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| My Kitchen Window Edna Jaques Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1935 |
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01 January 2016
31 December 2015
'Farewell, Old Year' by James Alway Ross, MPP
Canada First and Other Poems
James A. Ross
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1920
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26 December 2015
Ten of the Best: Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015
Early morning on Boxing Day and I'm lying comfortably in bed. My late mother is to thank. She taught that there is something unseemly in leaving family Christmas dinner to wait overnight for the chance at a $9.99 blu-ray player at Best Buy.
Because I'm done with buying books for this year, the time has come to present my ten favourite acquisitions, beginning with the 1907 Routledge edition of The Clockmaker pictured above. Bought for a buck a couple go months back, the series title, "Half-forgotten Books", did attract.
Half-forgotten books are what this blog is all about… the three-quarters-forgotten and entirely forgotten, too. What follow are the nine others:
The British Barbarians
Grant Allen
London: Lane, 1895
A second printing of Allen's second biggest book, this one has slowly risen to the top of the pile on my night table. The oldest addition to my collection this year – our literature is still so very young – I won this for one pound in an ebay auction. Shipping charges tempered the victory.
Kalee's Shrine
Grant Allen
New York: New Amsterdam, [1897]
Another Allen. One hundred and sixteen years after his death, books by this son of Kingston are becoming scarce, so I was pleased to get this one for just US$4.99. I understand it takes place primarily on the East Anglian coast and features an oculist.
The New Front Line
Hubert Evans
Toronto: Macmillan, 1927
A gift from James Calhoun, with whom I collaborated in writing the Introduction to Peregrine Acland's Great War novel All Else is Folly. I'm embarrassed to reveal – and reveal I must – that I was unaware Evans too had served in the conflict.
Hath Not a Jew…
A.M. Klein
New York: Behrman's Jewish Book House, 1940
The first edition of the first book by the first great poet of Jewish Montreal, I found this for a dollar.
King of Egypt, King of Dreams
Gwendolyn MacEwen
Toronto: Macmillan, 1971
The poet's novel of ancient Egypt and Akhenaton, I came across this copy – inscribed by MacEwen – whilst volunteering at our local library's book sale. In the words of the immortal Lou Reed, "you're going to reap just what you sow."
The Three Roads
Kenneth Millar
New York: Dell, [n.d.]
I purchased this first paperback edition at London's Attic Books, a very pleasant walk from the University of Western Ontario, at which Millar studied English literature.
The Damned and the Destroyed
Kenneth Orvis
London: Dobson, 1962
A second novel from a Montreal writer who seems entirely forgotten. I'd never heard of him, and yet Orvis was published internationally and managed to limp on into the 'eighties. See: Over and Under the Table: The Anatomy of an Alcoholic (Montreal: Optimum, 1985).
A Japanese Nightingale
Onoto Watanna [pseud Winnifred Eaton]
New York: Harper, 1901
Another second novel, this one written by the most accomplished member of Montreal's remarkable Eaton family. A true joy to hold and behold, I purchased my copy just two months ago at Attic Books.
The Keys of My Prison
Frances Shelley Wees
London: Jenkins, 1956
This Millaresque mystery set amongst the privileged of Toronto is a great read. My pristine first English edition, purchased from a bookseller in Lewes, adds to the delight. Seeing something older than myself in such fine form brings hope for the New Year.
And on that note… A Happy New Year to one and all!
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25 December 2015
Timely Verse from Christmas a Century Past
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| The Globe, 25 December 1915 |
A CHRISTMAS STAR
Christmas chimes across the snow,
Can you ring the old refrain
When the world is seared with pain,
When the lights of joy burn low?
Lovely chimes across the snow,
Ring: May Peace be born again!
Hearts that ache amidst the mirth,
Can we sing the songs of cheer?
Those who sang with us last year
Strive afar on alien earth.
All our songs are little worth,
Broken, faltering, thrilled with fear.
Yet for thought space finds no bar;
Seas may part, but not divide;
Brothers, sons, our Country s pride,
Now we send our greeting far;
Lo, we set our love, a star
In your skies this Christmas-tide!
A Christmas poem by Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, sister of Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, from Canadian Poems of the Great War, edited by John W. Garvin (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918).
A Merry Christmas to all!
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20 December 2015
Romance and the Psychopath's Daughter
No Pattern for Life
Frances Shelley Wees
The Star Weekly, 11 December 1955
Not so much novel as novella, No Pattern for Life came and went sixty years ago this month, never to see print again. It pains me to write that this is no great loss. Frances Shelley Wees' mystery The Keys of My Prison, ranks amongst the year's best finds. This is the most disappointing.
The Star Weekly did its best to position No Pattern for Life as a Christmas story – 'twas the season, after all – but the action extends well into the following spring. That said, the story does open on a Christmasy scene: Melinda Elliott, she of the deftly moving hands, decorates mistletoe with bright red ribbon.
See above.
Widowed Sarah Chalmers sits looking on, "absently knitting a white nylon sweater" and passing judgement. Roommates, the two not only share a flat but work together at a Toronto radio station. Their boss, George Johnson, is basically Jack Kent Cooke. And because Johnson is Cooke, he has divorced Agnes, his wife of twenty years, to marry vivacious young Melinda. Sarah doesn't approve.
Good question. Johnson is a balding businessman suffering a mid-life crisis – there's nothing more to him than that. Melinda's fascination has everything to do with his wealth and the many gifts it provides. The first chapter brings a mink coat, but before Melinda can don her dead apparel she trips over Christmas presents and flies face first into the edge of an open door. The story's greatest action – decorating the mistletoe comes a close second – it leads to an operation for a detached retina. The months of convalescence that follow allow Melinda time to contemplate life and reconsider her betrothal.
Priggish busybody Sarah seeks to provide moral guidance while dodging dinner invitations from Jim Malone, Melinda's eye surgeon. Here's a coincidence: not only did Jim and his wife Kitty attend university with Sarah and her dead husband Dick, but he just happens to have grown up in the very same small town as Melinda. Courtesy of Jim, Sarah learns of her roommate's kinfolk:
"I can't imagine how she would get into your orbit. Sarah, With her father and mother, and what must have been her upbringing."A strong believer in nature over nurture, Sarah determines that her roommate "hasn't got a chance". It's not Melinda's fault, of course, rather her "heritage", which Sarah judges to be "low, cheap, degraded, weak, degenerating." How comfortable she feels in the newfound knowledge that she shares a flat with a psychopath's daughter is left unexplored.
"That sounds pretty serious."
"Well… the father, Emmett… he got killed finally, we heard, in some disreputable way – in prison, I think – was a psychopath."
Sadly, No Pattern for Life is no "Murder-Mystery". Given the choices, I'd say it's more "Marriage Problem" than "Romance", though not one marriage features amongst its main characters. The Johnsons' union has ended in divorce. Doctor Jim's marriage to Kitty endured until her untimely passing. As mentioned, Sarah's Dick is dead.
And then we have a secret marriage. At nineteen, Melinda married Bill Blake, of the Toronto Graham-Blakes, but it ended badly because of the bride's frequent, unexplained disappearances from the family home.
As you're unlikely to read No Pattern for Life – copies are scarce and it is not recommended – I'll complete the tale:
Sarah has been declining Jim's invitations because she doesn't know that Kitty died in childbirth a decade earlier. Upon learning the sad news she lays her hand on his and declares her love.
See below.
Melinda visits her grandparents' graves, reads some very complimentary things written on the headstones, and determines that she doesn't really come from such bad stock. Sarah agrees. We learn that Melinda had disappeared from the Graham-Blake home to care for the alcoholic, drug-addicted mother of whom she dared not speak.
Conveniently, Bill Blake returns to the scene because he just can't get over Melinda.
Melinda breaks off her engagement with George, sending the jilted fiancé off in search of his ex-wife. He finds Agnes looking "as she had years and years ago, when they were young." The stress of the divorce had caused a loss of thirty or so pounds in excess weight, so he pleads with her to take him back.
She does.
Lord knows why.
I guess she finds him fascinating.
Favourite passage:
Most boring passage:
Object and Access: Sixteen-pages, fifteen of which feature the novel. The final page is given over to American cartoonist Harry Weinert's "Vignettes of Life". This week's theme: Babysitters.
Anyone looking to read No Pattern for Life is directed to our best reference libraries. That said, old Star Weeky novels do show up from time to time. I pulled mine from a stack being sold by a London bookstore. Price: $4.98.
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