The Barefoot Fugitive and Other Mysteries

The Wild Olive
[Basil King]
New York: Harper, 1910

Basil King wrote the bestselling novel of 1909.

Who knew?

Hardly anyone.

That novel, The Inner Shrine, was published anonymously. Its story of a woman's reputation sullied by the base claims of a cad captivated readers almost as much as the mystery of its authorship. Speculation centred on Henry James, Edith Wharton and the daughter of William Dean Howells as King kept to the shadows. When The Wild Olive appeared the following year it was credited only to "the author of 'The Inner Shrine'." I'll be damned if the new work didn't do nearly as well. In its summary of sales for 1910, Publishers Weekly placed The Wild Olive third, behind Florence L. Barclay's The Rosary and A Modern Chronicle by Winston Churchill.

There's no accounting for taste. The Wild Olive is far better than the Barclay and the Churchill; it's also better than The Inner Shrine. In fact, The Wild Olive is the best

Basil King book I've ever read. It begins in mystery: a barefoot man, a fugitive, scrambles through darkness in the Adirondack wilds. Coming upon a tasteful, well-appointed house, he walks through open doors to find Judge Wayne, the very man who had just hours before sentenced him to death.

A great coincidence, I know. There will be others.

The fugitive – name: Norrie Ford – only entered the house because he thought he'd heard a noise made by one of his pursuers. 'Twas in fact the light tread of a lithe young woman dressed in white. Silently, she beckons Ford back outside, then leads him in silence to a remote artist's studio somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Champlain. There he's left, hidden from the law, surrounded by sketches and watercolours depicting trappers, voyageurs, Indians and nuns. The woman in white reappears daily, bringing food, clothing and companionship of a sort.

The clothes she brings belonged to her deceased father, a Virginian who made a great deal of money in the northwest of Canada. "I was born on the shores of Hudson Bay," she tells Ford. "My mother was married to a French-Canadian voyageur." Not a suitable topic for polite dinner conversation, perhaps, but Ford's saviour is proud of her past. Her present, however, is off-limits; she won't reveal so much as her name.

This mysterious figure may be a bastard born, but Ford recognizes her as the most refined of women; something to do with having been raised in a Quebec City convent, no doubt. And yet she retains such inhibition, such a spirit of freedom:

In her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded him of something he had read or heard of the wild olive being grafted into the olive of the orchard.

Ford is keen to impress that he is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted – the murder of an uncle – but to this wild olive his words means nothing:

"He was very cruel to you – your uncle? – wasn't he?" she asked, at last.
     "He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him in his sleep – whatever I may have said when in a rage."
     "I should think it might be." He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would have laughed.
     "Are you so bloodthirsty – ?" he began.
     "Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have killed two or three."

Just as her mother helped her father escape from prison, so too the wild olive aids Ford in alluding the authorities. After an untold

number of days – a couple of weeks, I'm guessing – she serves as guide through dense forest to the shores of Lake Champlain. There he's handed a plan of escape to Canada, complete with canoe, map, money, train schedule and a ticket for England on RMS Empress of Erin (read: Empress of Ireland).

And so, Norrie Ford is given a second chance at life as "Herbert Strange", the... er, unusual name recorded on the steamer ticket. In this effort to make something of himself, Ford follows the mystery woman's suggestion that he make for the Argentine. "I happen to know a lot about it," said she. "Everybody says it's the country of new opportunities."

Indeed, it is. On a whim – he recalls passing mention made by the wild olive – the newly christened Strange seeks employment with Stephens & Jarrott, an American firm with offices in Buenos Aires. Eight years pass. Strange rises through the ranks, becomes engaged to a Jarrott relation, is transferred to New York, and then attends a dinner party at which he is seated to the left of the wild olive. To her right is Judge Wayne.

What are the chances?

Not bad, actually. One expects coincidences in an Edwardian novel, and there are several here, but setting aside the first, none beggar belief. The mystery woman's casual reference to Stephens & Jarrott, a firm to which she has the thinnest of connections, set Ford on a course that would bring him back to her. It was all quite unintentional on her part, but there you are... rather there he is.

I won't say any more for fear of spoiling the plot – it's so remarkably clever – except to say that the final page came as a complete surprise. The Wild Olive doesn't end so much as trails off leaving so many mysteries intact. What sent the wild olive's father to prison? How did her mother get him out? What of her French-Canadian husband? How did Ford escape his jailers? For goodness sake, what happened to his shoes?

Bloomer:

"You can't realize what all this means to me. If we succeed – that is, if you succeed – I hardly dare to tell you of the extent to which I shall be grateful."
     He felt already some of the hero's magnanimity as to claiming his reward.
     "You needn't think about that," he smiled. "I sha'n't. If by making Evie happy I can serve you, I shall not ask for gratitude."
     She looked down at her muff and smoothed its fur, then glanced up swiftly. "No; but I shall want to give it."

Trivia I: The most sympathetic character in the novel is Judge Wayne, a good soul who recognizes and struggles with the injustice of the justice system. When first we encounter the man – during Norrie Ford's first night on the lam – we see that he is going blind. Because he is beyond the help of the best German oculists, "poor Wayne" has descended into darkness by the time he and Ford share the same dining table. Ah, but the judge's hearing has grown more acute, right? I spoil things in revealing that he recognizes Ford's voice. However, Wayne keeps the knowledge to himself, choosing not to turn Ford in because, of course, justice is blind.

King himself was going blind when he wrote this novel.   

Moving Picture World
July 1915

Trivia II: In 1915, The Wild Olive became the first of seven Basil King novels to be adapted to the screen. A lost film, one of the very few images known to have survived is the publicity shot above of silent film star Myrtle Stedman as the Wild Olive. In the novel, she has a dog named Micmac. Forgotten English actor Forrest Stanley plays Norrie Ford.

Object: An attractive 346-page hardcover with eight illustrated plates by Lucius Hitchcock (who also provided illustrations for The Inner Shrine). My copy, a first edition, was purchased last month at Ottawa's Patrick McGaherne Books. Price: US$20.

Access: The Prince Edward Island Public Library Service succeeds were all other public libraries fail. Twenty-seven of our academic libraries have it in their holdings. Curiously, a third are found in Alberta.

Loads of copies being offered online at prices ranging from US$5 to US$564. Ignorance and greed aside, there is no reason for the wide range. Anyone looking to invest in a copy is warned that the Harper edition went through numerous printings, and was followed by a cheaply produced Grosset & Dunlap reissue. Those considering the later are warned that it features only one of the eight plates.

Speaking of ignorance and greed, print on demand vultures have been all over The Wild Olive. This post gives me an excuse to share an absurd old cover (right) from defunct Tutis Classics.

Good news is found in the fact that The Wild Olive can be read and downloaded here at the Internet Archive. I must add that an excellent audiobook recording read by Simon Evers is available gratis here through Librivox. Recommended!

Related posts:

Not Very Occult
RMS Empress of Ireland: 100 Years

Read This. Don't Get It Wet.

The Fraser Institute

811 Dorchester St, Montreal, Quebec

Related post:

Pierre Trudeau's Letter to the Children of Troy

Small-town Boy Makes Good, Founds Small Town

Jean Rivard

Antoine Gérin-Lajoie [trans. Vida Bruce]

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977

280 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Related post:

About Those Ugly NCL Covers

'A Tribute to St. Mary's [sic], Ontario'

Dawn on the River Thames, St Marys, Ontario (detail)
Anyès Kadowaki Busby
2016

This month marks the eighth anniversary of our move from downtown Vancouver to the picturesque town of St Marys, Ontario. As a young Montrealer longing to live in Manhattan I would've been horrified. In my thirty-second year, when my wife and I moved west to Vancouver, I complained that the city was too small. And yet here we are, living in community that isn't an eighth the size of my alma mater.

I wouldn't have it any other way. The Montreal I love seems increasingly foreign. The city will always be my true home, but it's becoming difficult to negotiate. Visits, which aren't at all infrequent, find me frustrated in looking to dine at restaurants that no longer exist and shop in stores that have long since closed. Other old haunts have been remade, remodelled and propelled out of price range.

No complaints. Montreal is the greatest city in North America.

Manhattan?

What was I thinking?

That said, St Marys has a growing place in my heart. It's here we've made a home for ourselves – in a large Victorian Italianate, overlooking the Canadian Thames, dwarfed by the town's Presbyterian Church.

I'm not the first Quebecer to fall for this small town. In the nineteenth century, Megantic's foremost Son of Temperance, Archibald McKillop, recognized "beautiful St. Mary's [sic]" in his "A Tribute to St Mary's [sic], Ontario".

"Such scenery nowhere is / For many leagues around", writes the poet.

Now consider this: Archibald McKillop was blind.

Such is St Marys' beauty!

The poem in its entirety follows.

A TRIBUTE TO ST. MARY’S, ONTARIO

                           Where beautiful St. Mary’s
                                Lies nestling ’mongst the hills,
                           The pleasing prospect rare is,
                                Its grandeur me enthrills. 

                           From flow’ry gardens nigh me
                                The balmy breezes blow;
                           The classic Thames runs by me
                                With peaceful, gentle flow. 

                           What kindly, friendly greetings
                                Have cheered me on its shore;
                           And O! such temperance meetings
                                I’ve never seen before. 

                           Good Affleck, Pierce and Manning,
                                Carswell and Watson too,
                           With famous Ross were planning
                                What temperance men should do. 

                           (For here, in Grand Division,
                                The Sons of Temperance met,
                           To work for Prohibition,
                                The law that we must get.) 

                           Thou town of peerless beauty;
                                 Ye friends so kind to me;
                           It is my pleasant duty
                                 To sing this eulogy. 

                           Such scenery nowhere is
                                 For many leagues around;
                           And in this fair St. Mary’s
                                 Let peace and wealth abound.

Collected Verse
Archibald McKillop
Winnipeg: [n.p.], [c. 1913]

Related posts:

Local Poet!

Temperance Verse for New Year's Day

Gay on Sunday: The Temperance Poems

Tour de Force Reawakens!

Word comes from Canadian Notes & Queries headquarters that my column about Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton's Tour de Force trivia game is now available online. You can read it – gratis – here.

But wait, there's more! This evening at The Walton in Toronto comes the opportunity for the game's  aficionados to show their stuff.

My title as Tour de Force champion is for the taking.

A bow tie event.

Related post:

Passing Go With Canadian Notes & Queries

The Busiest Man in England Lays Down His Pen

Hilda Wade: A Woman With Tenacity of Purpose

Grant Allen [and Arthur Conan Doyle]

New York: Putnam, 1900

383 pages

This review, revised and rewritten, now appears in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

A Poet's Angry Word With the Fenian Botherhood

Angry verse on this 148th anniversary of Thomas D'Arcy McGee's assassination found in Evan MacColl's Poems and Songs (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1883).

A WORD WITH THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD 

(Suggested by the assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, in 1868) 

            "The Fenian Brotherhood "! the phrase sounds well,
            But what's your right to such a title, tell?
            Strangers alike to honour, truth, and shame—
            Conspirators to aim at Fenian fame!
            If truly sang the bard of Selma old,
            The Fenian race were of no cut-throat mould;
            Though sometimes they in Erin loved to roam,
            A land more north was their heroic home;
            The "Cothrom Féine," was their pride and boast;
            Of all base things they scorned a braggart most;
            Besides 'twas not a custom in their day,
            Assassin-like, one's victim to way-lay
            And shoot unseen contented if, cash down,
            The price of blood were only half-a crown!
            Fenians, indeed! all true men of that race
            Fraternity with you would deem disgrace;
            Fenians, forsooth! renounce that honour'd name;
            "Thugs" would more fitly suit your claim to fame! 

            Poor souls, I pity your demented state;
            You will be vicious if you can't be great.
            Better for Erin any fate would be,
            Than to be ruled by bedlamites like ye:
            The war of the Kilkenny cats renewed,
            She'd find, I think, a very doubtful good.
            O wondrous-valiant, treason-hatching crew,
            If words were deeds, what great things might ye do?
            Ye, who have left your country for her good—
            Ye talk of righting all her wrongs in blood!
            'Tis laughable — the more so, that we feel
            Your necks were made for hemp, and not for steel.
            At Britain's lion you may spare your howls,—
            That noble beast is never scared by owls;
            Tis well for you, with all your vapouring frantic,
            You have 'tween him and you the broad Atlantic. 

            Let no one think that he who now cries shame
            On your misdeeds, your Celtic blood would blame;
            A Celt himself, his great grief is to see
            The land that nursed you cursed by such as ye.
            So bright the record of her better days—
            So much to love she still to us displays—
            So rich her heritage of wit and song—
            So warm her heart, so eloquent her tongue,
            He honours Erin. 'Tis to fools like you
            Alone the tribute of his scorn is due. 

            Union is strength. Joy to the nations three
            As now united! May they ever be
            The first and foremost in fair freedom's van—
            An empire built upon the Shamrock plan—
            A seeming THREE and yet a perfect ONE.

Related posts:

'O Martyr'd McGee!'

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

D'Arcy McGee, All Compliment to Thee

'Death of D'Arcy McGee'

'IN MEMORIAM! The Hon. T.D. McGee'

Remembering Edith Eaton and D'Arcy McGee

'Erin's Address to the Hon. Thomas D'Arcy McGee'

Passing Go with Canadian Notes & Queries

Ce soir à Windsor, the launch of Canadian Notes & Queries #95. "The Games Issue", it features contributions by Tobias Carroll, Vincent Colistro, Daniel Donaldson, Emily Donaldson, Stacey May Fowles, Alex Good, Spencer Gordon, Kasper Hartman, David Mason, Maurice Mierau, Grant Munroe, David Nickel, Alexandra Oliver, Mark Sampson, Robert Earl Stewart and Kaitlin Tremblay, enveloped in a wrap-around cover by Seth.

This time out my Dusty Bookcase column deals with Tour de Force, a 1984 trivia game that kinda, sorta came about through the efforts of bestselling author pals Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton.

Quelle désastre!

Hot on the heels of Trivial Pursuit, Tour de Force was meant to be the next big Canadian board game. There was a French language edition and the announcement of a UK version that would have borne David Frost's name. In the end, it went nowhere. I'm sure that the $30 price tag ($65 in 2016 dollars) had something to do with its failure. Other reasons are covered in my piece.

This evening will find me onstage with Grant Munroe, Robert Earl Stewart, editor Emily Donaldson and publisher Dan Wells, It'll be up to me to defend Tour de Force as they promote pinball, Civilization and professional wrestling. A pleasant evening might be had in reading Templeton's The Kidnapping of the President or the erotica of Pierre Berton. but it will not be nearly so enjoyable. I will be testing audience members with Tour de Force questions cards.

Consider this:

The brave and the bold are encouraged to meet the Tour de Force challenge at Biblioasis,1520 Wyandotte Street East, Windsor. The evening commences at 7:00pm, which should give attendees plenty of time to brush up on their trivia. Berton and Templeton fans hold no advantage.

Cocking in Bed

The House in Brook Street
Ronald Cocking
London: Hurst & Blackett [1949]

Wives who wish their husbands to fall asleep at a reasonable hour should not allow them to take this title to bed; it is one of the 'to be read at a sitting' variety, and liable to bring about marital crisis.

– Bruce Graeme, jacket copy for The House in Brook Street

Started in bed, moved to an armchair and ended up on the living room couch. I fell asleep several times. All in all it was very disappointing. I'm ashamed to say I paid for it.

My third Cocking, The House in Brook Street opens at Washington's Hotel Statler on the evening of V-J Day. Our hero and narrator, Inspector George Crawley of Scotland Yard, emerges from an elevator; that it isn't referred to as a "lift" is the novel's first and greatest surprise. George has been in the United States for three years, on loan to the FBI in its battle against wartime counterfeiting and the illegal transfer of bonds. Over a celebratory drink, G-Man pal Barney asks about future plans.

          "What'll you do now? Go back to England, I suppose?"
          "I suppose."

George isn't what you'd call a man of action, which may explain why he's never responded to G-Gal Norma Jean Travers' flirtations. A week after V-J Day she tries one last time, sitting on the corner of his desk, "one nylon leg crossed over the other," before giving up and seeing George off on the train that will take him to New York, the Queen Mary and, eventually, dear old London.

Aboard train, a beautiful blonde named Brenda Walsh asks to share his private compartment. He watches as she fiddles with her purse, and then their coffee cups. "I began to feel nervous," reports George. The coffee tastes bitter. His final thought before losing consciousness: "I had fallen for the oldest trick in the world."

George is revived by a porter – "My, my sah! You sho' do sleep heavy!" – to find that the compartment has been ransacked. Though he recognizes that someone at the Bureau has leaked his itinerary, George proceeds as planned, checking into the hotel at which he has a reservation.

Wouldn't want to lose that deposit.

George sees that he's being trailed by a cream-coloured 1942 Chrysler, but that doesn't prevent him from stopping in on his pal Lou Rogers, a captain in the NYPD. Lou reminds George that he promised to give him a glossy of Scotland Yard. After that, it's off to a penthouse overlooking Central Park, where Jacob B. Rand – "The Rand! Rand's First National Bank of New York!" – thanks him for catching a counterfeiter, then drones on about his enthusiasm for something called the Society of the Friends of Peace. Rand sends George back to the hotel in a cream-coloured 1942 Chrysler, something our hero dismisses as an "odd coincidence." His room has been ransacked.

The next day, aboard the Queen Mary, George picks up a newspaper and reads this:

"That's what you have to get used to in America", George tells us. "Anything can happen there – and usually does."

It was at this point that I lost what little faith I had left in George. Nothing that followed caused me to reconsider –  not even Scotland Yard's remarkable belief in their man.

Back in London, George is promoted to Chief Inspector and entrusted with security for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, scheduled to take place – as it did – on 10 January 1946 in London. Barney and Norma Jean arrive in town to ensure the safety of the American delegates. Good thing, too, because their English friend proves himself entirely inept. Twice he's lured to meet strangers who offer undisclosed information, twice he's warned that the meeting is suspicious, and twice he's ambushed. His worst beating comes after Brenda Walsh, the very same woman who slipped the Mickey Finn on the Washington-New York train, asks to meet him in Place Pigalle:

"The Place Piguelle!" I said."That's a hell of a place to meet anybody."
     "I know," she said, "but we've got go to a house near there. I'll explain when I meet you."
     "All right," I said. "I'll take your word for it. See you at eight."

After that particular ambush, George forgets to retrieve the gun that was knocked from his hand.

Cocking forgets, too.

The author's debut, The House in Brook Street is set in an odd world in which a policeman specializing in counterfeiting and financial fraud is tasked with ensuring the safety of hundreds of the world's most important politicians, ambassadors and bureaucrats. George has no staff and meets with no one other than Barney and Norma Jean. He never visits Central Hall Westminster, at which the General Assembly is to take place.

At some point, George is reassigned. We don't know when exactly – he keeps it from us for a while – but I'm willing to accept his story. It seems that banker Jacob B. Rand and his Society of the Friends of Peace friends are up to something, and because George has met Rand... well, who better to figure things out? No one knows just what Rand and the SFP have in mind except that it's being cooked up in the Society's house on... er, in Brook Street, and will take place on the very day the General Assembly is to convene. Sadly, George proves himself to be just as ineffective as ever. Frustrating as it is for the reader, it does include this pretty great passage:

I once read in a book that one of the chief requirements of a novel was that it should have Dramatic Unity. Well, I suppose that in a piece of fiction you can organize things so that the action is smooth-flowing and that the bits and pieces all fuse together in a nice, complete whole.
     My trouble is that I've got to set the facts down just as they happened (and anyway I'm a policeman, not a writer). So I've got to ruin the Dramatic Unity of the story by skipping three weeks or so. Why? Well, simply because the whole case came to a complete standstill.

A serious alcoholic, Barney is of no help. Norma Jean spends all her time cooking for the men, making pots of coffee and changing outfits. As the day of the General Assembly draws near, the trio are kidnapped by Rand. For no good reason, the banker tells them all about his plans for murdering foreign delegates. A forged document will convince the world that the orders came from Downing Street. World War Three will begin with a new Axis led by "fanatical Nazis in hiding in the Bavarian Alps."

That's Rand's plan, anyway.

Convinced that they have no hope of escape, George, Barney and Norma Jean while away the hours playing cards until, quite by chance, they're rescued. 

Really. That's what happens. I didn't dream it.

Favourite sentence:

It was so obvious that the only excuse which I can make for not seeing it before is that I had a lot of things on my mind.

Trivia: The House in Brook Street follows Jane Layhew's Rx for Murder as the second novel read in five months to feature "nigger in the woodpile", an expression I swear I'd never before encountered.

The novel's lone black character is the  railway porter mentioned above. A helpful soul, the last we see him is when Crawley's train arrives in New York:

"We is pullin' out ob dis bay in two minutes, sah." He was looking at me curiously.
     I looked around. Miraculously, my bags were packed and ready.
     "That's fine," I said, "thanks a lot." I gave him five dollars and his shining black face split in a huge grin.

Object and Access: A compact 224 pages in rose-coloured boards. The cover illustration is uncredited. Excited by the opening scenes of Cocking's Die With Me, Lady, in 2012 I purchased my copy for £35 from a bookseller in Winterton, Lincolnshire. The pages were uncut.

The rear flap announces Cocking's second novel, High Tide is at Midnight (1950), which I read and reviewed here two years ago. In turn, the High Tide is at Midnight dust jacket reports that The House in Brook Street has enjoyed three printings. Surprising. I see just one copy of The House in Brook Street being offered for sale online. The UK bookseller provides this description: "Book Condition: Acceptable. Foxing/tanning to edges and/or ends. No dust jacket. Pages tanned. Staining/marking to cover. Staining/marking to pages/page edges. Wear/marking to cover." Price: £74.57.

It's not worth considering.

Not a trace in Canadian libraries, I'm afraid. American cousins will find one lonely copy at Boston University. My English cousins are served by Oxford University and the British Library.

Related posts:

Cocking on the Beach

The Lonely Patience of Kevin Marlow

Dope Rings in Canada! Oh My!

'Easter Dawn' by Jean Blewett

Jean Blewett's Poems

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922

Related posts:

'The Easter Parade, 1915' by Robert Stanley Weir

Uncollected Easter Verse by Arthur Stringer

'Communion Pascale' de Émile Nelligan

Desperately Seeking Violet

Do Evil in Return
Margaret Millar
New York: Dell [1951]

Two men are in love with Charlotte Keating. It's easy to see why. Beautiful, intelligent, confident and caring, Charlotte is the complete package. She has her own medical practice and just last year bought an expansive house complete with sweeping city and harbour views of Salinda, California. Gossipy Nurse Schiller doesn't think much of Dr Keating's after-hours attire – picture hats, sheer dresses and high-heeled pumps – but that's just jealousy speaking.

The real black mark against Charlotte is found in the form of married lawyer Lewis Ballard. You can't quite accuse them of running around; they're far too discrete. They spend most of their time together at Charlotte's house. He parks himself in a large leather chair as she stands staring out her large living room picture window at the lights below. The bedroom doesn't come into play. One year in, they've yet to consummate their relationship.

Sex enters the novel on the first page when young Violet O'Gorman arrives at Charlotte's practice. Four months pregnant by a man who is not her estranged brute of a husband, she's desperate and lays it all out on the line:

"I – oh, doctor, please. You've got to help me."
     "I'm sorry I can't, not in the way you mean."
     The girl let out a cry of despair. "I thought – I thought being you was a woman like me – being you –"
     "I'm sorry," Charlotte said again.
     "What can I do? What can I do with this – this thing growing inside of me, growing and growing, and me with no money and no job and no husband. Oh, God, I wish I was dead!" She struck her thighs with both fists. "I'll kill myself!"
     "You can't, Violet. Stop now and be sensible."

Words of a woman who by all appearances has always had it together to a woman whose life is in chaos. It's an interesting part of the novel in that there is a subtle implication that Charlotte does indeed perform abortions, but is trying to be cautious. The first mystery here is just how Violet, a girl from Ashley, Oregon, ended up in her Southern California office. Charlotte is trying to get at the answer when Lewis phones and Violet bolts.

Charlotte isn't really so concerned about the mystery as she is about Violet; her evening with Lewis is ruined as a result. After he returns home to his wife, she visits the address Violet gave Nurse Schiller to find the girl missing. Step-uncle Clarence Voss tells Charlotte that his niece must've gone to a movie or something. It's all very suspicious.

Violet's body is washed ashore the next day. Lieutenant Easter, the detective assigned to the case, tells Charlotte that the girl was a suicide, though you never quite feel he believes it.

This reader didn't believe it. I was certain Violet didn't kill herself if only because I knew that Do Evil in Return followed Experiment in Springtime (1947), It's All in the Family (1948) and The Cannibal Heart (1949), marking Millar's return to writing mysteries.

You'd think she'd never been away. Do Evil in Return ranks amongst Millar's best novels, which is to say that it is just a hair's breath above the average Millar novel. She was that consistent. Scenes stay, as do the characters. It says much about her talent that one of the most fully drawn examples of the latter is an inessential figure we meet just twice: Roy H. Coombs, a pudgy motel manager who finds escape in reading romance comic books of the sort aimed at teenage girls.

On the subject of romance, Lieutenant Easter follows Lewis as the second man to fall for Charlotte. His aggressive pursuit of the doctor would be deemed inappropriate and unprofessional today.

Times change.

For the life of me, I couldn't understand how it was that so attractive a woman as Charlotte hadn't been able to find a mate. My wife suggests that the post-war male might have found her intelligence, her confidence and her independence intimidating.

Times change.

Poor Violet.

Object: A 192-page classic Dell, complete with map back. The cover is by Bill Fleming, the artist who will always be remembered for this:

I'm not sure what to think of his illustration for Do Evil in Return. Does it not look like poor Violet has a beard?

Access: Only eight of our university libraries hold copies. Library and Archives Canada also has one, as does the public library in Kitchener, the author's hometown.

Do Evil in Return was first published by Random House in 1950, with paperbacks from Dell, Lancer and Avon following. Paired with my favourite Margaret Millar novel, An Air That Kills, it was last published ten years ago by Stark House. Syndicate Books is rereleasing Do Evil in Return as an ebook next month.

As with most Millars, Do Evil in Return has enjoyed a number of translations: French (Rendons le mal pour le mal), German (Wie du mir), Italian (Inganno per quattro), Spanish (Pagarás con maldad), Finnish (Pahan valta) and Japanese (悪意の糸). Google translates the Polish title, Pięknym za nadobne as Tit for Tat.

Related post:

Margaret Millar and the Air Up North

The Paper Version (for Robert W. Chambers fans)

Every so often I'm asked about the difference between this blog and my Dusty Bookcase column in Canadian Notes & Queries. The answer is that I save all the really good stuff for the magazine.

I kid.

In truth, the CNQ pieces are longer and generally focus on books about which I'm particularly passionate. Case in point, last summer's column on Arthur Stringer's 1921 roman à clef The Wine of Life. The tragic love story shared by the author Owen Storrow and wife Jobyna Howland Torrie Thorssel, I've come to think of it as the most depressing Canadian novel ever written.

The Pittsburgh Press, 24 October 1921
Illustration by James Montgomery Flagg

Regular readers of this blog will recognize my enduring interest in the Stringers, their good looks, Jobyna's acting career, Arthur's precognition, and the time the world thought they had died in an oil stove explosion.

Well, now you can read last summer's piece on The Wine of Life – all 1383 words – here at the newly revamped CNQ website.

Go on. You know you want to. Who doesn't want to read about a novel so horribly depressing that it will haunt your days?

Publishers Weekly, 28 May 1921

Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries – a mere $20! – are available through the website. 

Related posts:

That's Entertainment, Part II

The Sudden Violent Deaths of Arthur Stringer and His Family

(and Their Respective Resurrections)

Portraits of a Marriage: James Montgomery Flagg and Arthur Stringer's Bittersweet Wine of Life

The Most Depressing Canadian Novel of All Time?

Familiarity Breeds Content

The Measure of a Man: A Tale of the Big Woods
Norman Duncan
New York: Revell, 1911

The Measure of a Man is a novel I thought I'd never read. Here's why:

You understand, I'm sure.

But looking at the book again last week – it is quite attractive – I happened upon this second note to the reader:

Oh, I do like a roman à clef. In fact, I once wrote an entire book about them. And in that book I made sport of Duncan's protests against those who saw something of Doctor Grenfell in Doctor Luke. A touchy sort,

so irritated was the novelist that he had a note appended to future editions of Dr Luke of the Labrador warning the reader against "this growing misconception." Duncan's Dr. Grenfell's Parish (1905), published the following year, features yet another note to the reader: "Dr. Grenfell is not the hero of a certain work of fiction dealing with life on the Labrador coast. Some unhappy misunderstanding has arisen on this point. The author wishes to make it plain that 'Doctor Luke' was not drawn from Dr. Grenfell."

Got that? Mission doctor Luke is in no way modelled on Duncan's friend Grenfell, a man who for four decades travelled the Labrador coast bringing medical care and the word of God to deep sea fishermen.

Duncan is more forthright when it comes to Rev Frances E. Higgins and The Measure of a Man, allowing that "some of the incidents in this story are taken directly from his experience, and many others are founded upon certain passages in his missionary career".

There really was no way around it. Not two years earlier, Duncan had published Higgins: A Man's Christian. A slim biography of the preacher, then in the fifteenth year of his mission, it begins with hungry lumberjack "Jimmie the Beast" emerging from a saloon and robbing a bulldog of its bone. Duncan recreates the scene in The Measure of a Man to introduce hero John Fairmeadow:

A worthy dog fight. Pale Peter's bulldog was concerned, being the aggrieved party to the dispute; and the other dog, the aggressor, was Billy the Beast from the Cant-hook cutting, a surly lumber-jack, who, being at the same time drunk, savage and hungry, had seized upon the bulldog's bone, in expectation of gnawing it himself. It was a fight to be remembered, too: the growls of man and beast, the dusty, yelping scramble in the street, the howls of the spectators, the blood and snapping, and the indecent issue, wherein Billy the Beast from the Cant-hook cutting sent the bulldog yelping to cover with a broken rib, and himself, staggering out of sight, with lacerated hands, gnawed at the bone as he went.
     When the joyous excitement had somewhat subsided, John Fairmeadow, now returned from the Big Rapids trail, laid off his pack.
     "Boys," said he, "I'm looking for the worst town this side of hell. Have I got there?"
     "You're what?" Gingerbread Jenkins ejaculated.
     "I'm looking," John Fairmeadow drawled, "for the worst town this side of hell. Is this it?"
     "Swamp's End, my friend," said Gingerbread Jenkins, gravely, " is your station."

And so, Fairmeadow adopts Swamp's End as the home base from which he ventures out preaching to lumber camps.

Who can fault Duncan? That story of the drunken, hungry lumberjack fighting a dog for a bone is a good one. There are plenty of others in Higgins: A Man's Christian, like when the preacher punched out a bartender and the time he took on a man who insisted on drowning out his sermon by grinding an axe:

"Keep back, boys!" an old Irishman yelled, catching up a peavy-pole. Give the Pilot a show! Keep out o' this or I'll brain ye!"
     The Sky Pilot caught the Frenchman about the waist – flung him against a door – caught him again on the rebound – put him head foremost in a barrel of water – and absent-mindedly held him there until the old Irishman asked, softly, "Say, Pilot, ye ain't goin' t' drown him, are ye?"

Here it is again in The Measure of a Man:

"Keep back, boys!" an old Irishman screamed, catching up a peavy-pole. "Give the parson a show! Keep out o' this or I'll brain ye!"
     Fairmeadow caught his big opponent about the waist – flung him against the door (the preacher was wisely no man for half measures) – caught him on the rebound – put him head fore-most in a barrel of water and absent-mindedly held him there until the old Irishman asked, softly, "Say, parson, ye ain't goin' t' drown him, are ye?"

It's not all fisticuffs, mind. I admit to being moved by the death of young consumptive prostitute Liz:

     "Am I dyin'. Pilot?" she asked.
     "Yes, my girl," he answered.
     "Dyin' – now?"
     Higgins said again that she was dying; and little Liz was dreadfully frightened then – and began to sob for her mother with all her heart.

– Higgins: A Man's Christian 

    "Am I dyin', parson?" little Liz asked.
    "Yes, my girl."
    "Dyin'?"
    " Yes, my girl."
    "Now?" little Liz exclaimed. "Dyin' – now?"
    " Mother!" little Liz moaned. "Oh, mother!"

– The Measure of a Man

Gets me every time.

It's right to criticize Duncan's recycling, as Elizabeth Miller has, but I'm prepared to give him a pass. The incidents aren't nearly so numerous as I think I've implied – and the axe-grinding incident is the only one that didn't go through a significant rewrite.

I think Duncan is correct: it must not be inferred that Higgins "bears any invidious resemblance to John Fairmeadow." The character might share Higgins' faith, brawn and fighting skills, but his backstory is markedly different. Higgins was an uneducated Ontario farm boy who one day decided that he wanted to become a preacher; Fairmeadow is a college-graduate who found salvation after descending into drink. It's not until the mid-point of The Measure of a Man that we learn anything of our hero's life before reaching Swamp's End. The tale is told in the sixteenth chapter – "Theological Training" – which finds a younger, bleary-eyed John Fairmeadow stumbling about Manhattan's Five Points in stupid thirst:

Dim, stifling lodging-houses, ill-lit cellar drinking-places, thieves' resorts, wet saloon-bars, back alleys, garbage pails, slop-shops, pawn-brokers' wickets, the shadowy arches of the Bridge, deserted stable yards, a multitude of wrecked men, dirt, rags, blasphemy, darkness: John Fairmeadow's world had been a fantastic and ghastly confusion of these things. The world was without love: it was besotted. Faces vanished: ragged forms shuffled out of sight for the last time.

Fairmeadow has been thrown out of aptly-named Solomon's Cellar – as low as you can go – and looks about to die when he is saved by Jerry McAulay's Water Street Mission.

Lasting just twelve pages, never to be mentioned again, Fairmeadow's battle with the bottle is the most memorable thing in the novel... next to Billy the Beast's fight for the bulldog's bone, anyway. Incongruity has something to do with it, I suppose – everything else takes place in the "Big Woods" – but in these pages I couldn't help but see something of the author in Fairmeadow. An alcoholic and a Christian, Duncan casts drink as the scourge of Manhattan and Swamp's End. Barroom owners prey. A hungry man who has spent all his money on drink fights for a bone that has been gnawed by a dog.

Drink killed Duncan. In October 1916, he dropped dead on the steps of a golf course clubhouse in Fredonia, New York. The writer was forty-five. His last book, the boys' adventure Billy Topsail, M.D., sees the return of Dr Luke, complete with requisite note to the reader:

Doctor Luke has often been mistaken for Doctor Wilfred Grenfell of the Deep Sea Mission. That should not be. No incident in this book is a transcript from Doctor Grenfell's long and heroic service.

Duncan had written those words seven months earlier. With the author dead and buried, and the Christmas season approaching, publisher Revell abandoned the script:

Boys' Life, December 1916

Trivia: In 1915, several chapters were gathered, bowdlerized and published under the title Christmas Eve at Swamp's End. Illustrator unknown.

Object: An attractive hardcover in brown boards, its 356 pages are enlivened further with three plates by illustrator George Harding. I purchased my copy four years ago at Attic Books in London, Ontario. Price: $5.00. I'm not entirely certain, but I think the jacket is the oldest I own.

I've seen a variant in green boards. The design will be familiar to Duncan fans.

Access: "HARD TO FIND ORIGINAL 1911 EDITION", trumpets a Michigan bookseller. Don't you believe it; as befits the work of a popular author, The Measure of a Man had a generous print-run. Decent copies –sans jacket – are listed for as little as US$8.00 online. At US$25, the one to buy is inscribed by the author.

Found in thirty-one of our universities and the Kingston-Frontenac Public Library. It can also be downloaded and read online here, but really, don't you want that inscribed copy?