he didn't die until 1960.
I have always argued against the use of colouring books as reference material.
31 October 2009
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