Romance and the Psychopath's Daughter

No Pattern for Life
Frances Shelley Wees
The Star Weekly, 11 December 1955

Not so much novel as novella, No Pattern for Life came and went sixty years ago this month, never to see print again. It pains me to write that this is no great loss. Frances Shelley Wees'  mystery The Keys of My Prison, ranks amongst the year's best finds. This is the most disappointing.

The Star Weekly did its best to position No Pattern for Life as a Christmas story – 'twas the season, after all – but the action extends well into the following spring. That said, the story does open on a Christmasy scene: Melinda Elliott, she of the deftly moving hands, decorates mistletoe with bright red ribbon.

See above.

Widowed Sarah Chalmers sits looking on, "absently knitting a white nylon sweater" and passing judgement. Roommates, the two not only share a flat but work together at a Toronto radio station. Their boss, George Johnson, is basically Jack Kent Cooke. And because Johnson is Cooke, he has divorced Agnes, his wife of twenty years, to marry vivacious young Melinda. Sarah doesn't approve.

Good question. Johnson is a balding businessman suffering a mid-life crisis – there's nothing more to him than that. Melinda's fascination has everything to do with his wealth and the many gifts it provides. The first chapter brings a mink coat, but before Melinda can don her dead apparel she trips over Christmas presents and flies face first into the edge of an open door. The story's greatest action – decorating the mistletoe comes a close second – it leads to an operation for a detached retina. The months of convalescence that follow allow Melinda time to contemplate life and reconsider her betrothal.

Priggish busybody Sarah seeks to provide moral guidance while dodging dinner invitations from Jim Malone, Melinda's eye surgeon. Here's a coincidence: not only did Jim and his wife Kitty attend university with Sarah and her dead husband Dick, but he just happens to have grown up in the very same small town as Melinda. Courtesy of Jim, Sarah learns of her roommate's kinfolk:

"I can't imagine how she would get into your orbit. Sarah, With her father and mother, and what must have been her upbringing."
     "That sounds pretty serious."
     "Well… the father, Emmett… he got killed finally, we heard, in some disreputable way – in prison, I think – was a psychopath."

A strong believer in nature over nurture, Sarah determines that her roommate "hasn't got a chance". It's not Melinda's fault, of course, rather her "heritage", which Sarah judges to be "low, cheap, degraded, weak, degenerating." How comfortable she feels in the newfound knowledge that she shares a flat with a psychopath's daughter is left unexplored.

Sadly, No Pattern for Life is no "Murder-Mystery". Given the choices, I'd say it's more "Marriage Problem" than "Romance", though not one marriage features amongst its main characters. The Johnsons' union has ended in divorce. Doctor Jim's marriage to Kitty endured until her untimely passing. As mentioned, Sarah's Dick is dead.

And then we have a secret marriage. At nineteen, Melinda married Bill Blake, of the Toronto Graham-Blakes, but it ended badly because of the bride's frequent, unexplained disappearances from the family home.

As you're unlikely to read No Pattern for Life – copies are scarce and it is not recommended – I'll complete the tale:

Sarah has been declining Jim's invitations because she doesn't know that Kitty died in childbirth a decade earlier. Upon learning the sad news she lays her hand on his and declares her love.

See below.

Melinda visits her grandparents' graves, reads some very complimentary things written on the headstones, and determines that she doesn't really come from such bad stock. Sarah agrees. We learn that Melinda had disappeared from the Graham-Blake home to care for the alcoholic, drug-addicted mother of whom she dared not speak.

Conveniently, Bill Blake returns to the scene because he just can't get over Melinda.

Melinda breaks off her engagement with George, sending the jilted fiancé off in search of his ex-wife. He finds Agnes looking "as she had years and years ago, when they were young." The stress of the divorce had caused a loss of thirty or so pounds in excess weight, so he pleads with her to take him back.

She does.

Lord knows why.

I guess she finds him fascinating.

Favourite passage:

Most boring passage:

Object and Access: Sixteen-pages, fifteen of which feature the novel. The final page is given over to American cartoonist Harry Weinert's "Vignettes of Life". This week's theme: Babysitters.

Anyone looking to read No Pattern for Life is directed to our best reference libraries. That said, old Star Weeky novels do show up from time to time. I pulled mine from a stack being sold by a London bookstore. Price: $4.98.

Related post:

A Rival for Margaret Millar?

Kenneth Millar at 100; Ross Macdonald at 59

Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald: A Checklist
Compiled by Matthew J. Brucolli
Introduction by Kenneth Millar
Detroit: Gale, 1971

Kenneth Millar was born one hundred years ago today. The first recognition of the anniversary I saw came this past May when Linwood Barclay reviewed the new Ross Macdonald Library of America collection for the Globe & Mail.

Library of America. And why not? After all, Millar was born in Los Gatos, California. His Canadian parents returned to their home and native land a few months later, marking the beginning of a confusing childhood that included a variety of addresses and living arrangements in Vancouver, Kitchener, Wiarton, Winnipeg and Medicine Hat. Kitchener is key. He returned repeatedly to the Southern Ontario city, and as a child lived there longer than another other. It was in Kitchener that he first met and fell for fellow Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute student Margaret Sturm. In 1931, their respective short story debuts were published in The Grumbler, the school's literary magazine. His, "The South Sea Soup Co.", suffered a printer's error: "Ken Miller".

After graduation, Millar attended Waterloo College (now the University of Waterloo), the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto. He married Margaret, who had dropped out to become a writer. And she did… they both did. Ken sold stories, poems and reviews to Saturday Night, but Margaret Millar was the first to publish a novel: The Invisible Worm (1941). The year after publication, the couple moved to Ann Arbor, where Ken had accepted a fellowship at the University of Michigan. Visits aside, the Millars never returned to Canada, settling instead in Santa Barbara, some 450 kilometres south of Ken's birthplace.

Measuring such things is a fool's game, but I think it safe to say that Millar is much more American than, say, Vladimir Nabokov, whose work is also included in the Library of America. Millar saw himself as both Canadian and American, and considered his greatest character to be the same.

I make a deal about of Millar's early years – again – because we Canadians don't. Three years ago, I had to convince the folks at The Canadian Encyclopedia that he was worthy of an entry.

Margaret, too.

The greatest value in Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald: A Checklist lies not in the checklist itself, now very much out of date, but in Millar's seven-page Introduction. Here he provides a rather distorted account of that very messy childhood, and the long, agonizing attempts to capture same in "Winter Solstice", an abandoned autobiographical novel. The struggle went on for years, unresolved until "transformed and simplified into a kind of legend, in The Galton Case."

His favourite novel and I still haven't read it.

I've gone over every page in this slim volume, from Matthew J. Brucolli's Compiler's Note ("This checklist is not a bibliography…"), through Kenneth Millar's Introduction ("Having a bibliography put together is in some ways like being psychoanalyzed…"), to the checklist bibliography checklist itself. Introduction aside, the best of it is found in the images.

The end papers are pretty great, though I do wish they were in colour.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

The title pages, also reproduced, provide a nice reflection of the author's decade-long transition from Kenneth Millar to Ross Macdonald:

Millar was just fifty-five when this checklist was published. No one could have known that his career was in its final years. He managed just two more novels before Alzheimer's began taking its toll. Some of the best things about the book are reproduced manuscript pages – five in all – providing glimpses of a keen mind at work… the keen mind that was lost.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

(cliquez pour agrandir)

I'd happily read entire Millar novels this way, beginning with "Winter Solstice". Next Library of America volume, perhaps.

Object and Access: Eighty-six pages in black boards, issued sans dust jacket. I bought my copy two years ago at a London bookstore, a pleasant stroll from the University of Western Ontario. Price: $6.99.

Copies are held by Western and fourteen other Canadian universities. The Toronto Public Library also comes through; Library and Archives Canada does not.

Fifteen copies are listed for sale online, all but one ranging in price from US$12.50 to US$90. Condition is not a factor. The fifteenth, the exception, is inscribed by Millar to his lawyer Harris Seed, and features laid-in "a bookmark issued by the publisher that prints a poem by the author that also bears his holograph signature in ink." Clearly, the copy to present during this season of gift giving. Price: US$1250.

Related post:

Munro, Bellow, Millar and Identity

The Year's Best Books in Review — A.D. 2015; Featuring Three Books Deserving Resurrection

Yes, the year's best books in review… the best reviewed here, anyway. These past twelve months haven't been the most active at the Dusty Bookcase. Truth be told, I'd planned on closing up shop last January – and even wrote a post to that effect – but then I heard from readers asking me to go on. I felt the love and returned on Valentine's Day.

And so, this casual exploration continues, if more casually. Between this blog and my column in Canadian Notes & Queries I managed to review twenty-four books this year. That's not nothing, right?

Of the twenty-four, I see four worthy of a return to print, but tradition dictates that I choose three:

The Plouffe Family [Les Plouffe]
Roger Lemelin [trans. Mary Finch]

Roger Lemelin's 1948 best seller spawned an excellent film and our two most popular early television series. A monumental work of cultural and historical importance, I still find it hard to believe the translation is no longer in print.

The Fiend
Margaret Millar

A remarkable novel that dares centre on a sympathetic portrayal of a registered sex offender. That I read no other Millars this year is likely the reason only one of her novels features on this list. In 2012, the Kitchener native took all three spots.

The Adventures of Jimmie Dale
Frank L. Packard

Intricate and cleverly-woven adventures starring the Jimmie Dale – bored playboy by day, crime-fighting Gray Seal by night. Enormously influential and surprisingly entertaining.



I'm right now at work at reviving the unnamed fourth. If successful, it'll be back in print by this time next year. If not, my heart will be broken and I will never speak of it again.

In what must be a record, three of the novels covered here this past year are currently in print:

The Town Below [Au pied de la pente douce]

Roger Lemelin [trans. Samuel Putnam]

Toronto: Dundurn, 2013

The Three Roads

Ross Macdonald [pseud Kenneth Millar]

New York: Black Lizard, 2011

Night of the Horns

Douglas Sanderson

Eureka, CA: Stark House, 2015

I may as well add that The Damned and the Destroyed, Kenneth Orvis's "Relentless Story of the Hell of Drug Addiction", is right now available as an ebook from Prologue Books.

I was involved with three reissues this year, all titles in the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books series:

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul
Ronald J. Cooke

A novel about a young writer working for a crime boss in Depression-era Montreal. Is his motivation the need for material? Money? A dame? All three, it seems. I wrote the Introduction.

Hot Freeze
Douglas Sanderson

The first Mike Garfin thriller sees the disgraced former RCMP officer immersed in Montreal's drug trade. My favourite Canadian post-war noir novel, ow could I not write this Introduction, too?

Blondes Are My Trouble
Douglas Sanderson

The second Mike Garfin thriller. This time the private dick does battle with violent men pushing women into prostitution. The Introduction is by J.F. Norris of Pretty Sinister Books.



Praise this year goes to Wilfrid Laurier University Press and the Early Canadian Literature series edited by Benjamin Lefebvre. Dedicated to returning rare texts to print, there have been six titles to date, the most recent being Frederick Niven's The Flying Years with Afterword by Alison Calder.

Wilfrid Laurier University Press offers a 25% discount on online orders. Amazon and Indigo don't come close to matching those prices.

It's on my Christmas wish list.

Related posts:

Dirty Old Town

The Trouble with Charlie

Whatever Happened to Jimmie Dale?

Discovered Vile

A Man's Struggle with Humiliation

'A Relentless Story of the Hell of Drug Addiction'

A Blockhead Tries Writing for Money

Of Sex and Drugs and Montreal

Dark Blondes

The Season's Best Books in Review — A.D. 1915; Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

The influence of the war upon the literary taste of the public is strikingly illustrated by the increasing demand for more serious books.

— The Globe, 4 December 1915

Can the same be said for our time of war? I'm not so sure, though "The Globe 100: The Best Books of 2015", published last Saturday, assures me that this year's list is "smarter than ever."

Ah, the hubris of the living.

The Great War was heading towards its second Christmas when the Globe published its review of the 143 best books of 1915. Most are pretty much forgotten – The Heart of Philura, anyone? – though some, like W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, live on. Canadians don't fair too poorly, taking thirty-two spots. Sadly, our survival rate isn't any better.

Consider The Life of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, Beckles Willson's authorized biography of the man who co-founded the Canadian Pacific Railway and once held controlling shares in the Hudson's Bay Company. The Globe informs: "Based upon a mass of material, this record introduces documents which throw new light upon noted transactions in the Northwest."

New light upon noted transactions in the Northwest!

Hold me back.

The advertisement from publisher Cassel,featured on the bottom right of the page announces the title as "THE BOOK OF THE YEAR". Lest you question that claim, consider this: The Globe included the book even though it had not yet been published.

Competition comes in the form of In Pastures Green by farmer, poet and – it needs be noted – Globe contributor Peter McArthur. "Mr. McArthur is among those who have promoted the Dominion to full literary responsibility", sayeth the Globe. "We wisely rejoice in the products of our farms, but there is no more sustaining or enduring product of the farm at Ekfrid than 'In Pastures Green.'"

J.M. Dent and Sons' advert for In Pastures Green more than trumps the one for The Life of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal:

Sustaining and enduring In Pastures Green has been out of print for nearly seven decades. Of the thirty-two Canadian titles, only two are in print today: Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery, described here as the third volume in the "Anne Trilogy", and Winnifred Eaton's Me: A Book of Remembrance. "A much-talked of account of the life of a working girl who is 'up against it' nearly all the time. A sensational revelation of real life", says the Globe.

I've still not made time for Me. In fact, after all these years of the Dusty Bookcase –  here and at Canadian Notes & Queries –  I've yet to review a single book from 1915. Curious… I've covered several from each of the surrounding years. Perhaps it has something to do with this, as noted by the Globe in its introduction to the list:

The hell that is war.

Whatever Happened to Jimmie Dale?

The Adventures of Jimmie Dale
Frank L. Packard
Toronto: Copp Clark, 1917

This is my fourth Packard. Put in context, that's like tackling John Buchan's Witch Wood, Castle Gay and Sick Heart River before getting to The Thirty-Nine Steps. The Adventures of Jimmie Dale is the real entry point to Packard; it's his best-known book, his best-selling work and it introduces his most popular character. As with Buchan and Richard Hannay, Packard returned to his hero repeatedly throughout his career.

Jimmie Dale owes everything to his late father, who made millions manufacturing the finest safes money could buy. You might say that the fortune came through protecting those of others. Jimmie himself dabbled in sketching and writing before turning to breaking and entering. Donning a black silk mask, he'd sneak into the expansive homes of New York's well-to-do, crack open their safes, and affix a diamond-shaped grey seal in place of a carte de visite. Nothing would be taken – Jimmie has never wanted for anything – the thrill was payment enough.

One night, all went horribly wrong. Jimmie's secret identity as the "Gray Seal" was discovered by a mysterious, unseen woman who threatened to expose him unless he turned his talents toward combatting crime. The millionaire playboy did just that – resulting in even greater thrills.

There are comparisons to be made. Jimmie Dale follows Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel by some ten years, though I would argue that he's had a far greater influence. For one, the Gray Seal's adventures take place in a contemporary setting, not some fanciful, idealized past. There's a gritty reality in the depictions of New York's impoverished and its criminal class, aided I think by the access Packard was granted to NYPD stakeouts and raids. Then there is the Sanctuary, a secret lair in which Jimmie transforms into Larry the Bat, to all appearances a down-and-out cocaine addict who moves through the city's underworld. As both Larry and the Gray Seal, Jimmie wears a wide leather belt holding the tools of his crime fighting trade.

Walter Gibson acknowledged his debt to Packard in creating the Shadow. That Batman co-creator Bob Kane never said a thing is unsurprising.

Walt Disney was a great Gray Seal fan, and would re-enact scenes from the adventures before his staff. Here's a photo of Uncle Walt with a copy of Jimmie Dale and the Blue Envelope Murder (1930) on his desk. In 1952, Disney purchased the television rights to the adventures and tried to interest NBC in a series. Too dark, it seems. Wade Sampson's excellent article "Walt Disney aka the Gray Seal"  has more on the failed pitch.

I'm making a lot of the Disney connection because The Adventures of Jimmie Dale is even better suited for television today. The novel's structure owes much to the fact that it initially appeared in serialization. The first part, "The Man in the Case", details ten intricate and brilliantly executed adventures, each instigated by the mysterious woman. It's episodic, yet there is character development and an overarching narrative. The second part, "The Woman in the Case", consists of one long adventure in which the mystery of the mysterious woman is finally solved.

The mystery the reader is left with is how such an influential character can be so forgotten. Why has there been no revival? How is it that The Adventures of Jimmie Dale is out of print? Most of all, why did it take me so long to get around to reading it?

Gray? Grey?: I've used both here: one for the character and one for his calling card. A fellow Montrealer, I expect Packard was brought up to use "grey", but he was a pro who would've known to use "gray" when writing for the American market. Interestingly, the author anglicized the Gray Seal's adventures for British publication. Four years ago, a generous reader sent me these comparisons of the American and British versions:

Jimmie? Jimmy?: From the earliest days, publishers have struggled with the hero's name.

I've encountered two different editions published as The Adventures of Jimmy Dale, though the texts of each had Jimmie as "Jimmie".

Didn't buy either.

Big mistake.

Bloomers: Mark Abley published a very good piece on these unintentional double entendres a few months back in the Gazette, noting amongst other things that the meaning of "ejaculation" has changed  over time. The word and its variations appear eleven times in The Adventures of Jimmie Dale.

This is a very fine bloomer:

"Ah!" – it came in a fierce little ejaculation from Jimmie Dale.

But it is outdone by what is the best bloomer I've read all year:

A chorus of ejaculations rose from the reporters, while their pencils worked furiously.

Curiously, the word features just once in the second Grey Seal novel, The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1919):

"Oh, colonel!" There was mingled delight and hesitation in her ejaculation.

Motion Picture News, 30 June 1917

Trivia: In 1917, the novel was adapted and brought to the silent screen as Jimmy Dale, Alias "The Grey Seal", a sixteen-part serial. Forgotten actor and director E.K. Lincoln featured in the title role. All sixteen episodes are considered lost. Appropriate, don't you think?

Object: A 468-page hardcover, my jacket-less first Canadian edition was purchased for $20.00 this past summer. It's horribly beat-up, but the money went to charity.

Access: Copies can be found at Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the Toronto Public Library and pretty much every one of our universities.

Long in the public domain, inept print on demand vultures like Nabu and "Kessinger Publishing [sic]" have really moved in on this one. As always, they are to be ignored. You can always read it for free online here at the Internet Archive.

Plenty of old copies are being offered online for as little as six American dollars. At US$150 the one to buy is a Very Good copy of the Copp Clark edition in Very Good jacket being offered by a bookseller in Milton, Ontario.

I know of two translations – Irish (Tuille de eachtraí Shéamuis Uí Dhuibhir) and Spanish (Aventuras de Jim Dale) – though I suspect there are more.

Ricochet Prefers Blondes

The postman brings the third Ricochet Book in as many months. As Series Editor, I couldn't be more proud. One of the greatest Canadian noir novels, Blondes Are My Trouble followed Hot Freeze as the second Mike Garfin thriller. Like the first, it's set in the private detective's hometown of Montreal. And, like the first, the focus is on vice. This time it's prostitution, a racket not even Mike's girl Tessie can escape.

I was introduced to the novel as The Darker Traffic, published in 1954 by Dodd, Mead under Sanderson's "Martin Brett" nom de plume. Blondes Are My Trouble is the title given by Popular Library for the 1955 paperback release.

Better, don't you think?

We think Popular Library's cover is better, too, so have adapted it for the Ricochet reissue. Sure, that dame depicted isn't a blonde, but aren't you intrigued?

This time out I tapped John Norris of Pretty Sinister Books to pen the Introduction.

I think of Hot Freeze as the very best of post-war Canadian noir. John tells me that Blondes is even better.

Could I be wrong?

Acknowledgement: The publication of Blondes Are My Trouble sees the return of all four – or is it three? – Mike Garfin thrillers to print:

Hot Freeze (1954)

The Darker Traffic (a/k/a Blondes Are My Trouble; 1955)

The Deadly Dames (1956)

A Dum-Dum for the President (1961)

The last two are available from Greg Shepard's Stark House Press. It is thanks to Greg that we were able to contact Douglas Sanderson's son and secure the rights to Hot Freeze and Blondes Are My Trouble. Long a champion, in the past nine years Stark House has reissued six Sanderson novels, most recently Night of Horns and Cry Wolfsham.

Related posts:

Of Sex and Drugs and Montreal
Dark Blondes
Ricochet! Ricochet!

A Rival for Margaret Millar?

The Keys of My Prison
Frances Shelley Wees
London: Jenkins, 1956

Is The Keys of My Prison typical Frances Shelley Wees? If so, she's a writer who deserves attention. If not, the worst that can be said is that she wrote at least one novel worthy of same.

The beginning is quiet and subtle. In the well-appointed private room of a Toronto hospital, devoted wife Julie Jonason sits watching over husband Rafe. Ten days earlier, he was involved in a car accident. Rafe's been unconscious ever since, poor man, but he is improving; Dr Prescott expects a full recovery. Julie has every right to believe that things will eventually return to normal. Then Nurse Burnell enters and mentions, as casually as possible, that that morning her patient had mumbled something about a woman named Bess.

This shouldn't be taken as much – Nurse Burnell is a bitch – but it marks a beginning. Julie's life, with its inherited riches and ideal husband, is slowly revealed as something less than blessèd. For one, she's always had to deal with the tragedy of her birth, during which her mother died. As if in punishment, Julie was cursed with an unsightly facial disfigurement that had her hiding away for the first two decades of her life. No man would ever take Julie for his bride – on this everyone agreed – yet Rafe did.

Polite, contemplative, dedicated, diligent and sober is Rafe, but the man who emerges from the comatose state is none of these things. This Rafe denies he's Rafe and doesn't recognize his own wife. "And who the hell are you?" are his first words to Julie.

Doctor Prescott determines that the best course of action is to transfer the patient to the family home; a familiar environment is sure to restore his memory. And so, Julie is forced to share the Rosedale mansion built by her father with a crude, intemperate man who downs drams of whisky, keeps ungodly hours and might just be an impostor.

The Keys of My Prison is an exploration of identity, of course. That psychology plays such a part brought Margaret Millar to mind, though the similarities extend far beyond the psychoanalytic trends of the post-war era. The novel takes place in Millar territory: here are the comfortable Torontonians found in Wall of Eyes (1943) and The Iron Gates (1945). The novel also shares something with Millar's An Air That Kills (1957) in featuring a car accident that takes place between Toronto and cottage country. And then there's the dialogue… Not one Canadian writer of the time matched Millar, but Wees comes close.

If The Keys of My Prison is Frances Shelley Wees at her very best, she rose to the level of the average Millar.

That's a high watermark.

Object: A very attractive, very compact 190-page hardcover with jacket by English illustrator Eric Tansley. The scans above don't do it justice.

The very same year, The Keys of My Prison was published by Doubleday. Your guess is as good as mine as to which is the true first, though my money is on Doubleday. If it makes any difference, Doubleday's was the one sold in Canada.

The third and final edition appeared in 1966 as a Pyramid Books paperback. It has been out of print ever since.

Access: My American cousins will have an easy time of it. The bad news is that in this country the novel is held only by Library and Archives Canada, the Toronto Public Library and six of our universities. The good news is that used copies are cheap. At US$5.00, the cheapest is a library discard of the Pyramid edition. Ignore that. The copies most worthy of consideration are:

• the lone Jenkins edition, despite its "tatty" dust jacket. £4.00;
• a Very Good Doubleday in Very Good dust jacket. US$14.50;
• a Near Fine Doubleday in Very Good dust jacket, inscribed to Wees' doctor and his wife. US$25.00;
• a Very Good Doubleday in Very Good dust jacket, inscribed to a person or persons unknown C$50.00.

I recommend the third option.

There is one translation: Das Gefängnis seiner Wahl (Frankfurt, 1960).

Related posts:

The Return of Frances Shelley Wees
Margaret Millar and the Air Up North

A Millar Mystery and the Art of Deception
Margaret Millar's Great Toronto Murder Mystery
Damaged Dysfunctional and Decadent Toronto

Hunting the Hun by the Banks of the Niagara

Young Canada Boys with the S.O.S. on the Frontier
Harold C. Lowry [sic]
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1918

A boys' adventure story from the Great War, doesn't this look like a series title? Could've been, I suppose, had the Armistice not been signed the month after publication.

Lowrey's "Young Canada Boys" are the "Scouts of the Allies' Patrol", a Baden-Powell-inspired group  whose members more or less represent the Allied Powers. "Cod" Martin was born in Newfoundland. "Cinders" Thomas's father is a Welshman, "Marne" Armand's veins flow with French blood and "Rusty" Kelly will never deny he's Irish, "even though he hated the mention of the evil word [sic] 'Sein Fein.'" Twelve in number, they're a pretty tight group, though "Jap" Douglas, whose missionary parents proselytized in the Orient, is repeatedly accused of being "yellow".

All of 'em – well, maybe not Jap – are itching "to give the Huns such a corking good lickin' they'll never want another war as long as the world lasts." But because they're too young, the scouts do the next best thing by enlisting as Soldiers of the Soil.

Scouts of the Allies' Patrol existed only in Lowrey's imagination, but Soldiers of the Soil – the S.O.S. of the title – was very much real. Formed in the final year of the war, it sought to fill the labour shortage on Canadian farms with strapping young lads like Cod, Cinders, Marne, Rusty and… okay, we'll take Jap.

Young Canada Boys with the S.O.S. on the Frontier was intended as a work of propaganda, and Harold C. Lowrey was just the man for the job.

Canadian Grocer, 31 January 1913

True, he wasn't a novelist, but Lowrey was a fruit grower, a grocer and an agriculture journalist. I expect he also owned a typewriter. In his first chapter, "Enlisting", the scouts join Soldiers of the Soil. In the second, "To the Farms", they travel to adjoining farms in the Niagara Peninsula. Lowrey himself was from the region and uses his knowledge of same to good effect. He recognizes that there is only so much excitement to be had in pruning and tending to plum and cherry trees affected with black knot, so adds a chapter on a runaway horse and makes it so that one of the scouts nearly drowns in the Niagara River. Elderly farmer Grandpa Secord appears from time to time to share folksy tales of his Auntie Laura and the War of 1812.

Dumb luck leads the scouts to stumble upon instructions left behind by the clumsiest German spies found in fiction. They share the evidence with the commanding officer of nearby Niagara Camp (read: Camp Niagara), who promptly hands the group over to dashing Chief Intelligence Officer Major Watson. The scouts are smitten – the mere sight of the man sets "Anzac" Woodruff's "lithe young body a'throb with excitement" – but I wasn't so affected. To be perfectly frank, I found the Major himself a bit of a suspicious character. Consider this: Niagara Camp has fourteen thousand men, but Watson sets out to catch the enemy accompanied only by the boys and an underling named Lewis. Lowrey's explanation only fuelled my suspicions: "he could not resist smiling at the eager looks on the faces of the scouts. Anzac's keen eagerness quickly caught the officer's fancy and approval; he was a boy after his own heart."

My fears were unfounded.  The climax, such as it is, involves slingshots, revolvers, falling boulders and a pit of thirty-eight seventeen-foot rattlesnakes that crush the life out of two men.

Seventeen-foot rattlesnakes? The whole thing, fantastic and incongruous, was hard to take seriously.

Black knot, on the other hand…

Bloomer? Bloomers?:

"Catch a spy ? Why say, kid, you couldn't catch a spiced pussy, let alone a German spy," laughingly asserted Chuck, giving Anzac the spanking he deserved. A lively tussle followed, which all the patrol enjoyed immensely.

Object:  A bland hardcover, 202 pages in length, the most interesting thing about it is the misspelling of the author's name on the title page.

Shades of News Stand Library.

Access: Two copes are right now listed for sale online, neither of which is in great shape. At US$25.00, the cheaper is falling apart and is splattered with white paint. The other copy is just about as bad, though it does bear the author's signature. It's yours for US$55.00. I bought mine earlier this year for one Canadian dollar at a thrift store not four blocks from my home.

Young Canada Boys with the S.O.S, on the Frontier can be found at the Toronto Public Library and seven of our universities. It can be read online here at the Internet Archive.

I wouldn't recommend it.

Related post:

Dreaming of the Hun