Gilbert Parker's Hollywood Ending

Being an addendum to last week's post on Gilbert Parker's The Money Master. 

Of the eighteen Gilbert Parker screen adaptations, The Money Master is the only one to be undertaken by the author himself. In his filmography, it follows closely behind Behold My Wife! (1920), a George Melford production based on the author's 1893 bestseller The Translation of a Savage.

That Behold My Wife! was Hollywood's second adaptation of the novel in seven years speaks to the author's popularity. A third adaptation followed.

But this post is about The Money Master... or not. The advertisement at the top of this post comes from an advert Paramount placed in the March 1921 edition of Motion Picture News.

Look for the asterisk.

cliquez pour agrandir

This was three months from release and still there'd been no decision as to the title. The film premiered on 26 June 1921 as A Wise Fool. Though it is preserved in the Library of Congress, I see no evidence that there has been a screening within living memory. What little I know of A Wise Fool comes through publicity shots and reviews, the former being surprisingly uncommon.

The image above, from the August 1921 edition of Exhibitors Herald, features Carmen Barbille (Alice Hollister) serenading her daughter Zoé (Ann Forrest), suggests one difference between A Wise Fool and its source; in the novel, Carmine last sees Zoé as a young girl.

Apologies for the the spoiler.

Anyone considering The Money Master as an autumn read is advised to skip the rest of this post as I'll be comparing the plots of novel and film.

The Money Maker concerns Jean Jacques Barbille, the fortunate heir to generations of wealth grown in rural Quebec. He takes some of those riches to Paris, where he is not recognized as the man of importance he believes himself to be. As noted in last week's review, his reception outside the French capitol meets expectations, though this is to do with capital (apologies, again). On his return voyage aboard the Antoine, Jean Jacques meets the beautiful Carmen Delores and her ne'er-do-well father. The two are fleeing Spain on account of papa Sebastian backing the losing side in Spain's recent civil conflict. The Antoine strikes a submerged iceberg off the shore of Gaspé. Jean Jacques is rescued by Carmen and the two marry.

Flash forward thirteen years. Jean Jacques lives at the family home, Manor Cartier in the parish of St. Saviour's, with Carmen and their little girl Zoé. A happy soul, his passion for business has come to consume and he is taking family life for granted.

No, that's unfair. Jean Jacques dotes on Zoé, who loves him so much.

But what of Carmen?

Mme Barbille has been sneaking around with master carpenter George Masson, whom M Barbille had hired to construct a flume. Once the project is completed, the lovers plan to flee the parish.

George and Carmen as imagined by illustrator André Castaigne.

Jean Jacques discovers his wife's infidelity and confronts George. He has the perfect opportunity to murder his wife's lover, but does not. 

I won't go into their exchange except to say that it is the very best part of the novel.

George jilts Carmen. Though Jean Jacques forgives his wife, she disappears, leaving her daughter behind.

We flash forward again, this time to Jean Jacques' fiftieth birthday, where he realizes that Zoé has fallen in love with Gerard Fynes:

He was English – that was a misfortune; he was an actor – that was a greater misfortune, for it suggested vagabondage of morals as well as of profession; and he was a Protestant, which was the greatest misfortune of all.

Faced with Jean Jacques' disproval, the two elope. It's now Zoé's turn to disappear. 

Jean Jacques goes into a complete tailspin. The modest growth of his inherited wealth is reversed. The decline is hastened by his thieving father-in-law, a dishonest cousin, and a fire that destroys his flour mill. Rather than declare bankruptcy or accept financial aid from the widowed Virginie Poucette, he allows creditors to move in. All Jean Jacques manages to save for himself is a bird cage that had belonged to Carmen and Zoé's pet canary. With nothing to anchor him to St Saviour's, Jean Jacques leaves for Montreal where – quite by chance – he encounters Carmen on her deathbed. In her last moments, they reconcile. Our hero then sets out for the Canadian west, where there had once been a sighting of Zoé and her husband.

Because this synopsis is taking far too long, I won't go into Jean Jacques' attempted murder of Carmen's last lover, and will instead cut to the discovery that he has a granddaughter. The Protestant actor father is dead, Zoé died shortly after childbirth, and the baby is now with a wealthy woman who'd been unable to conceive.

I won't go into their exchange except to say that it is the very worst part of the novel.

For reasons both unclear and unconvincing, Jean Jacques leaves his granddaughter, never to see her again. He marries Virginie Poucette and lives his remaining years on three hundred and twenty acres of land "near the Rockies" he'd bought for Zoé decades earlier. 

I realize that was long. In rushing through the ending I kept pace with the novel.

The comparison with A Wise Fool will be much shorter because I haven't seen it – who has? – and so rely on century-old reviews. The most detailed, found in the 3 June 1921 edition of Variety, suggests that the film followed the plot of the novel quite closely up to the point at which Jean Jacques loses his fortune. This includes a scene in which he destroys the guitar left behind by the absent Carmen.

 

James Kirkwood as Jean Jacques Barbille.

As in the novel, after losing his wife, his daughter, his livelihood, and his possessions, Jean Jacques becomes something of a wanderer, his only companion being the caged canary. 

Had Parker read McTeague?

The Variety reviewer was none too impressed, summing up all that follows in just two sentences:

 

In The Money Master, Jean Jacques comes upon Carmen in a hovel, not a nunnery. She dies within the hour. For all his years of searching, the desperate father never sees his daughter again. Zoé cannot return to him because she is dead. Her husband Gerald died a pauper. Their child is raised by a wealthy woman who refuses to let Jean Jacques so much as touch his granddaughter.

For the film, Parker cut the three deaths and the very existence of Zoé and Gerald's daughter. 

Would that we could see that film! I'm curious as to its depiction of life in rural Quebec, much praised in by American critics, and the character Virginie Poucette. Played by Californian Truly Shattuck, the Canadien isn't mentioned in so much as one review I've found.

Should be be concerned about Virginie?

Gilbert Parker knew what he was doing. As early as 1921, he recognized the Hollywood Ending.

I expect Virginie did just fine.

Related posts:

The Rise and Fall of a Peacock Philosopher
Behold the Translation of a Savage on Film!

The Rise and Fall of a Peacock Philosopher

The Money Master;
   Being the Curious History of Jean Jacques Barbille,

   His Labours, His Loves and His Ladies
Gilbert Parker

Toronto: Copp Clark, 1915
360 pages

I bought my first Gilbert Parker book at a library sale in the mid-eighties. By 1990, it was gone, though I have no idea where. My fault, of course. I'd paid it little attention because Parker himself wasn't paid much attention. His name had never once come up in university courses. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, then my bible, doesn't accord the man so much as one of its 1199 pages, despite popularity and critical acclaim (both now a century past).

I couldn't even remember which Parker I'd owned back then. What I did remember was an illustration and caption depicting a miserable man traveling to Quebec in the company of a beautiful woman who seemed intent on marriage. Imagine my surprise when in researching this recent read I came upon:

The image of the reluctant groom threw me because Parker depicts him as being extremely keen on marrying the woman in the funnel.

The fiancé, Jean Jacques Barbille, is heir to a fortune built over four generations. Having transformed these inherited riches into slightly greater riches, the Canadien has an idea to visit the land of his ancestors, where he expects to be recognized as a man of great importance. Paris disappoints, but folks in the nether regions appreciate his money and so accord deference. Satisfied, Jean Jacques sets off for home with purse depleted, comforted by the knowledge that his various endeavors, save one or two, are moderately successful. 

Whilst crossing the Atlantic aboard the good ship Antoine, Jean Jacques encounters Spanish Amazon Carmen Delores – she of the funnel – and Sebastian Delores, her father. They are on the run because papa – the sinister figure at the funnel's base – had been on the losing side of Spain's most recent power struggle. If anything, young Carmen suffered a far greater loss in that her lover Carvillho Gonzales was executed for his efforts:

Carmen had made up her mind from the first to marry Jean Jacques, and she deported herself accordingly – with modesty, circumspection and skill. It would be the easiest way out of all their difficulties. Since her heart, such as it was, fluttered, a mournful ghost, over the Place d’Armes, where her Gonzales was shot, it might better go to Jean Jacques than anyone else; for he was a man of parts, of money, and of looks, and she loved these all; and to her credit she loved his looks better than all the rest.

In short, Jean Jacques looks a lot like Carvillho Gonzales.

The Money Master is the twentieth book I've reviewed here this year. It follows James De Mille's The Cross and the Lily (1874) and Grant Allen's The Great Taboo (1890) in being the third to feature a shipwreck. Parker's takes place when the Antoine strikes an iceberg off the shore of Gaspé. Jean Jacques sees Carmen safely bestowed on a lifeboat, before giving up his spot to a crying fifteen-year-old boy. This he does, despite being not that strong a swimmer.

Fortunately, the Spanish Amazon is a strong swimmer. When her lifeboat overturns, she makes for a floating chair, and then uses that chair to save Jean Jacques from drowning.

James Cameron take note.

  

Jean Jacques and Carmen marry in the Gaspé, much to the disapproval of the gentle townspeople of St Saviour:

It was bad enough to marry the Spanische, but to marry outside one’s own parish, and so deprive that parish and its young people of the week’s gaiety, which a wedding and the consequent procession and tour through the parish brings, was little less than treason.

But what a story! The romance of it all is so great as to encourage the curious to travel as much as forty miles to catch a glimpse of the couple during Sunday mass. Carmen never corrects the presumption that she was saved by Jean Jacques and not the reverse. 

Jean Jacques Barbille is a man with "a good many irons in the fire." Given the opportunity, he'll sell you insurance and lightning rods. His inherited riches grow not by leaps and bounds, rather by unsteady steps as taken by a toddler.

He fancies himself first and foremost a philosophe. Though he never quite articulates his philosophy, Jean Jacques is quick to share that he spent a year at Université Laval. He carries with him a small volume titled Mediations on Philosophy, which he bought in Quebec before sailing for France.

Jean Jacques is an egotist and something of a dandy, all the while being a good man. He is kind, treats his workers well, forgives debts, and is generous toward the less fortunate. The man's greatest fault relates to the home. He is so taken with his reputation and many business concerns that Carmen feels neglected; this in turn results in the most interesting scenes I've read in an old novel this year...

And, you know, I've read twenty.

Carmen does not feature in the scene, though she does in the next, which is easily the second most interesting scene.

Reading The Money Master forty or so years after having first purchased a copy, I'm at a loss to explain how it is Gilbert Parker is so ignored.

Trivia: Adapted to the Hollywood screen in 1921 as A Wise Fool, the subject of the next week's post. 

Object: The first Canadian edition, it features seven illustrations by French artist André Castaigne, best known for having illustrated the first edition of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra. 'Tis a thing of beauty, purchased ten or so years ago in London, Ontario. Price: $2.50.

I'm also the proud owner of the Hutchinson's UK first edition, which I picked up in fin du millénaire Montreal for 30¢.

Sadly, it lacks its dust jacket (see below).

Access: The novel first appeared serialized in Hearst's Magazine (Aug 1913 - April 1914) and Nash's Magazine (Nov 1913 - Jul 1914).

As I write this, a Riverview, New Brunswick bookseller is offering a Very Good copy of the Copp Clark first edition at two dollars. There's no mention of a dust jacket, so I'm assuming that the bookseller believed it had none. Further west, a bookseller in Whitby, Ontario has a Canadian first with dust jacket!

The asking price is $100.

If you don't have the cash, consider the two dollar copy. It's a steal, particularly if you live nearby and can avoid shipping charges.

Before making your decision, consider Harper's American first with its unusual wrap-around jacket illustration, drawn from one of Castaigne's interior illustrations.

A bookseller in Portland, Oregon is offering this copy at US$35:

At the high end – US$350 – we have the Hutchinson UK first on offer from Babylon Revisited, a favourite bookseller. Must say that the cover illustration pales somewhat when compared to the work of Monsieur Castaigne.

Buyer beware, none of Castaigne's illustrations feature in the Hutchinson.

As always, print on demand copies are not to be considered.

Woodrow Wilson would agree.

Related post:

Acadian Driftwood
Of Cannibals and Christians
Gilbert Parker's Savage Novel
Behold the Translation of a Savage on Film!

A Red, White and Blue Baron: For Minnie's Sake

The American Baron

James De Mille
New York: Harper & Bros, 1872
144 pages

Of all the novels I've read this past year – perhaps the past fifteen years – no line of dialogue has made me laugh so much as this:

That's what they all do, you know, when they save your life. Always! It's awful!"

The speaker, Minnie Fay, has come all a fluster to her older sister, the young widow Mrs Willoughby, with news of a marriage proposal from Count Girasole. To this early point in the novel, the nobleman has been depicted as a great hero. In the second chapter, he rescued Minnie from certain death after an avalanche swept her petite form into a deep gorge in the Italian Alps.

Mrs Willoughby – "Kitty" to her family – is taken somewhat aback by the news. She'd noticed the count's interest in Minnie, and so had taken care to keep them apart. It seems her efforts have only been so successful. Says Minnie:

"This dreadful man – the Count, you know – has some wonderful way of finding out where I go; and he keeps all the time appearing and disappearing in the very strangest manner."

Kitty does her best to reassure. If the the count can't be shaken, they'll simply return home to England. It's at this point that Minnie reveals her reason for coming to Italy in the first place. Count Girasole is not the first to save her life. There is another man!

Not only another man, but at least one more! At this point in her young life Minnie has been rescued from certain death on no less than three occasions by no less than three different men. Each was a stranger before the rescue, but all proposed shortly after.

Kitty, by which I mean Mrs Willoughby, hardly knows what to make of it all.

The head spins, all fades to grey, then opens on two gentlemen, Scone Dacres and Lord Hawbury, who are sharing drinks and stories in a Naples apartment. The former has a tale to tell about the day's adventure. He'd rescued a young woman, an "angel child," from certain death at Mount Vesuvius. Now, he wants to marry her. Hawbury understands fully, he was similarly smitten after having once saved a woman from a forest fire whilst hunting outside Ottawa.

Minnie Fay is the young woman Dacres rescued, suggesting that he is the fourth man to have done so.

Given her history, I'm betting there are there are others.

By great coincidence, the woman Lord Hawbury rescued in Canada is Miss Ethel Orne, who happens to be Minnie's cousin. He would like to marry her, but has no idea as to her whereabouts. Lord Hawbury himself was once rescued from Indian captivity by an American named Rufus K. Gunn.

There is no suggestion that Rufus K. Gunn wants to marry Lord Hawbury.

We're now well into the novel, and still the titular character has not been revealed. His identity is made known on the the 58th of its double-columned 132 pages. I'm sharing the 59th because it features an illustration.

The American Baron is, of course, a Victorian novel. One expects great coincidences, but not humour of the sort that might resonate today. It brought laughter from beginning to end, most of which was almost certainly intentional.

Rufus K. Gunn is the American baron. He'd rescued Minnie from a shipwreck in the waters of the St Lawrence. A Haliburtan Yankee in nearly every way, he's brash, loud, aggressive, brave, and a bit of an idiot.

Rufus K. Gunn believes he is Minnie's fiance for no other reason than she's accepted his proposal. But then the same could be said about the Englishman and Count Girasole. Much as he would like, Scone Dacres cannot propose because he has a secret so dark that he has hidden it from his friend Hawbury:

Ten years earlier, a young man just out of Oxford, Dacres met a young woman on a steamer. Her name was Arethusia Wiggins. Her father was a genial gent. Dacres and Arethusia married in South America, honeymooned in Switzerland, then settled in his family home where things soon went sour.

That's gotta hurt.

The couple split. Under the terms of separation, Arethusia received £20,000 (roughly £1,960,000 today), and was obliged to adopt another surname so as not to disgrace the Dacres family. The name she chose is Willoughby.

Mystery arises when Dacres catches sight of Minnie's sister, Mrs Willoughby.

Mrs Willoughby!

Dacres, who doesn't even know her name, is certain that she is his estranged wife. None of this makes any sense. How is it that she does not recognize him? The widow Willoughby's background is nothing like that of Arethusia Wiggins. A right proper lady, she seems the very opposite of a bigamist. Surely, she can't be Arethusia, can she?

There's action and adventure in this novel – Minnie's rescue from the avalanche is only the beginning – but Dacres' delusion is more interesting.

The novel reminds me of nothing so much as fellow Canadian Grant Allen's 1886 novel For Mamie's Sake as a satirical novel centred on a young woman whose innocence and ignorance causes havoc. I'm more partial to the latter because it features assassination by exploding cigar. But if romantic adventure with the threat of brigands is your thing, The American Baron is the novel for you!

Bloomer:

"Sconey, allow me to inform you that I've always considered you a most infernally handsome man; and what's more, my opinion is worth something, by Jove!"

   Hereupon Hawbury stretched his head and shoulders back, and pulled away with each hand at his long yellow pendent whiskers. Then he yawned. And then he slowly ejaculated,

   "By Jove!"

Object: A slim volume bound in dark green boards with gilt lettering. The novel is fine print in double columns with 45 illustrations by William L. Shepard, this being my favourite:

The novel itself is followed by twelve pages of adverts for other Harper titles. I purchased my first edition copy six years ago as part of a lot. It set me back a half-dollar.

Access: The American Baron novel made its debut in the pages of Harper's (February - December 1871). The book is not at all common, though first editions are cheap. A New Jersey bookseller is offering a Very Good copy at US$50.

You will not regret the purchase.

The American Baron can be read online – here – thanks to the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive.

Related posts:

Susanna Moodie's Bloomers
Grant Allen's Wicked Novel

Murder at Expo 67: A Complete Mystery Novel?

A short follow-up to last week's post on Janet Gregory Vermandel's

So Long at the Fair.

So Long at the Fair, Janet Gregory Vermandel's debut novel, made its own debut as "Murder at Expo 67" in the October 1967 issue of Cosmopolitan. "A Complete, Stunning Mystery Novel" says the cover, a claim that is more or less repeated in the magazine itself. But look carefully at the bottom of the page. 

Did you catch it?

cliquez pour agrandir

"Murder at Expo 67" is "from" So Long at the Fair in much the same way the American version of XTC's English Settlement is "from" the British. Nowhere near complete, at roughly 33,000 words, it's not sixty percent the length of So Long at the Fair. 

Skimming "Murder at Expo 67," I missed most of the cuts, which only made me more curious as to how it was done. Long-suffering readers are all too aware that abridgements and bowdlerizations are something of an obsession of mine. Marshall Saunders, Arthur Stringer, R.T.M. Scott, Margaret Millar, Dan Keller, Joan Walker, Max Brathwaite, and Ezra Levant... I do go on, I know, and so will limit myself to five pages, the first being the beginning as published by Dodd, Mead:

There's not a lot to see here, but I find it interesting in that the first sentence is different: "Goodbye Brian" in Cosmo, is "Good-by, Brian" in So Long at the Fair.

Personally, I'm more accustomed to "Good-bye, Brian."

So Long at the Fair is more liberal in its use of commas, though I don't imagine that this would've had much effect on the Cosmo layout. The most notable difference between the two texts occurs about a third of the way through the novel, where heroine and narrator Lisa accepts a ride from a excitable aluminium foil salesman named Patrick Goulet:

again, cliquez pour agrandir

An awkward, unnecessary information dump, this is So Long at the Fair at it's very worst. Small wonder that the bulk didn't make it into the pages of Cosmo. I see this is a good thing. Goulet's fanaticism might've been  be a turn-off to anyone considering a visit in the fair's final month.

An Expo fanatic myself, it was the promise of the fair that led to me purchase So Long at the Fair. Though I was disappointed in that it takes place three months before the the gates opened, there were things that held my interest, like this description of the disruption caused by its construction. 

and again

The Administration and News Pavilion and its staff seem right out of Mad Men.

The "Z-shaped" Administration and News Pavilion, now home to the Port of Montreal
October 2020

It swung.

Fifty-seven years later, Montreal is swinging still.

Trivia I: To put it politely, "Murder at Expo 67" is a misleading title. The plot features two murder victims, both women. The body of the first is found on a golf course north of the city. There is no reason to suspect that the murder took place at the Expo 67 site. The second body is found at the scene of the murder, a motel on Upper Lachine Road.   

Trivia II: The Cosmo illustration is by the great Bob Peak. It's in keeping with the American, German, and Dutch book covers to come in that it features a scene that does not appear in the novel.

Related posts:

An Expo 67 Murder Mystery?
Beautiful Joe: Now with 30% Less Violence!
Arthur Stringer Unshackled (then bowdlerized)
That Old Black Magician
Margaret Millar Simplified and Spoiled
Montreal Noir, Toronto Noir, and the Road Between
The Incomplete Repent at Leisure
Condensed Canlit
Ezra Levant and the Crude Art of Bowdlerization

An Expo 67 Murder Mystery?

So Long at the Fair

Janet Gregory Vermandel

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1968

186 pages

Canadian publishers really messed up with Expo 67; McClelland & Stewart, Macmillan, Ryerson, and Copp Clarke published nothing related to the fair. Swan, so small a paperback house that it is pretty much forgotten today, sought to cash in with Instant French, its penultimate title.

Meanwhile, newspapers, magazines, and news agents seized the opportunity by publishing guides to the fair. MacLean-Hunter's official guide is by far the most common, followed by Bill Bantey's Expo 67, published by the Montreal Gazette.

American book publishers were far more savvy, giving us a memoir (Expo Summer), a work of pornography (Sexpo '69), and this novel of suspense.

So Long at the Fair was Janet Gregory Vermandel's debut. She shares something with memoirist Eileen Fitzgerald and pornographer Charles E. Fritch in being American. That she actually lived in Montreal sets her apart. The publisher's author bio (right) is one of the most unusual I've ever read.

I like it.

Vermande would go on to write five more novels, most of which were set in Montreal. She eventually returned to the United States and her home town of Buffalo, dying in 2002 at age 79, another victim of Alzheimer's.

The first sentence of So Long at the Fair shook me cold:

"Good-by, Brian."

Brian is narrator Lisa Bentham's ex-fiancé. They'd worked together at a Buffalo advertising agency until office gossip of his affair with a lithe, blonde co-worker reached her ears. Seems everyone knew but her. So Long at the Fair begins with Lisa, all of twenty-two, flying off to Montreal for a fresh start. 

Why Montreal?

Lisa preferred Paris or New York, but her mother did not approve. Montreal was a neat compromise. Mrs Bentham insists that her daughter room with Victoria Lester, niece to a bridge partner, until she finds her footing. And so, Lisa's journey from Buffalo to Montreal ends with a walk through a polished marble lobby lit by crystal chandeliers.

Victoria's apartment is luxurious and spacious – more than enough room for a guest – which is surprising for a woman who does occasional work at a temp agency. She and Lisa have known each other since childhood, but were never quite friends. After some awkwardness, they spend the evening catching up. The next morning Victoria heads off to work, leaving her guest alone to explore a foreign city.

Lisa returns in late afternoon to an empty apartment, waits for Victoria, gives up, makes herself an omelette, and then turns in. She's awoken after midnight by the sound of someone moving about the apartment. When she calls out Victoria's name all goes quiet.

It's not her.

Lisa next sees Victoria at the city morgue.

Maybe New York wasn't such a bad idea, Mrs Bentham.

So Long at the Fair features two murders, an attempted murder, an assault, break-ins, extortion, and various other crimes committed by seven different characters, not all of whom are connected – and yet, Montreal comes off rather well. Vermandel, clearly loved her adopted city, and has her heroine share the love by treating her to evenings out at Altitude 737, La Bonne Femme, and La Reserve in the Windsor Hotel. The Buffalo gal makes her way with surprising ease. Jobs are plentiful. The afternoon Lisa quits her first job, with printer Ross-Fairchild, she's hired as a secretary at the Expo 67 Administration and News Pavilion.

Publisher Dodd, Mead positioned So Long at the Fair as a "story of murder and romance, set against the fabulous background of Montreal's Expo '67." Certainly "background" – as opposed to "backdrop" – was intentional. The novel takes place in January 1967, ending with the fair still three months away. Set during the planning of Expo, it's to Vermandel's credit that she captures something of the excitement that until now I'd read about only in old newspaper and magazines.

Leave it to an American expat.

Trivia: As "Murder at Expo 67," a condensed version appeared in the October 1967 issue of Cosmopolitan (the subject of next week's post). 

Object: A typical Red Badge Mystery in that it is a cheaply produced hardcover. In this case, the boards are blue. The jacket is by Alan Peckolick, best-known for the GM logo.

I purchased my copy earlier this year from a bookseller located in League City, Texas. Price: US11.75.

Access: A few copies are listed online. At US$7.41, the least expensive is described as being in good condition. Seems a bargain.

The most expensive – £31 – is the UK edition published in 1968 by Herbert Jenkins as Murder Most Fair. 

Not sure about the title, but I do prefer its cover to the American.

There has never been a Canadian edition.

There have been two translations, the earliest being the German Kastanien aus dem Feuer (1968), which was followed by the Dutch Het rode paspoort (1969).

Neither cover depicts a scene found in the novel. Of the two, I like Het rode paspoort more, but only because it imagines a Montreal that has never existed.

Sadly, there has never been a French translation.

What is wrong with us?

Related posts:

Summer of a Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

A McGill Student's Mild Summer of Love

The Little People of Expo 67

A Mid-Century Modern Country House Mystery

Harsh Evidence
Pamela Fry

London: Wingate, 1953

172 pages

Because this is a Canadian country house mystery, the house isn't terribly old and servants not so numerous. Rocky Crest is located on a private island in a lake somewhere in Northern Ontario. Belonging to wealthy Toronto businessman J.H. Charleston, it is a two-storey mid-century modern, complete with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows and – here I assume – Danish furniture.

J.H. has invited employees and their spouses for a relaxing weekend, though no one is at all relaxed. Guests include:

• Randy Matthews, the top copywriter with Charleston & Synge Advertising. He's here with wife Ann, who worries that his time at the company is limited.
• Iris Martin, dress designer, owns a Bloor Street shop in which J.H. has chosen to invest. She is the latest in in Randy's "long string of entanglements."
• Peter Fairweather, a commercial artist working within the Charleston business empire, has brought his wife Lois, "a small, bird-like woman in her mid-thirties."
• Gordon Goodman, an accounts executive with Charleston & Co is also present, with his wife, "that silly Marion," in tow.

And then there's protagonist Beth Manley. The daughter of a "Toronto University" professor who died far too young, she's the editor of Glitter, J.H.'s latest and most ambitious publishing venture. Unlike the others, this is her first visit to Rocky Crest. Very much outside her element, she's found a friend in Ann, who warns against "Charlestonitis":

"New arrivals to Rocky Crest are particularly susceptible. First symptoms are a dampness in the palms and an irresistible urge to say 'Yes' every time J.H. opens his mouth."

A cautious soul who is very much outside her comfort zone, Beth is made more tense upon learning that her former lover, journalist Paul Manning, is due to arrive.

She awaits Paul's arrival, just was the reader awaits the discovery of the dead body described in the italicized first paragraph: 

In time she would be found—but not yet. The shock and terror of her discovery were still to come. Now she floated peacefully at the edge of the island, the spreading web of blonde hair framing her clear, pale face, the wet green silk of her dress clinging to breast and thigh. Her ballerina slippers were gone—it had been easy for the water to pull them away. And as the small waves lapped her cheeks, her head moved as though she turned it in her sleep. But she was not sleeping.

It's Beth who finds the body. She'd given liquor to steady herself as things begin spinning out of control.

De döda talar ej [Harsh Evidence]
1956

Harris, Charleston's handyman, fishes the lady from the lake. He takes the body to the toolshed, which everyone somehow agrees is appropriate, and then sets out for the mainland and the police. His departure is followed by a sudden storm, leading all to wonder if he'll be coming back at all.

But, look, a boat!

It's not Harris, nor the police, rather late arrival Paul:

Marion flung herself upon him.
   "Paul, darling! We're so glad to see you! We've had the most dreadful time!

Harsh Evidence may be a Canadian country house mystery, but the characters speak like proper Brits.

Marion's slobbering excitement at Paul's arrival is tempered somewhat by J.H., who tells the journalist about the drowned woman. No sooner has his story ended than Marion stumbles upon a heart-shaped locket in the grass. It would appear to have fallen while Harris was carrying the body to the toolshed. Paul inspects it and turns a whiter shade of pale:

"I think she was my wife." 

Turns out he's right.

Beth had no idea that Paul was once wed. When the two are alone, he relates a sad, sordid story of love and betrayal... and then it's off to dress for dinner!

The women go all out. Ann dons on a white dinner dress that possesses "a rakish charm," Lois engulfs herself in yards of grey velvet topped by a little pearl cap, and Iris has "poured herself into a strapless dress which appeared to be made of black sequins." You'd think the dress designer would have the advantage, but it's Beth who makes the biggest splash:

Gentlemen! Lady! I remind you that this very afternoon a woman, Paul's ex-wife Lizette, was found dead floating not far from this very house. Beth, you were the one who found her. Randy, Gordon, you walked down to the shoreline to help retrieve the body. 

The 26 September 1953 Globe and Mail review features some backhanded praise:

I didn't think much of J.H.'s guests, Beth included, but these intolerable four-flushing types are what makes Harsh Evidence worth reading. Careerists all, we dodge them in life, but are drawn to them in print.

All enjoy a perfectly lovely dinner, after which Peter tinkles the ivories and Iris does a substandard Dietrich imitation. The host waltzes with Lois in all her velvet, then suggests a game of Kidnapped.

Kidnapped?

Kidnapped is one of Randy's creations. It's something like Hide and Go Seek, but with teams and rhyming clues.

What fun! But how strange.

The novel's great flaw lies in the callous and peculiarly uniform behaviour by a group of people who had mere hours earlier witnessed Harris retrieve of the body of a dead woman. Some of this may be explained away by the slow reveal that Paul was not the only member of the party to have, let's say, known Lizette.

Kuolleet eivät puhu [Harsh Evidence]
1957

It's not often that I share a spoiler. I do so here because Harsh Evidence is unique in Canadian mystery writing of the time.

As the novel's mid-point approaches, Ann tells tells Beth about Iris's tragic history. The father was disinherited for marrying a chorus girl, Iris's mother. After losing what remained of his money in the crash of '29, he took a drive out a window. J.H., a friend of the family, paid for an exclusive girls' boarding school from which Iris was subsequently expelled. It's only in recent years that the two resumed cordial relations:

"It's certainly romantic," Beth said. "Positively Victorian. Somehow it doesn't fit Iris."
   "There are a lot of things about Iris that don't fit," Ann said slowly.
   "Oh? What, for example?"
   "Well, the men she collects – considering how hard she works at being a glamour girl – they're a pretty queer bunch."

I identified the last sentence as a bloomer, but the final chapters led me to reconsider. By this point, the reader has come to see Lizette Manning (née Lily Roberts) for what she was, a femme fatale who had mined men for money and sex. The twist comes when it is revealed that Lizette saw another mark in Iris, who confronts her on the morning of the afternoon her body would be found.

Ultimately, it's Gordon who exposes the murderer:

Interestingly, Iris herself had used sex – or the promise of sex – to get Randy to agree to a scheme involving the sale of insider information to J.H.'s competitors.

For these reasons alone, Harsh Evidence is worth a careful second reading. 

About the author: Following early, lazy research on Miss Fry, the newly released 1931 census provides a touch more information. Pamela Fry is recorded as the 14-year-old English-born daughter of John and Charlotte Fry. The family had emigrated to Canada in 1928. The Frys lived at 46 Spencer Avenue in Toronto, sharing the house with Edward and Freda Jones and their three daughters.

The house still stands, though you can't see much of it in this 2020 Google Maps Street View.

Object and Access: A hardcover consisting of pale green boards and post-war paper, only the dust jacket illustration renders it attractive. Credit goes to Patric O'Keeffe, about whom I know very little.

The novel can be found at Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the University of Toronto, McMaster University, New York University, Occidental University, Trinity College Dublin and, most remarkably, the Atmore Public Library in Atmore, Alabama.

Here's to the Atmore Public Library! 

I purchased my copy earlier this year from a UK bookseller. Price: £7.50.  As I write, one copy of the Wingate edition is listed at the very same price I paid. Though lacking the jacket, it seems a good buy.

In 1956, New York's Roy Publishers published the first and only American edition. I've never seen a copy.

Harsh Evidence has enjoyed two translations, the first being the Swedish De döda tala ej (1956). This was followed by a Finnish translation titled Kuolleet eivät puhu (1957). Neither cover depicts a scene that features in the novel. Ditto the frocks.

Harsh Evidence has never been published in Canada. 

Related posts:

Keeping an Eye Out for Pamela Fry

The Mystery Writer Mystery Unravels
Susanna Moodie's Bloomers