Bliss Carman at 150

Bliss Carman

(15 April 1861 – 8 June 1929)

The End of the Trail

Once more the hunters of the dusk
Are forth to search the moorlands wide,
Among the autumn-colored hills,
And wander by the shifting tide.

All day along the haze-hung verge
They scour upon a fleeing trace,
Between the red sun and the sea.
Where haunts the vision of your face.

The plane at Martock lies and drinks
The long Septembral gaze of blue;
The royal leisure of the hills
Hath wayward reveries of you.

Far rovers of the ancient dream
Have all their will of musing hours:
Your eyes were gray-deep as the sea,
Your hands lay open in the flowers!

From mining Rawdon to Pereau,
For all the gold they delve and share,
The goblins of the Ardise hills
Can horde no treasure like your hair.

The swirling tide, the lonely gulls,
The sweet low wood-winds that rejoice—
No sound nor echo of the sea
But hath tradition of your voice.

The crimson leaves, the yellow fruit.
The basking woodlands mile on mile—
No gleam in all the russet hills
But wears the solace of your smile.

A thousand cattle rove and feed
On the great marshes in the sun,
And wonder at the restless sea;
But I am glad the year is done.

Because I am a wanderer
Upon the roads of endless quest,
Between the hill-wind and the hills,
Along the margin men call rest.

Because there lies upon my lips
A whisper of the wind at morn,
A murmur of the rolling sea
Cradling the land where I was born;

Because its sleepless tides and storms
Are in my heart for memory
And music, and its gray-green hills
Run white to bear me company;

Because in that sad time of year,
With April twilight on the earth
And journeying rain upon the sea,
With the shy windflowers was my birth;

Because I was a tiny boy
Among the thrushes of the wood,
And all the rivers in the hills
Were playmates of my solitude;

Because the holy winter night
Was for my chamber, deep among
The dark pine forests by the sea,
With woven red auroras hung,

Silent with frost and floored with snow,
With what dream folk to people it
And bring their stories from the hills,
When all the splendid stars were lit;

Therefore I house me not with kin.
But journey as the sun goes forth,
By stream and wood and marsh and sea,
Through dying summers of the North;

Until, some hazy autumn day.
With yellow evening in the skies
And rime upon the tawny hills.
The far blue signal smoke shall rise,

To tell my scouting foresters
Have heard the clarions of rest
Bugling, along the outer sea.
The end of failure and of quest.

Then all the piping Nixie folk,
Where lonesome meadow winds are low,
Through all the valleys in the hills
Their river reeds shall blow and blow,

To lead me like a joy, as when
The shining April flowers return,
Back to a footpath by the sea
With scarlet hip and ruined fern.

For I must gain, ere the long night
Bury its travelers deep with snow,
That trail among the Ardise hills
Where first I found you years ago.

I shall not fail, for I am strong,
And Time is very old, they say,
And somewhere by the quiet sea
Makes no refusal to delay.

There will I get me home, and there
Lift up your face in my brown hand.
With all the rosy rusted hills
About the heart of that dear land.

The Jacket, the Dressing Gown and the Closet

Dark Passions Subdue

Douglas Sanderson

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1952

This is an unpleasant novel filled with unpleasant characters, but you musn't complain. The dust jacket cautions: "Mr. Sanderson is a terrifying critic of the social scene. His Montreal frauds can be found in big cities everywhere. His hero's crisis is the crisis not of an individual, but of an era."

A hero, a crisis... it's hard to identify either. The protagonist of this, Sanderson's debut, is Stephen Hollis, a young McGill student who lives with his wealthy, pious, Protestant parents in post-war Westmount. He's handsome and he's intelligent, but the reader will find that this poor little rich boy has the personality of a cinder block. To the characters in this novel, however, Stephen is very attractive indeed. Everybody, male and female, wants to be his friend – while he cares for no one.

And then Stephen meets Fabien, a sophisticated Noel Coward sort of figure who never leaves his large, luxuriously decorated Montreal house. Young, well-groomed and impeccably dressed, Fabien is a bon vivant who is always at the ready with a bon mot or catty remark. He is a comfortably directionless aesthete, content to bathe in the delights of fine wine and his intimate entourage of attractive young men. This includes Duncan, a perpetually shirtless dancer, whom Fabien has not only taken into his home, but supports financally.

Here I'm about to spoil things for the potential reader:

It's not true that Stephen's "crisis is the crisis not of an individual, but of an era" – quite the opposite, in fact. The moment comes with just pages to go when he professes his love for Fabien. Stephen begs to be held, Stephen is rejected. It is only then, when attempting physical intimacy, that Stephen learns Fabien is not a "queer".

"Whoops! Stevie dear, Whoopsie!" says Crystal, who reveals herself as Fabien's girlfriend.

Fabien himself is not nearly as goodnatured: "You fool! You bloody fool! You misunderstand me. I am a foreigner." Because, you see, foreigners are often mistaken for homosexuals.

What is a surprise to Stephen was also a surprise to me. Sanderson is guilty of toying with the reader; playing upon stereotype in order to deceive. Here, for example, is our first glimpse of Fabien.

Up on the landing a shaft of light appeared from an opening door and a figure, smoking a cigarette and wearing a bronze-colored Charvet dressing gown, emerged, advanced, and leaned nonchalantly over the bannister. The voice was as pleasantly languid as the pose.

"Greetings, you infamous cow. You won't mind if I mention that I cooked a perfectly delicious Lobster Newburg and opened a bottle of Chablis?"

Duncan laughed. "I beg your pardon."

"Granted, of course."

"I was out with a woman. She wanted to know if I was an intellectual."

"You are, my dear. Far too. Did you convince her?"

"I don't know. I went home with her and she offered me some wine." He sat down on the bottom stair. "I suppose there is no way of helping anyone. That poor lonely woman. Christ, it was ghastly." He burst into tears.

The figure did not move. The voice softened. "Come upstairs and have a shower and tell me all about it, my pet. And let that great heart bleed for the world if it must, but please, please don't weep on the staircase. It simply isn't done. Come now."

Dear Duncan – in tears again. Earlier in the evening he'd wept while rejecting the advances of beautiful Westmount matron Miriam:

"I can't," he said, his breath was coming in sobs; "I'm sorry, but I can't." His hands were over his face, muffling his voice so that she could barely understand what he was saying.

"Duncan–"

"No, it's no use. I tried, honestly. When you came into the room I told myself I could do it because I was a man."

But you see, Duncan, a Scot, is also a foreigner.

In terms of sales, Dark Passions Subdue went nowhere. My copy appears to have been marked down several times with no takers. Reviews were awful and tended to be a touch unfair. Writing in Saturday Night, B.K. Sandwell chose to concentrate on the author's errors when writing French dialogue. One wonders whether The New York Times' John Brooks read the book at all; he describes it as a "first novel about a young couple living in Montreal."

The commercial and critical disappointment caused Sanderson to reinvent himself as a mystery writer. As "Martin Brett", the next year he published Exit in Green, which was followed by the wonderful, noirish Hot Freeze (1954).

Trivia: Credit for the dust jacket's design goes to H. Lawrence Hoffman. No great fan, I've always found Hoffman's work pretty forgettable, though his cover for the first edition of Mickey Spillane's The Long Wait (1951) does stick in the mind.

Access: Not found in a single public library in Canada. Eight university libraries come through for us, but not McGill. Five copies of the first and only hardcover edition are currently listed for sale online, ranging from C$10 (crummy, ex-library copy) to US$112.50 ("Very Good", although the accompanying description leans toward Good). The 1953 Avon paperback – also first and only – seems just as uncommon: five copies ranging in price from US$13 to US$46. Sadly, in purchasing the paperback one misses out on on the moralizing found on the hardcover's jacket copy. That said, you do get this: "Young Stephen Hollis discovered the irrevocable truth of his lack of normal maleness."

"Sexy Cover Art", says one bookseller. Not in my opinion.

Each to his own, I suppose.

'O martyr'd McGee!'

Thomas D'Arcy McGee

13 April 1825 - 7 April 1868

A stray tribute "from the pen of an accomplished Catholic priest of Pennsylvania", collected in The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Sadlier, 1870).

Related posts:

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

D'Arcy McGee, All Compliment to Thee

'Death of D'Arcy McGee'

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

A Poet's Angry Word With the Fenian Brotherhood

A Gentleman of Pleasure is Recognized

The first review of A Gentleman of Pleasure today – this from literary historian, antiquarian bookseller and author Stephen J. Gertz.

...A Gentleman of Pleasure is the long-awaited biography of Glassco, one of the most fascinating characters of twentieth century literature in English yet one, for the most part, completely unknown. That should change with this thoroughly researched, engaging, and elegantly written book.

How to honour the occasion? Why with a previously unpublished photo of John Glassco and Graeme Taylor strolling along the boardwalk in Nice, of course.

Crossposted at A Gentleman of Pleasure.

A Local Poet is Recognized

And so another National Poetry Month begins. In little St Marys we'll be kicking things off with James MacRae Poetry Night, a free event at Stewart Books, the town's lone bookstore. An historic evening, it will feature what is likely be the first public reading of the man's verse. The Friends of the St Marys Public Library will be raising funds through the sale of this 24-page chapbook. It's cheap at $5 – and with a numbered print-run of only 40 copies, is sure to be sought-after by future generations.

More MacRae (né MacDonald) to whet the appetite:

Written in the House of a Quarrelsome Wife and Drunken Husband

Oh! What pleasure it would be
To reach the gates of hell
For those who in a place like this
For many years must dwell.

Good angels, if ye ever weep,
Here drop one pitying tear;
But, demons, dare not tread this place,
If woman’s rage ye fear.