Pulp and Its Origins

Thomas P. Kelley, King of Canadian Pulps, as imagined by Henry van der Linde

The Globe & Mail, 9 January 1982.

A holiday from the working month of McIntyre today so that I can go on about No Tears for Goldie.

Apologies.

The most interesting thing about the novel is the story of Ginger Daniels, the young widow who turns up ready to work at the brothel. Hers stands out for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that she never actually becomes a prostitute. So, why include this character at all? She arrives, consumes close to a fifth of the novel with her story, then departs, never to be heard from or mentioned again.

What gives?

I think the answer has to do with the author's habit of recycling material. Plainly put, I believe Kelley was reusing material he'd penned for a romance magazine.

In No Tears for Goldie, the working girls encourage Ginger to tell her story. "You needn't tell much of the first part of your life," says Aunt Maggie, "just begin where you met that husband of yours..." And so she does, sweeping the omniscient narrator aside to speak of her love for a young lawyer named Rod, encounters with his shrew of a mother and the attempt to sabotage their wedding. The account, much more detailed than any other part of the novel, runs one full chapter, ending: "I now know that I would never have to worry about his mother again now that Rod was mine forever - and I was happy."

Happy? Happily ever after, it seems... but the narrator returns in the following chapter, and we discover that Rod died in a car accident ten days into the marriage.

Tragic.

On an unrelated matter, I was curious as to whether Kelley used "Jack C. Fleming" for any other works. True, he claimed to have employed thirty pseudonyms, but in a career that lasted nearly five decades, one might expect considerable repetition. Curiously, the only other works I've found attributed to Jack C. Fleming are mid-20th-century editions of another Canadian book, Musson's Improved Ready Reckoner, Form and Log Book, which was once used in calculating measurements for lumber and other products.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Related post: Heart of Goldie

Heart of Goldie

No Tears for Goldie

Jack C. Fleming [pseud. Thomas P. Kelley]

Toronto: Arrow, 1950

Cover copy paints No Tears for Goldie as "the story of poor, little Goldie Clarke who knew all about sex from first hand experience at an age when most girls were thinking about 'coming out' parties or their first prom." It's an odd piece of writing in that it reveals more about her past than is found in the novel. Odder still, Kelley spends much of No Tears for Goldie recounting the histories of the other girls at Goldie's place of employment, "Aunt Maggies [sic]", an early 20th-century San Francisco brothel. There's Tess, who had been "quick to pick up a knowledge of sex from the lowest sources"; Alma, who was seduced by a hobo at age thirteen; and Vera, who lost her looks and became a scrub woman.

The longest of these stories – twenty-one pages in a 123 page novel – belongs to Ginger, a young widow whom Aunt Maggie turns away. "You're a clean kid if ever I saw one," she says, "there's nothing of the whore in you." The working girls all chip in to help give Ginger a new start, but not Goldie. To quote Aunt Maggie a second time, her best girl has "a heart as hard as steel".

As if to prove the madam wrong, Goldie soon falls for Harvey Perry, a wealthy alderman who lives alone in a palatial mansion by the ocean. Within days they make plans to get marry and leave San Francisco. But then Perry dies. And Aunt Maggie dies. And Goldie finds she is pregnant. She gives birth to a boy, leaves him on the doorstep of a wealthy childless couple named Carson, and spends two years wandering the globe before ending up in a Denver brothel.

In the 8 July 1967 Star Weekly Magazine Kelley described his method, writing that when beginning a novel he had absolutely no idea what would happen, how the plot would unfold or how it would all end. I don't doubt there's truth in this – it explains much – but this ending would have been planned.

On the morning of 18 April 1906, Goldie returns to San Francisco with dreams of getting a job as the Carson's maid and so be close to the son she had given up. Before she can set her plan in motion Goldie happens upon Mrs Carson and the boy on the street:

The time was exactly 9.12 a.m. And then a terrific rumble sounded. THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE HAD BEGUN!!

In horror, she witnesses a disaster of biblical proportions:

The street before her was split wide open, in a long and angry gap. She saw humanity plunged into it, to disappear forever. The sky around her was suddenly aglow, with the glare of countless fires!

The din was indescribable!

Mrs Carson is crushed by a boulder. Goldie shelters her son, before both are buried under "a hundred tons of bricks and mortar". In time their bodies are found by a rescue party, who note that Goldie died with a smile on her face:

"...You'd think she almost welcomed death, with her baby in her arms", one remarks. I wonder who she was?"

The death car made its way up the street. The men returned to their work. And Goldie Clarke's tormented soul had found a certain peace!!

THE END

A "profound novel with a message and a purpose", the cover copy concludes. The message? The purpose? Damned if I know.

Trivia: The 1906 earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m., about one hour before Goldie's return to San Francisco... but, hey, No Tears for Goldie is fiction.

Object: A cheaply produced mass market paperback.

The copyright page informs the reader: "This book has been selected for reprint because of its popular appeal and its successful record of sale when originally printed." In fact, this is the first and only edition of the novel; Arrow Publishing placed this notice in all their books. I'm grateful to bowdler of Fly-by-night for confirming my hunch.

Access: No trace on Worldcat, nothing on AddAll, No Tears for Goldie holds the distinction of being the most elusive book yet featured in this blog. I was fortunate to find a copy two months ago for just five dollars.

Related post:

Pulp and its Origins

A Second 'To Jas. McIntyre'

from William Arthur Deacon's The Four Jameses (Ottawa: Graphic, 1927)

TO JAS. MCINTYRE

A man of mighty mark,

Who crossed the ocean dark

To win some glory;

Resolved to carve his name

High in Canadian fame,

And live in story.

And this methinks will be,

For friend and foe agree

Rare is his talent;

And as much diversified

As our world is wide.

Hail Scotia's gallant!

He racy is, and witty,

As shown by many a ditty

In humourous vein;

And some say wit's his forte,

His muse all turns to sport,

He eschews pain.

But we who know him best

'Gainst this view must protest

He's oft pathetic;

And with his pen so wise,

Can bring tears to the eyes

Of each ascetic.

Related post: Don't Answer the Door!

Don't Answer the Door!

Fort Frances Times, 8 February 1917.

The devoted daughter of James McIntyre, Kate Ruttan wrote several poems honouring her father, including at least two titled "To Jas. McIntyre". This, the superior, was written in happy times, before McIntyre's business was lost to Canada's River Thames. Late in life, she described the gothic scene in a letter to William Arthur Deacon:

Foundation of furniture factory fell & sailed down the River Thames. Coffins, caskets, cupboards, card tables, chairs, pianos, pianolas - all commingled in confusion worse confounded. Also he was previously burned out. He wrote me his true townsmen collected Six Hundred Dollars for him that mournful morn. He was the loveliest man on earth.

It seems Mrs Ruttan inherited her father's bad luck. Widowed at a young age, she struggled to support her small family by working as a schoolteacher, postmistress, newspaper columnist and, it seems, door-to-door salesperson for evangelist Billy Sunday. Her only volume of verse, Rhymes, Right or Wrong, of Rainy River, was published in 1926 by the Fort Frances Times. She died two years later.

Related post: A Second 'To Jas. McIntyre'

A Poetic Argument for Gun Control

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

Nablo in Paperback

Not much more to say about the elusive Nablo, though these paperback covers of The Long November are worthy of mention. The first, published by News Stand Library in 1948, juxtaposes a "Vigorous, lusty; a tale of passion and virile drive" with "AN R.C.A.F. VETERAN'S SENSATIONAL NEW NOVEL", as if to say: "Before you label this as smut, the publisher would like to point out that this novel was written by one of our heroic servicemen."

The artwork is a touch better than most News Stand Library covers, but makes the whole thing look like some light-hearted, mildly risqué romp. And where in Canada do leaves begin falling in November?

News Stand Library's second cover, from 1949, isn't a whole lot better. Does it not look like Steffie Gibson is drowning? Poor little rich girl, caught in a whirlpool with tiny autumnal leaves floating above her beautiful visage.

Predictably, the finest of the lot belongs to the 1952 Signet edition. "Too Many Women - Too Little Time" might not be the most original of pitches, but the cover captures the novel's dark mood and does depict an actual scene.

This last beat-up cover was rescued a couple of decades back from a store's 25¢ bin. It was being rained on and, I'm betting, was within an hour or two of being tossed. Appropriate then, that today's James McIntyre poem was inspired by a neglected book happened upon while out for a stroll, its pages "scattered o'er the ground".

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

The volume concerned is The Posthumous Works of the Late George Menzies, Being a Collection of Poems, Sonnets, &c., &c., Written at Various Times When the Author was Connected with the Provincial Press. Published in 1850 by his widow, Harriet, it can't be bought for under two hundred dollars.

Related posts:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

Nablo in Hollywood