Giving Madge Macbeth Her Due

The frontispiece to Madge Macbeth's Kleath (Boston: Small, Maynard & Co, 1917)
Artist: George William Gage

A brief follow-up to the previous post on Madge Macbeth's The Long Day.

Madge Macbeth never visited the Yukon, but that didn't prevent her from setting her 1917 novel Kleath in Dawson City. I don't own a copy, and haven't read it, though it is available online. 

This isn't about that book, rather the film it inspired.

Two years after publication, the motion picture rights to Kleath were sold to the Mayfair Photoplay Corporation by her American publisher Small, Maynard & Co. Macbeth received a 65% cut, amounting to $442. The resulting film, The Law of the Yukon (1920), takes its title from a Robert Service poem. The Bard of the Yukon was given sole credit.

Exhibitors Herald, 1 May 1920

I wonder how much Service was paid for lending his name.

Bet it was more than $442.

The film The Law of the Yukon has nothing to do with Service. It's not in any way based on his "verse Classic." If you don't believe me, I'm providing the Service poem in full. If you do believe me, feel free to skip.

THE LAW OF THE YUKON

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:

"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane— 

Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;

Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;

Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,

Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.

Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;

Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;

Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;

But the others—the misfits, the failures—I trample under my feet.

Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,

Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters—Go! take back your spawn again.

"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;

From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;

Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come,

Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him swept—the scum.

The pallid pimp of the dead-line, the enervate of the pen,

One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought was—Men.

One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;

One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.

Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,

Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins;

Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,

Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;

Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,

Frozen stiff in the ice-pack, brittle and bent like a bow;

Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight,

Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;

Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,

Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer;

Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,

Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home;

Lost like a louse in the burning . . . or else in the tented town

Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and sinking down;

Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world,

Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;

In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,

Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;

Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,

In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.

Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,

Crushing my Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive.

"But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my fame

Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame;

Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,

Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;

Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,

Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.

I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;

Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.

Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,

Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;

Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn,

Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.

Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,

And I wait for the men who will win me—and I will not be won in a day;

And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,

But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;

Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,

Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.

"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise,

With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes;

Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,

When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away;

Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave—

Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave.

Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,

Of children born in my borders of radiant motherhood,

Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,

As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;

That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.

Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,

This is the Will of the Yukon,—Lo, how she makes it plain! 

Not much in the way of plot, is there.

In an interview published under the title 'Look to Poems for New Ideas' in the 24 April 1920 issue of trade journal Exhibitors Herald,  Isaac Wolper, the president of Mayfair, hints at the truth:

Because The Law of the Yukon is a lost film, I've relied on old reviews for what it's about. The most detailed I've found comes courtesy of the 11 November 1920 edition of the Daily Colonist:

Morgan Kleath comes to Gold City, a bustling mining camp in the Klondike country, in the film "the law of the Yukon," which was shown for for the first time at the Variety Theatre yesterday. Kleath makes his way to the "San Domingo," the principal gathering place and meets Tim Meadows, the proprietor, who had induced him to come to Gold City to establish and edit a daily paper.
     Tim introduces Kleath to his daughter Goldie, whom he worships and guards with jealous care. Kleath invites Goldie to dance. Joe Duke, who as been paying attention to Goldie, conceives a violent dislike for Kleath and with the aid of his friend Jake Nichols, is able to pick a quarrel with him.
     A fight follows, in which Duke receives a sound thrashing. Jake, seeing the turn of events and, striving to aid his fried, stabs Morgan Kleath in the arm.
Barney McCool, a good natured old Irishman, who is known as "the biggest liar in Gold City," takes a strong fancy to Kleath and becomes his good man, Friday. He takes the wounded man to his log cabin and Dr. Meredith, the only physician in the town, waits on him. Mrs. Meredith, hearing of the newcomer, calls on him. She at once becomes infatuated with Kleath. Goldie to is strongly drawn to him.

     Everybody is anxious to know Kleath's past. His silence furnishes food for speculation. On two different occasions – once when he had picked a lock with a rusty nail, and once when he opened Tim Meadow's safe after the combination had been lost, he played into the hands of his enemies. These enemies, seeking to discredit him, circulate a story that Morgan Kleath is a yeggman, a criminal fugitive from the States.

     Duke, harboring revenge, sees his way clear to rob Tim Meadow' safe and have suspicion point towards Kleath. Duke and his partner, Jake Nichols, are successful in luring Goldie and Morgan Kleath to a deserted cabin, where they are forced to remain all night. During the night Duke and Jake commit the robbery.

     Kleath's feat of opening the safe is remembered and he is arrested and charged with the grave crime. Before leaving the deserted cabin, Kleath extracts a promise from Goldie that she will not mention the fact that they spent the night there. This, of course, is done to protect her good name. Kleath's silence compels the court to declare him guilty. Goldie, unable to keep silent, lays bare the whole circumstance. A stranger, a woman, appears dramatically and reveals the history of Kleath's past life (an honorable history, by the way) and herself as the accomplice of Duke and Nichols. Duke, infuriated at the turn of events, shoots the woman. After a lapse of time Kleath and Goldie leave the Klondike for the "Outside" as man and wife, and this the story ends happily, as it should. 

Exhibitors Herald, 12 June 1920

Because I haven't read the novel, I can't speak to the accuracy of the plot synopsis found in the this review from the November 1917 issue of the Canadian Magazine:

"...the story, if set for moving pictures, undoubtably would be a success."

In her 1957 memoir, Boulevard Career, Madge Macbeth devotes all of five sentences to Kleath: 

It was published in Boston and for several weeks I was deliriously happy. Then I learned that it was being filmed without my knowledge or consent. The Author's League of America took the matter up but there was nothing to be done because in my ignorance I had turned all rights over to the publisher. The film appeared under Robert Service's title, The Law of the Yukon, and my name was not mentioned!

     I got enough money from the venture to buy a cheap fur coat.

The $442 she received in 1920 would amount to under six thousand today. So, yeah, a cheap fur coat.

All this leaves me with this question: We can't see the movie, but should we be reading the book? 

A Bonus: In the Exhibitors Herald article, I happened to catch Isaac Wolper referencing The Miracle Man, almost certainly the most important lost film based on a Canadian novel:

Ideas lift a picture far above the commonplace level. Analyze one of the greatest pictures ever produced, 'The Miracle Man.' What made it great? Why was the public response to it so eager and spontaneous? The crux of the reason is expressed in one word. 'Idea'! The picture conveyed a poetic idea beautifully expressed.

Related posts:

Madge Macbeth's Great Gold Rush Hoax

Images from a Lost Film of a Forgotten Novel

The Miracle Man on Paper and Nitrate Film

Madge Macbeth's Great Gold Rush Hoax

The Long Day: Reminiscences of the Yukon

W.S. Dill [pseud Madge Macbeth]

Ottawa: Laurentian Press Syndicate, [c. 1926]

245 pages

I can't claim to have read every book by Madge Macbeth – her history The Lady Stanley Institute for Trained Nurses (Ottawa: Lady Stanley Institute Alumnae Association, 1959), isn't anywhere near the top of my TBR pile – but of those I've tackled The Land of Afternoon (Ottawa: Graphic, 1925) is by far my favourite. A scandalous political roman a clèf published in the midst of a federal election, she kept herself well hidden under the pseudonym "Gilbert Knox." Conservative MP Alfred Ernest Fripp did his best to hunt down the author's true identity, as did Parliamentary Librarian Martin Burrell, but it wasn't until after Macbeth's death, four decades in the future, that all was revealed.

I expect Madge Macbeth didn't feel the need to be so cautious with "W.S. Dill."

The Long Day presents itself as a reminiscence of the Yukon Gold Rush as written by a man who witnessed it all. Dill didn't exist, Macbeth didn't visit, and yet this reader, steeped in Gold Rush lore owing to a great-grandfather who served in Skagway as a customs inspector, found little by way of fabrication. The author draws frequently and liberally from those who were there. Four pages come from boxer Frank "Paddy" Slavin's 1926 autobiography The Sydney Cornstalk. Another boxer, Jack Kearns is quoted at length from a wire service piece published in the 6 July 1926 edition of the Ottawa Journal. 

Macbeth finds her richest vein in William Ogilvie's Early Days on the Yukon (Toronto: Bell & Cockburn, 1913), retelling Ogilvie's stories in a way that verges on plagiarism. Consider this passage from The Long Day:

During the winter of '96-7, disturbing news—Queen Victoria was critically ill—Pope Leo the Thirteenth lay at the point of death—War between England and Russia was imminent, and, perhaps more agitated than all of these to the camp was the prospect of a prize fight between James J. Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons, scheduled for the spring.

Now, here's Early Days on the Yukon:

During the winter the last arrival from the outside who brought any newspapers, brought dire intelligence indeed. According to the papers, Queen Victoria was critically ill; Pope Leo XIII was at the point of death; war was imminent between England and Russia; and, more exciting to the camp, a fight for the championship of the world was coming off some time in the spring between the star pugilists, James J. Corbett and Robert FitzSimmons [sic].

Tracking Macbeth's sources is good fun, but it does distract. After a bit, I abandoned the chase and settled back to enjoy the stories she'd chosen to tell. My favourite involves Charles Carbonneau — Macbeth has his Christian name as "Jules" — a Montreal barber who reinvented himself as M le Comte Carbonneau, representative of French wine merchants Messieurs Pierre Legros, Freres et Cie. A rogue of the highest order, he woos trouser-wearing miner Belinda Mulrooney, "the richest woman in the Klondike," marries her, builds a chateau in France, and then makes off with her younger sister.

The Baltimore Sun, 17 September 1906

It's a sad and sordid tale, told in such detail that you'd think W.S. Dill had borne witness to the courtship, attended the wedding, and had had a glass or two at the celebration that followed. In taking on the persona of her creation, she adopts a voice and writing style that is nothing like her previous books.

The first readers saw of W.S. Dill — as "Willard S. Dill" — came in 'Over the Chilkoot to Eldorado,' published in the 15 September 1926 issue of Maclean's. That initial article, the first in a series of three, brought considerable response, as relayed by editor H. Nigel Moore:

I have no idea whether Moore was in on the hoax. What I can say is that The Long Day was well-received. "Mr. Dill has produced an interesting book and one that will be appreciated by those who knew the gold country in the early days," said the Kingston Whig-Standard (14 February 1927). The 15 January 1927 edition of the Montreal Gazette describes it as "most interesting and instructive," concluding "the book is well worth reading. Anyone who has ever been to the Klondike should not miss it."

I recommend it myself, even to those who have never been to the Klondike. Macbeth has an eye for entertaining tales and a talent for telling them. I finish my own review with the observation that no critic noted this: W.S. Dill doesn't once feature in his book of reminiscences.

Trivia: Madge Macbeth's own reminiscences, Boulevard Career (Toronto: Brunswick, 1957), lists The Long Day as one of her titles. The Land of Afternoon remains hidden, despite Fripp and Burrell being long dead.

Object: A strange-looking thing, isn't it? The raised images and lettering reminds me of nothing so much as old university annuals.

The Long Day was first published in 1926 by Ottawa's legendary Graphic Press. In  his essay "Graphic Press and the Bibliographer" (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada XVIII), David B. Kotin describes the Laurentian Press Syndicate as an imprint, which applied fresh title pages to sheets used in the Graphic-branded edition. The last pages of my copy list other Graphic titles, including Macbeth's The Day of Afternoon and Shackles.

My copy once belonged to Dr Bertram Reid MacKay (1885-1981), who served over four decades with the Geographical Survey of Canada. 

Doctor MacKay's Carling Avenue house is said to have begun sinking, such was the weight of his immense library. Sadly, for a man who was an early advocate for the preservation Ottawa's heritage buildings, that house was eventually razed. This architectural marvel stands in its place.

Access: Nine copies of the novel are currently listed for sale by online booksellers, none of whom recognize its true author. They range in price from US$20.00 to US$69.00. All are Graphic Press editions. Of those, the one you'll want to buy — price: US$40.56 — is offered with dust jacket by an Ottawa bookseller. 

Twenty-six Canadian libraries hold copies. Yukon Public Libraries does not have a copy.

Related post:

A Very Canadian Succès de scandale

The Dustiest Bookcase: L is for Lysenko (& Lesik)

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Westerly Wild
Vera Lysenko [pseud Vera Lesik]
Toronto: Ryerson, 1956

284 pages

Purchased for $2.50, I was sold by the opening words on the front flap:

WESTERLY WILD, a sort of Canadian Wuthering Heights, grew out of the fascination exerted on the author by the rolling countryside of south-western Saskatchewan...

Six years later, this Vera Lysenko novel continues to collect dust because I still haven't read Wuthering Heights.

A Harlequin Harlot Romance for Valentine's Day

The Pick-Up

Raymond Marshall [pseud René Lodge Brabazon Raymond]

Toronto: Harlequin, 1955

Related posts:

Harlequin: Before the Romance

Another Harlequin Valentine

This Year's Harlequin Valentine

A Harlequin Valentine from Day Keene
Romance… Harlequin Romance
A Harlequin Valentine from Syd Dyke
A Harlequin Valentine Just for You
C'mon, It's Harlequin Valentine Time

This Year's Climacteric Harlequin Valentine

A Weird and Tense Harlequin Valentine

Harlequin & the Eternal Valentine's Day Question

Nothing Says Romance Like a Harlequin Romance

Harlequin: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Suggestive Harlequins: A Romantic Threesome
Harlequin Librarians: So Many Secrets
Harlequin's Filthiest Title

May Agnes Fleming's Wronged Wife (of many)

A Wronged Wife
     [The Twin Sisters; Or, The Wronged Wife's Hate]
May Agnes Fleming

New York: Carleton, [c. 1883]

420 pages

A Wronged Wife was first published in 1864, the year before its author, then May Agnes Early, met and married machinist John W. Fleming. I think this worth noting because that union was a complete disaster with Mr Fleming exposing himself as a drunkard given to physical violence. Mrs Fleming proved herself the stronger. A victim of Bright's disease at thirty-nine, she managed to leave behind a will – which stuck – in which her husband was denied her money and their four children. Anyone with so much as a passing knowledge of nineteenth-century Canada will be astonished by this accomplishment.

Types of Canadian Women or Women Who Are
or Have Been Connected With Canada
H.J. Morgan, editor
Toronto: William Briggs, 1903

There are plenty of wronged wives in May Agnes Fleming's fiction, but I've yet to encounter another so vindictive as the one in this novel. The story begins with a train arriving in the village of Riverside, a sunny summer retreat to Manhattanites of means. This being a "drear and dark December day," no one is expected to disembark, so it comes as a surprise when a man known to the locals as "Captain Forrest," a regular visiter in warmer months, does just that. Under cover of darkness, he makes his way to a ramshackle house, steals two sleeping toddlers, then makes off who knows where.

The next scene takes place some days later on Christmas Eve (1844, by my calculation) in the large, lavishly appointed Fifth Avenue brownstone of wealthy widower Alexander Hazlewood. His is a full house comprised of three adult sons, two nieces, a recently widowed sister, and an unspecified number of servants. Old school chum Dr Jeremiah Lance has stopped by for a visit. The eldest niece and three Hazelton sons are preparing to leave for a party when they're interrupted by "a shrill scream from the hall below." The chambermaid has come upon a pair of toddlers – twin girls – who have somehow been deposited just inside the front doors, along with this note:  

"It's a vile slander!" declares crimson-faced Mr Hazlewood, "It’s the work of some infamous being who has taken this means of securing a home for the offspring she will not rear."

Dr Lance, a sour bachelor whose proposal of marriage was decades earlier turned down by the aforementioned widowed sister, is not so quick to dismiss: "Black eyes, black hair, fresh complexion, and good features—all characteristics of the Hazelwoods?" And, really, if the two girls were mere street urchins, why are they so elaborately and expensively dressed?"

Why, indeed!

Enter the three Hazelton sons: handsome heartthrob Conway, delicately dishy August, and ugly Eugene:

It's an uncomfortable situation, but not so much as to delay the brothers' departure for the party. And who can blame them! Beautiful Helen Thornton, who ranks amongst New York's greatest heiresses, is hostess! Mr Hazelwood is well aware and well pleased that the desirable Helen has eyes only for Conway. His other sons, who aren't quite so observant, bare their hearts to Helen, and are rejected. By party's end, Conway and Helen are engaged to be wed.

As preparations take over the Hazelwood household, one might be forgiven in forgetting the toddler twins. They've not been shuffled off-stage, nor shuttled to the alms-house, as Mr Hazelwood had threatened, rather they remain in the Fifth Avenue brownstone. Once wed, beautiful Helen wants to adopt the girls – which is not to suggest that she believes her betrothed to be their father.

Meanwhile, Eugene has gone missing. Having been spurned by Helen, he's set off to solve the riddle of the twins' paternity.

The evening before the wedding, a figure disguised in in blackface confronts Conway on Broadway telling him that he must show himself in Thornton conservatory at half-past ten the next morning... that is, if he knows what's good for him.

On the day of the wedding, beautiful Helen receives this intriguing note: 

Against her maid of honour's advice – always listen to your maid of honour – beautiful Helen does just as the note instructs. The novel's second scream comes when the bride is discovered dead in the conservatory. A distraught Conway, who dismissed the instructions he'd received the previous evening, learns that the missing Eugene had been in the conservatory mere minutes before Helen's body was found. He has his brother arrested and charged with Helen's murder. Eugene maintains his innocence, but not even his broken-hearted father believes him.

He's found guilty, is sentenced to death, and hangs himself with a bed sheet.

This whirlwind of events comes to a climax in the form of a letter received on the evening of the suicide:

cliquez pour agrandir

Wow!

I've given away much of the plot, but not enough to spoil. Rose Hazelwood's letter appears roughly one-third through the novel, and there's so much more to come: a riding accident, a second suicide, a third kidnapping, and several additional deaths within the Hazelton family. This reader was surprised that nothing aligned with the path of vengeance indicated in the letter. Was this the author's plan? Was there a plan, or was she just writing furiously for money?

May Agnes Fleming published more than two dozen novels in her thirty-nine years. Nowhere in the one, two, three, four other Fleming titles I've read is there one so self-referential:

• Dr Lance describes the appearance of the twins with accompanying note as something “absurd and mysterious enough for a three-volume novel."
• Arthur likens their appearance to "a thing from a play or a story."
• The widowed sister tells her niece that "it would be like a story in a novel if the twins turned out to be Conway's children." (To which the niece replies: "such things only happen in novels.")
• Helen's murder and the surrounding drama is not only dramatized for the stage, but serves as inspiration for "sensation-novelists." 
• Male characters liken themselves, or are likened, to heroes of novels.

As in other Fleming novels coincidence piles upon coincidence, the difference here being height and instability. The most amusing part of the A Wronged Wife comes when the narrator (omniscient) remarks on the improbability of three Americans, none of whom had seen each other in well over a decade, encountering each other in the Quebec village of St Croix. 

It's an old storyteller's trick. In recognizing and remarking on one unbelievable coincidence, the others seem less incredible. May Agnes Fleming was a pro; "Canada’s first outstanding success as a professional novelist,"  she was like no other of her day.

She knew how to make money... a lot of money.

And she knew how to keep it from her husband.

Favourite sentence:

She flew off as she spoke, like a lapwing, thrusting the note into Love's own post-office — her bosom.

Trivia I: Though the chapters set in St Croix take place in 1860, Fleming refers to the village as being in "Lower Canada," and not "Canada East." The latter replaced the former with the Act of Union 1840, which was passed in the year of Fleming's birth. Her use leads me to wonder whether "Lower Canada" continued as part of common speech.

Trivia II: The author, a New Brunswicker, uses the word "Canadian" when referring to the francophone residents of St Croix. The anglophones are referred to as "English." Interestingly, everyone living in St Croix is depicted as being fluently bilingual.

With Confederation, three years after the novel was published, Fleming became a Canadian.

Object: My Carleton edition bears an 1883 copyright and looks to date from the late nineteenth century. An investigation of the six pages of other Carleton titles offered after the end of the novel confirms. It was purchased last year from a bookseller in Webster, New York. Price: US$10.

Access: The novel first appeared in 1864 as 'Hazelwood,' a serial that ran in New York's Sunday Mercury. It was first published between the covers as The Twin Sisters; Or, The Wronged Wife's Hate (New York: Beadle & Adams, 1864). For reasons that would spoil in the telling, A Wronged Wife is the better title.

The worst of the novel's many titles is The Rival Brothers, first used in a 1875 edition from published by Beadle (sans Adams). As far as I can tell, it was last used sometime in the early 20th -century by While it's true that Conway, Arthur, and Eugene are in competition for Helen's hand, their rivalry ends early. Eugene commits suicide in the eighth of the novel's twenty-seven chapters. Arthur, from the start a ghost of a character, moves to England, develops gout, and all but vanishes.

As of this writing, just five copies of the novel are on offer from online booksellers. At US$17.50, the least expensive is an 1888 edition published by Dillingham. This is the one to buy. Three booksellers offer Federal Book Company editions, published as The Rival Brothers, at prices ranging from US$67.00 to US$100.00. The most intriguing and most expensive offering is a copy of the 1888 Dillingham edition featuring an 1899 inscription signed by "M. Fleming." The bookseller notes: "May Agnes died in 1880 at age 39 from Bright's disease. Presumed then to be the signature of a relative."

I suppose it is possible that the presumed relative may be daughter Maude Fleming, who was entrusted with her mother's literary estate, but at US$212.45 I'm not interested in taking a gamble. 

Related posts:

Falling Hard for May Agnes Fleming

Parents of the Children of the Revolution

Soldiering On with Edith Percival

May Agnes Fleming's Very Worst Marriage?

Erring on The Terror of the Tar Sands

A 1968 children's book, one of the most obscure novels I've read since beginning the Dusty Bookcase, The Terror of the Tar Sands came under fire at the 2012 International Symposium on the History of the Oil and Gas Industry.

I was not invited.

The criticism originated with oil historian Joyce Hunt, who took issue with the use of "tar sands" in its title:

Contemporary rhetoric creates fear in the minds of those unfamiliar with today’s vital energy industry as it puts on hold construction jobs and the economic hopes of thousands. The media and those opposing oil sands development constantly refer to Alberta’s oil sands as tar sands, a technically incorrect term.

Does that not seem a bit unfair? After all, "oil sands" is also technically incorrect. And let's not forget that "tar sands" was used for decades by the industry itself. Still is:

Hell, I grew up with ads for the tar sands, like his one, which featured in the 31 October 1977 issue of Maclean's:

cliquez pour agrandir

(Am I alone in thinking that a sitting MLA shouldn't be on Syncrude's payroll, never mind serve on its Management Committee?)

I'm not a fan of The Terror of the Tar Sands either, but my criticism has nothing to do with the title. You can read all about it in the new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. My copy arrived today. You're a subscriber, right? If not, here's some of what you're missing, beginning with this cover by Seth:

Dan Wells' Publisher's Note introduces a new series, Shelf Talkers, bringing together recommendations from independent booksellers (among them, my old friend Ben McNally).

Rod Moody-Corbett writes on Percy Janes, whose House of Hate is both one of this country's most controversial and most neglected novels. Only in Canada is such a thing possible.

We have a fable from Pauline Holdstock and a short story by Shaena Lambert.

Bruce Whiteman contributes a memoir.

Other contributors include:

Ho Che Anderson

Michel Basilières

Steven W Beattie

Juliane Okot Bitek

Andreae Callanan

Laura Cameron

Sally Cooper

Steacy Easton

André Forget

Alex Good

Brett Josef Grubisic

Tom Halford

Jeremy Luke Hill

Mikka Jacobsen

River Kozhar

Allison LaSorda

David Mason

John Metcalf

James Grainger Morgan

Nick Mount

Shane Neilson

Rudrapriya Rathore

Patricia Robertson

Mark Sampson

Richard Sanger

Souvankham Thammavongsa

Phoebe Wang 

It all ends on page 88 with Stephen Fowler's remarks on this book:

But wait, what's this?

The same envelope containing the latest CNQ brought the very first issue of Bibliophile, which features the latest news from CNQ mothership Biblioasis. 

Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries can be got through this link.

One last thing: It was through reading The Terror of the Tar Sands that I first learned of Project Cauldron, a 1958 proposal which would have seen nuclear bombs used to separate bitumen from the sands. Why were we not taught this in school? After reading up on it all, this illustration from The Terror of the Tar Sands doesn't seem so insane.

The Dustiest Bookcase: K is for Keith

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

The Bells of St. Stephen's

Marian Keith
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922

336 pages

My rule when buying books by Marian Keith is to pay no more than two dollars. I ignored this with The Bells of St. Stephen's, which set me back four dollars. The cover, depicting a young woman with volume in hand, seduced.

I don't know what to make of Marian Keith because I've never read her. She exists in a fog, as do so many once-popular Canadian novelists. Keith was more successful than the vast majority, and yet she's still miles below contemporaries like Gilbert Parker, Ralph Connor, Basil King, and L.M. Montgomery (with whom she co-authored 1934's Courageous Women.) I doubt one of Keith's novels sold as well as Robert E. Knowles' St. Cuthbert's, but her literary career lasted much longer, stretching from Duncan Polite (1906) to The Grand Lady (1960).

I've been meaning to read Keith for years. Is The Bells of St. Stephen's the best place to begin? In Canadian Novelists: 1920-1945 (1946), Clara Thomas suggests that Keith's best is A Gentleman Adventurer (1924).

I've yet to cross paths with anyone who has read Keith, but I'm sure you're out there.

Where should I begin?

My Marian Keith collection.
Total expense: $11.00

Related post:

St. Cuthbert's and the Rest