07 June 2016

Am I the Only One Laughing with Leacock?



The Hohenzollerns in America; 
     With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and Other Impossibilities
Stephen Leacock
Toronto: S.B. Gundy, 1919

Robertson Davies hated this book. "Leacock at his worst," he wrote in his ill-fated tribute to the man, adding: "Nevertheless, we may not dismiss it; he wrote it, and if we accept the sunshine, we must not shrink from a peep into the dank chill of his shade."

Centring on the lengthy title story, Davies' disgust is anything but unique. Biographers David M. Legate, Albert Moritz and Theresa Moritz express similar opinions, while Ralph L. Currie, the first to pen a life of Leacock, chooses to simply ignore it. In her Leacock book, Margaret MacMillan complains that the story is "too broad and too crude." Writes the author of Paris 1919:
The title piece of his 1919 book, The Hohenzollerns in America, starts from the amusing conceit that the German royal family takes refuge in the United States as penniless refugees after Germany's defeat in the First World War but goes downhill because Leacock cannot keep his light touch. "The proper punishment," says Leacock in his preface, "for the Hohenzollerns, and the Hapsburgs, and the Mecklenburgs, and the Muckendorfs, and all such puppets and princelings, is that they should be made to work."
I'm breaking in here with a couple of comments, the first being that the title piece does not begin with a "light touch," but is heavy from the start. Note that MacMillan contradicts herself by quoting the story's preface.* And while it's true that Leacock can be relied upon for a goodnatured, inoffensive chuckle, his touch was not always light. Teetotals will confirm.

MacMillan continues:
The resulting sketch is nasty and not at all funny. At its end, the former Kaiser, now a ragged street peddler in the Bowery, dies of his injuries after a traffic accident.
I myself found "The Hohenzollerns in America" nasty, funny and fun. Anticipating Sue Townsend's The Queen and I, it imagines the German
royal family stripped of wealth and trappings, and forced to work "as millions of poor emigrants out of Germany have worked for generations past." The piece is presented in the form of a diary – Townsend would approve – kept by Princess Frederica, niece to the deposed emperor, beginning with her first day in steerage on a ship bound for New York. Once in America, the Hohens, as they are now known, do their best to reinvent themselves. A couple become waiters. Uncle Henry, once a Grand Admiral, finds a job as a stevedore while studying to become a Barge Master. Meanwhile, untrustworthy Cousin Ferdinand makes a killing in the schmatta trade, as reflected in the vaguely anti-semitic dust jacket of the first British edition. One of their number, Cousin Willie, becomes an out and out thief.

The deposed Kaiser loses his mind and ends up hawking pins, ribbons and bobbles to amused folk who see him as a something of a character. In the princess's account, he doesn't die after a traffic accident, as MacMillan claims, but of injuries sustained by running into a line of cavalry horses at the unveiling of a monument "put up in memory of the people who were lost when one of our war boats fought the English cruiser Lusitania." Princess Frederica finds true love with Mr Peters, a very nice iceman.

"What makes us cringe as we read it is that Leacock has plainly aimed it at minds inferior to his own to feed a nasty kind of patriotism and mean triumph," writes Davies. Come now, most readers of Leacock can't quite match the man's intellect. This dimwit detected not so much as a dash of nasty patriotism, but savoured the stewing of the aristocracy. Such is my taste. Any country's aristocracy will do. I'm also happy to eat the rich, though Davies doesn't share my appetite:
Even when we try to consider it ["The Hohenzollerns in America"] as a part of an hysterical post-war relief, it is still bad Leacock, and the other things in the book, including the satire on plutocrats who profited from the war but sent their chauffeurs to fight, is no better.
No better? The piece to which Davies refers, "The War Sacrifices of Mr. Spugg," is just about the best thing Leacock ever published. This is fine satire:
Although we had been members of the same club for years, I only knew Mr. Spugg by sight until one afternoon when I heard him saying that he intended to send his chauffeur to the war.
     It was said quite quietly, no bombast or boasting about it. Mr. Spugg was standing among a little group of listening members of the club and when he said that he had decided to send his chauffeur, he spoke with a kind of simple earnestness, a determination that marks the character of the man.
     "Yes," he said, "we need all the man power we can command. This thing has come to a showdown and we've got to recognise it. I told Henry that it's a showdown and that he's to get ready and start right away."
     "Well, Spugg," said one of the members, "you're certainly setting us a fine example."
You won't find "The War Sacrifices of Mr. Spugg" in any Leacock anthology, nor "War and Peace in the Galaxy Club" in which a series of
ill-conceived fundraising events meant to aid the Red Cross only bring increasing debt. By the Armistice, the Club faces insolvency:
Peace has ruined us. Not a single member, so far as I am aware, is prepared to protest against the peace, or is anything but delighted to think that the war is over. At the same time we do feel that if we could have had a longer notice, six months for instance, we could have braced ourselves better to stand up against it and meet the blow when it fell.
Both pieces come from the middle section of the book: "Echoes of the War". Given the title, should we really be expecting a light touch? It leads with "The Boy Who Came Back," an account of young nephew Tom's first dinner party as a returning war hero. The host is at concerned that Tom will disturb the other guests with gruesome accounts of the war, and is then disappointed when he doesn't.
Tom had nothing to say about the Hindenburg line. In fact, for the first half of the dinner he hardly spoke. I think he was worried about his left hand. There is a deep furrow across the back of it where a piece of shrapnel went through and there are two fingers that will hardly move at all. I could see that he was ashamed of its clumsiness and afraid that someone might notice it. So he kept silent. Professor Razzler did indeed ask him straight across the table what he thought about the final breaking of the Hindenburg line. But he asked it with that same fierce look from under his bushy eyebrows with which he used to ask Tom to define the path of a tangent, and Tom was rattled at once. He answered something about being afraid that he was not well posted, owing to there being so little chance over there to read the papers.
When Tom finally breaks his silence it is to talk about how his French comrades had really taken to baseball, his great passion in life.
It grieved me to note that as the men sat smoking their cigars and drinking liqueur whiskey (we have cut out port at our house till the final peace is signed) Tom seemed to have subsided into being only a boy again, a first-year college boy among his seniors. They spoke to him in quite a patronising way, and even asked him two or three direct questions about fighting in the trenches, and wounds and the dead men in No Man's Land and the other horrors that the civilian mind hankers to hear about. Perhaps they thought, from the boy's talk, that he had seen nothing. If so, they were mistaken. For about three minutes, not more, Tom gave them what was coming to them. He told them, for example, why he trained his 'fellows' to drive the bayonet through the stomach and not through the head, that the bayonet driven through the face or skull sticks and, but there is no need to recite it here. Any of the boys like Tom can tell it all to you, only they don't want to and don't care to.
Dismiss The Hozenhollers in America? Never. I've enjoyed the sunshine, but within the dank chill of his shade exists a depth that makes me appreciate the man all the more. It's Leacock at his best.


A favourite light passage to cleanse the palate:
Mr. Peters came over to my chair and took hold of the arm of it and told me not to cry. Somehow his touch on the arm of the chair thrilled all through me and though I knew that it was wrong I let him keep it there and even let him stroke the upholstery and I don't know just what would have happened but at that very minute Uncle William came in.
Object: A dull-looking 222-page book with olive green boards, lacking dust jacket. I bought my first Canadian edition twenty-six years ago in Montreal. Price: $6.00. I probably could've got it cheaper.

Access: The Hohenzollerns in America is one of the few early Leacocks to have been excluded from the New Canadian Library. The collection has been out of print over nine decades, which isn't to say that it is at all difficult to find. Dozens of copies are being offered online at prices ranging from one American dollar to US$521. At the low and high end are jacketless copies of the John Lane British first, the difference being that the latter is being sold by crooks. The one to own comes courtesy of bookseller Ian Thompson, who offers an inscribed and dated copy of the John Lane first in uncommon dust jacket. Price: US$400.

Leacock being Leacock, the book is available at our big city libraries and nearly every university in the land.

A German translation, Die Hohenzollern in Amerika und andere Satiren, was published in 1989 by Fackelträger-Verlag!

* MacMillan limits herself to the beginning of what just might be Leacock's longest published sentence. It is worth quoted in full:
The proper punishment for the Hohenzollerns, and the Hapsburgs, and the Mecklenburgs, and the Muckendorfs, and all such puppets and princelings, is that they should be made to work; and not made to work in the glittering and glorious sense, as generals and chiefs of staff and legislators, and land-barons, but in the plain and humble part of laborers looking for a job; that they should carry a hod and wield a trowel and swing a pick and, at the day's end, be glad of a humble supper and a night's rest; that they should work, in short, as millions of poor emigrants out of Germany have worked for generations past; that there should be about them none of the prestige of fallen grandeur; that, if it were possible, by some trick of magic, or change of circumstance, the world should know them only as laboring men, with the dignity and divinity of kingship departed out of them; that, as such, they should stand or fall, live or starve, as best they might by the work of their own hands and brains.
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03 June 2016

'After Ypres' by Robert Stanley Weir


The Gazette, 3 June 1916
One hundred year old verse by Montreal's Robert Stanley Weir from After Ypres and Other Poems (Toronto: Musson, 1917).
AFTER YPRES

June 3rd, 1916 
                                  Fight on, O Canada
                                       Fight on!
                                  Still arm thy valiant sons,
                                  Thy best and bravest ones,
                                       Still hangs our fate!
                                  Loud the far battle calls,
                                  Hasten ere Freedom falls!
                                       The hour is great
                                            Fight on! 
                                  Not for thyself alone,
                                  For bone of thine own bone,
                                       Thine own roof-tree!
                                  Fight for thy Motherlands,
                                  And for those other lands,
                                       That they be free.
                                            Fight on! 
                                  Strike, with free flag unfurl'd!
                                  Strike, with the risen world!
                                       Great battle wage!
                                  So shall the brood unborn
                                  At dawn of a new morn
                                       Have heritage.
                                            Fight on! 
                                  Fight on, O Canada,
                                       Fight on!
                                  For those who quiet lie
                                  Beneath another sky:
                                       Blood of thy blood;
                                       (Let them not die)
                                  Thy heroes battle-scarr'd
                                  Thy heroes glory-starr'd,
                                       Now with their God,
                                            Fight on!
The Gazette, 14 June 1916

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02 June 2016

The Battle of Ridgeway: 150 Years



Verse for this day, the sesquicentenary of the Battle of Ridgeway, by Archibald McKillop, the Blind Bard of Megantic, taken from his Collected Verse (Winnipeg: n.p., n.d.).

ONTARIO’S BRAVE DEFENDERS

(Suggested by the monument to those who fell at Ridgeway)

                              No cooler spread the maple shade
                                   By great Ontario’s waters,
                              Nor ever marshalled truer men
                                   The pride of wives and daughters,
                              Than on the day we lent our ear
                                   To news and rumour vendors.
                              To arms! To arms! the foe is near,
                                   Ontario’s Brave Defenders!

                              Then forward sped with dauntless tread
                                   Our troops, the bugle sounding,
                              To rally by their battle-drums
                                   The British flag surrounding.
                              No patriot or volunteer
                                   One cherished right surrenders.
                              To arms! To arms! the foe is near,
                                   Ontario’s Brave Defenders!

                              By war’s alarms when called to arms
                                   Went sternly forth to duty
                              A true, a tried, heroic band,
                                   The pride of worth and beauty;
                              When parting kiss or falling tear
                                   Foreboding thought engenders,
                              'Twas thus we felt when foes were near,
                                   Ontario’s Brave Defenders.

                              But never yet can we forget
                                   The kind farewells they bade us,
                              Those dear loved ones, who fought and fell
                                   By Ridgeway’s lengthened shadows.
                              The trump of war resounding clear —
                                   To rout the raid-pretenders
                              They rose to arms, our volunteers,
                                   Ontario’s Brave Defenders.

                              They come, they come, with muffled drum,
                                   The victor host returning;
                              A pall is spread around the dead,
                                   The country wrapped in mourning.
                              And lo! This sculptured stone appears,
                                   The gift a nation renders
                              To those departed volunteers,
                                   Ontario’s Brave Defenders.

                              And while we weep for those who sleep,
                                   And grateful mem’ries cherish,
                              From Canada, true Freedom’s shore,
                                   Let all invaders perish!
                              For nobler far than lords or peers
                                   Or knighted court-attenders,
                              Our true, our loyal volunteers,
                                   Ontario’s Brave Defenders.

                              And suns may gleam on lake and stream
                                   In peaceful calm reposing,
                              All echoes die beyond the hills
                                   When daylight’s eye is closing; —
                             But should the tocsin wake our ears
                                  Amid these glowing splendours,
                             To arms will rise our volunteers,
                                  Ontario’s Brave Defenders!

A Bonus:

The St. Catharines Constitutional
7 June 1866
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01 June 2016

Ruth Strong's 'The Campus - June 1916'


Miss Ruth Strong
Torontonensis, 1918
Century-old verse by Ruth Strong of Hamilton, an undergraduate of the University of Toronto, featured in Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1917).


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30 May 2016

AC/DC Nurse: Another Harlequin Threesome


Staff Nurses in Love
Hilda Pressley
Toronto: Harlequin, 1962
Nurse's Dilemma
Hilda Pressley
Toronto: Harlequin, 1965
Make Up Your Mind Nurse [sic]
Phyllis Matthewman
Toronto: Harlequin, 1964

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24 May 2016

Worst. Dialogue. Ever.



Over the past week, more than a couple of readers – three, in fact – have admired my ability to get through He Will Return, Helen Dickson Reynolds' 1959 girl-meets-boy, girl-loses-boy, girl-buys-boy-return-ticket novel. In truth, it wasn't such a slog. True, He Will Return spans a quarter-century – and encompasses such events as the Great Depression, the Second World War and the opening of the Vancouver Art Gallery – but it isn't so long a novel. Time moves quickly from the start, picks up momentum, begins skipping over years, then comes to a dead stop on page 256.

My pace in reading He Will Return was more measured: a chapter or two a night until the thing was done. The plot didn't interest much; what kept me going was the dialogue, which I'm certain is the very worst of the 185 novels I've read from The Dusty Bookcase. This exchange, in which girl Constance is introduced to boy Ivor, is so very bad that I can't help but repeat it:
"You know, Ivor, this pretty little girl has just been given a diploma by the Vancouver Art School. I'm afraid you're going to find this city a poor market for pictures, Connie, and this Depression doesn't help."
     "Don't be such a crape hanger [sic], John," his wife reproved.
     "Our new Art Gallery will give young artists a place to exhibit and sell their paintings."
     "Oh sure,"the doctor agreed amiably. "We're a young city, you know, Ivor. It's only forty-six years since this town was completely wiped out by fire."
     "Great Scott! It's inconceivable. The houses and gardens look so well established."
Expository dialogue, right? So much of it is, and yet for all the talking a lot is left unsaid... or isn't said until long after one would've expected. Consider this exchange, which takes place on the first Sunday after Constance and Ivor's honeymoon:
"Darling," said Constance, "you're Methodist and I'm Anglican. Shall we take turns going to each other's churches? I believe the United Church has swallowed the Methodist in North Vancouver, anyway."
     Ivor looked gloomy and stirred his coffee. Constance bit her lip.
     "Dearest, you'd probably like to sing in the choir. I'll go to eight o'clock Communion after this, and to the morning Service to your church with you."
     A deep flush mounted to Ivor's eyes. "I said I was brought up in a strict Methodist family. I didn't say I adhered to the faith. I... I regard Christ as the greatest teacher of ethics, but I have no use for organized religion.
     Constance turned white.
Whiter, anyway.

Constance gets to the church on time despite the shock, and is a regular congregant throughout the novel. Project Bookmark Canada will want to consider a plaque at the former site of Vancouver's St John's Anglican Church.


The young marrieds have barely settled into their first home when even younger marrieds Dick and Evelyn Burnett move in next door. One afternoon, between clotheslines, Evelyn tells Constance that Dick will be asking her husband to join his glee club. Just the thing to raise one's spirits in this Depression!
"A glee club sounds rather jolly," Ivor said, rolling a cigarette. He had cut down his smoking to a cigarette after lunch and one after dinner. "If I get a definite invitation from Burnett, I'll accept it."
     The words were hardly out of his mouth before the doorbell rang. Ivor jumped up eagerly to open the door and welcomed Dick Burnett in.
     "By jove, it's good to meet another man who sings, as I hear you do. Will you have this chair? D'you smoke? Afraid I have no tailormades now to offer you. I roll my own."
     "No, thanks." Dick Burnett sat down, glancing at the piano. "I only smoke mentholated cigarettes and not many of them, because of my voice. I dare say it's a superstition."
And I dare say, it isn't.

Never mind. I'm not such a prick about our forebearers as James Cameron. I quote this passage only because it points to the most curious aspect of Reynolds' dialogue. Shall, shouldn't, oughtn't, whether Canadian, Welshman, Irishman or Englishman, every character but one speaks like a proper Etonian schoolboy. The very same Etonian schoolboy. The exception is... well, I'll let him introduce himself:
"Good evening, Mrs. Owen-Jones. I'm your neighbor, Malcolm Macrae. I thought as I was passing I would just look in and see if you could use a wee bunch of radishes. They grow awfully early on my south slope. You'll maybe no care for radishes?"
     "I'm just crazy about radishes. Do come in. Mr. Macrae. It's very kind of you to call and bring us these delicious radishes. Won't you sit down? My husband will be out in a second; he's shaving."
     "I doubt I've come at the wrong time. You and your good man are going out?"
     "Oh, no, we're not thinking of going out. We have two small children, and we never leave them alone."
     "I've seen your two wee boys; they're bonnie laddies. I obsairved your vegetables coming along nicely. I have more tomato plants and cabbage and cauliflower in my hotbed than I can use; I'd be glad if you could take a few off my hands; I'm fashed to throw them away."
Whilst on the subject of hotbeds, those who made it through last week's post will remember the name Stephen Cochrane. A pipe-smoking widower, Stephen spends a chaste summer in Constance's company, only to discover that the woman he thought was a widow is actually an abandoned wife:
"Constance, I knew the children were all away and I came over with the firm intention of asking you to marry me. Now that is shot to pieces. Do you know where your husband is?"
     Her voice shook. "I haven't known for seven years and some months. You are the first person that I have told, and I am telling you because you have paid me the greatest compliment that a man can pay a woman."
     He sat very quiet for a while. "You could have him presumed dead," he said slowly, "or you could have him traced and make sure. You and I are Anglicans and we couldn't marry even if you were to get a divorce."
     "Stephen, I am sorry, I firmly believe that Ivor is alive and that in the course of time he will come back to me."
And, of course, he does... just a matter of waiting another decade, tracking him down in England, writing a pleading letter, and then paying his way back. It's somehow appropriate that the novel's final words belong to Ivor; after all, for most of the book he's not heard from. After Ivor returns, the poor man barely has a chance to speak before Constance loads him in the car for a second honeymoon on Vancouver Island:
"Oh, Ivor, we forgot that you need a driver's license. Now I'm afraid I'll have to keep the wheel."
     "You're the one to have the wheel," Ivor said humbly. "And, Connie, my sweet, from this day on Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God." 
FIN
Ivor quotes Ruth 1:16, but has he found religion? I think not. He knows the passage because he was "brought up in a strict Methodist family." What Ivor has found is a woman who will feed and keep him in neckties and socks. Constance couldn't afford to do that when they first met, but she can now, hence his return.

Ah, romance.

One last thing:

He Will Return? Shouldn't it be, oughtn't it be He Shall Return?


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16 May 2016

But Why Would You Want Him To?: The Very Strange Story of a Delusional Abandoned Wife



He Will Return
Helen Dickson Reynolds
Toronto: Ryerson, 1959

Newly-minted art school graduate Constance Manning faces the challenge of making a living as a portrait painter in Depression-era Vancouver, as detailed on the second page of this, Helen Dickson Reynolds' twenty-third novel:
"You know, Ivor, this pretty little girl has just been given a diploma by the Vancouver Art School. I'm afraid you're going to find this city a poor market for pictures, Connie, and this Depression doesn't help."
     "Don't be such a crape hanger [sic], John," his wife reproved. "Our new Art Gallery will give young artists a place to exhibit and sell their paintings."
     "Oh sure,"the doctor agreed amiably. "We're a young city, you know, Ivor. It's only forty-six years since this town was completely wiped out by fire."
     "Great Scott! It's inconceivable. The houses and gardens look so well established."
Pay no attention to crape hanger John and wife – this is their only scene – focus instead on Ivor. He of the title, Ivor Owen-Jones is a thin young Welshman with "jet -black hair brushed back from a good forehead, a well-shaped nose and sensitive, mobile mouth." This is the moment of their meeting... by which I mean the meeting of Constance and Ivor, not nose and mobile mouth.


In the months that follow they play tennis in Stanley Park, swim at Second Beach, visit the Pauline Johnson Memorial and take in cricket matches at Brockton Point. One afternoon by rustic Lumberman's Arch Ivor says something about maybe one day visiting Wales together. For a reason I cannot fathom, Constance interprets this a marriage proposal. Ivor seems equally dumfounded, but goes with the flow just the same. In the second chapter the young couple marry and move into a small bungalow in North Vancouver.

Life isn't easy for the Owen-Joneses – this is the Depression, you'll remember. Ivor has an indescript office job with a firm called Western Imports, while Constance gives art lessons and receives the occasional commission to do a child's portrait. Things would be a whole lot easier if only the groom would make use of his God-given talents. Ivor has a voice like Devonshire cream and an extensive repertory of traditional Welsh songs. Fussy Shaughnessey matrons look to hire him to perform at their soirées – "a refreshing change from the usual ballads and arias" – but Ivor takes offence in not being permitted to mingle with the guests. "Honestly, it was like the Middle Ages, when musicians ranked with scullions," he tells his bride.

The pair live frugally, affording poor Constance precious few opportunities to don her trousseau dresses. Things go from bad to worse when Ivor is fired on the very day Constance announces that she is pregnant. Her father gets him another job, but the firm goes bust just after the baby is born. Constance becomes pregnant again, and Ivor struggles to make ends meet as a door-to-door washing machine salesman. Must've been hell on the back. When the couple fall behind on their bills, losing their electricity, Ivor decides to apply for public relief:
He stared at the window curtained with raindrops. "I'll wait till the mail comes. I've made applications to firms with box numbers... there may be something. Anyway, it's a filthy day."
     The postman came with letters held under his glistening raincoat. He shoved one legal-looking envelope through the slot in the door. Ivor snatched it up.
     "It's from a legal firm in Wales." His fingers shook as he tore the stiff paper of the envelope. "My God, it's a will... Great-aunt Gladys has died... and left me a thousand pounds. I can't believe it."
I could believe it. I'd been waiting for Great-aunt Gladys to kick off ever since Constance had sent the old girl sketches of her babies.

Ivor races to the bank, leaving Constance in the dark with pencil stub and paper figuring out just how to make the inheritance stretch. He returns holding the deed to a farm outside Nelson. "I bought it at a tremendous bargain because the owner, quite an old man, has died recently, and the heirs want to wind up the estate."

Oh, dear.

The farm isn't quite as described. The Owen-Joneses manage to stave off poverty just long enough for Constance to give birth to a third child. When Great-aunt Gladys's money runs out, Ivor runs off, leaving behind a note promising that he'll return once he's found work. Constance carries on for several seasons, all the while expecting Ivor to walk through the door at any minute. If only he'd write. She eventually sells the farm, moves with her children back to Vancouver, and secures a position as an public school art teacher.

"The war years passed..." Yes, they did – and still no word from Ivor. Constance, cautious, manages to clothe and feed and her three children. No occasions now to dip into her trousseau. Straight-laced next-door neighbour Stephen Cochrane expresses interest, but is shot down: "Stephen, I am sorry, but I firmly believe that Ivor is alive and that in the course of time he will come back to me."

It was at this point I began to think Constance had become unhinged. After all, it had been more than eight years since Ivor had gone off in search of a job and he hadn't so much as sent a letter. In the fact of this, Constance's love and faith remain constant; she looks forward to the day he too will laugh at their children's antics.

Where once time crawled, then passed, it now flies. "Life went on fairly quietly until David's twenty-first birthday," begins the twenty-first chapter. What happens is this: David, her eldest, announces that he is going to marry a mousy pianist named Mona. The news brings on a dizzy spell. A few weeks later, daughter Faith earns a scholarship to study ballet in far off New York City. Another dizzy spell. Constance, who had demonstrated such fortitude in raising three young children, alone, is suddenly frail. When number two son Robert gets a job as pilot up north, Constance suddenly faces long evenings alone in a house that "echoes with emptiness." She fills her leisure time with visits to her elderly parents and taking shut-ins for drives. One particularly lonely night she decides to go to the cinema. There Constance takes in a bland feature, followed by a cartoon, followed by a travelogue in which she spots Ivor walking in Trafalgar Square.

You caught that, right? Ivor walking in Trafalgar  Square? I nearly missed it myself because I'd pretty much given up on his return. After all, he disappeared in the first half of the novel and hadn't been heard from since. Oh, there were times I thought he might turn up, like in the odd, overly-detailed description of  the VJ-Day crowd in chapter 18, but with just nine pages to go his reappearance was a real surprise.

On the next page, Constance manages to get a letter to her husband:


Come back and take care of me? When did Ivor ever take care of you, Constance? You were better off without him. That Welshman is a leach. The good folks at Western Imports will attest that he has absolutely no work ethic. Besides, what kind of husband buys a farm – sight unseen – without consulting his wife? For that matter, what kind of idiot buys a farm when he knows nothing about farming. For goodness sake, what kind of father refuses to sing for his baby's supper?

Ivor does indeed return. Before he does, "happy as a young bride," Constance shops for his favourite foods, a new tie and new socks. She picks him up at the airport. They embrace. All is forgiven. The next day they go off on what Constance describes as their "second honeymoon."

The ending is so very sudden and so very strange that I began to wonder whether it was all in Constance's head. Could it be that the omniscient narrator isn't? Might it be that this story is told by Constance herself? Is it all an abandoned wife's fantasy?

Nothing so interesting, I'm afraid. The sad truth is that He Will Return is just a very bad novel.

He will return? Sure, but only if you pay his way.

Note: Did not win the Ryerson Fiction Award.

Object: A 256-page novel in unattractive brown boards. The dust jacket illustration is by art school graduate Jon Nielsen. The back of the jacket takes the form of an advertisement for recent Ryerson titles by Will Bird, Ada Pierce Chambers, E.M. Granger Bennett, Gaie Taylor and Myron David Orr. Reynolds' previous novel, McBain's Brier Rose (1957), leads the list.

Access: Though the author's most common book, He Will Return is found in just fourteen of our university libraries. Library and Archives Canada doesn't have it, but the Calgary Public Library does.

The Canadian edition enjoyed one lone printing. The novel was published in the United States by Thomas Bouregy. Copies listed for sale online run between US$10 and US$30. I found mine six years ago at a London Goodwill. Price: $2.99.


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09 May 2016

A Wild Olive of Nitrate



A short follow-up to last week's post on The Wild Olive by Basil King:

Sold at auction four years ago by eMoviePoster.com (note watermark), above is the only poster I've ever seen for The Wild Olive. Should've bought it. The Canadian dollar was trading on par back then, and the winning bid wasn't so much as five Yankee sawbucks.

The Wild Olive was, as the adverts said, adapted from the celebrated novel of Basil King. It was released in 1915, becoming the first Hollywood feature to come from a novel by an Islander. The Inner Shrine (1917) and The Lifted Veil (1917), also adapted from King novels, rank second and third. Then came The Spreading Dawn (1917). It was inspired by a King short story, so doesn't really count. Meanwhile, L.M. Montgomery fans were still waiting to see Anne Shirley on the screen.

The Wild Olive was the sixty-fifth of director Oscar Apfel's 120 films... so, mid-career, right? Myrtle Stedman and Forrest Stanley star as heroine and hero. Myrtle Stedman was a silent film star, but I'm not sure I've ever seen her in anything. Stanley I recognize from a bit part in what is just about the best episode ever of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This would be 1955's "Breakdown", in which he plays an accountant who is fired by Joseph Cotten. Total screen time: 42 seconds. Myrtle Stedman was long dead by then. The Wild Olive was made when both were enjoying career highs.


It also stars Mary Ruby and Edmund Lowe. I know the latter best as the adulterous Dr Wayne Talbot in Dinner at Eight.


Would that I knew Lowe from The Wild Olive, but as with all adaptations of King novels, the film is lost. All I've been able to see of Lowe's performance comes in this still from the July 1915 edition of Motion Picture News:


The most detailed description of what we're missing comes courtesy of T.C. Kennedy in the 3 July 1915 edition of Motography. I present it here in full, recognizing that it will serve as a spoiler anyone who has not read the novel:
The Oliver Morosco Photoplay Company, in association with Bosworth Inc., offers as its latest release on the Paramount program "The Wild Olive," an adaptation of the celebrated novel by Basil King. The choice of story and the co-starring of Myrtle Stedman and Forrest Stanley result in a picture of sterling quality and lasting attraction, and one which deserves to enjoy the popularity of the  book from which it is adapted.
     The plot concerns itself with the romance of a wealthy mountain girl who is willing to sacrifice her own happiness to clear the name of the man she loves. The rugged, imposing country of the Alleghany lumber regions adds a virility which makes for a strong and lasting appeal. The change of background from the rough lumber camps to the gay and cosmopolitan Argentine presents a contrast which is striking. Myrtle Stedman, seen as Miriam Strange, "The Wild Olive," and Forrest Stanley as Norrie Ford, interpret their parts splendidly, and are surrounded by a capable cast, in which are Mary Ruby as Evie Wayne; Charles Marriot as Judge Wayne; and Edmund Lowe as Charles Conquest.
     Norrie Ford, accused of murdering his uncle, is convicted on strong circumstantial evidence. He escapes from the deputies, and is offered a hiding place in the cabin studio of a mountain girl, who believes him innocent. There he hides until morning, and then starts for South America, bearing letters of introduction from the girl, who, in answer to his request for her name, tells him to call her "The Wild Olive."
     In the Argentine, Ford, aided by the letters, secures a position, and through his industry and integrity soon works his way to the top. As his letters to "The Wild Olive" are returned by the postal authorities, he gives up hope of ever seeing the girl to whom he owes his life. He becomes engaged to Evie Wayne, a New York girl, and the niece of the firm's senior partner. Evie returns to New York and her uncle transfers Ford to the managership of the New York office.
     Ford, on his return to New York, finds that Evie Wayne is the girl chum of Miriam Strange, "The Wild Olive." Miriam, who has waited for him, is heartbroken when she learns that he is engaged to Evie. But she remains true to her chum, and consents to marry Charles' Conquest, whom she had previously refused, on condition that he clear the innocent Ford of the murder charge which hangs over him. Evie learns that her fiance is charged with murdering his uncle, and breaks their engagement. Ford's disguise is penetrated and he is arrested, but the death bed confession of the actual murderer leads to his acquittal at his second trial. Conquest, realizing how greatly Miriam loves Ford, releases her from her promise, leaving her free to marry him.
What else is there to say?

Well, for one, The Wild Olive appears to have been quite faithful to the original. There are minor differences: the "lumber regions" of the novel are in Vermont, Miriam offers no letters of introduction, and Ford writes no letters himself. The greatest liberty seems to have been inspired by King's title. In the novel, no one calls our heroine "The Wild Olive" – least of all Miriam herself – rather Ford likens her to a wild olive "grafted into the olive of the orchard". That same issue of Motography features a dramatic still in which we see lumbermen helping Ford escape the law (something only hinted at in the novel).


Variety praised the film's opening scenes "in which there is some good natural scenery." I'll take the magazine at its word, though I gotta say this looks a bit awkward:

The Day (New London, CT), 8 July 1915
Anything else to say about something I've never seen?

I got nothing.

Silence.

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08 May 2016

A Poem for Mother's Day from the Great War



Century-old verse by Miss Elspeth Honeyman, whose brothers served in the 29th Battalion (Vancouver). From Canadian Poems of the Great War, chosen and edited by John W. Garvin (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918).
MOTHERHOOD, 1916 
          The night comes down and the wind is chill,
               (Are both my boys asleep?)
          Daylight tinges the distant hill,
               (Why is it I cannot sleep?) 
          A passing lad and a whistled tune,
               (France is so far away!)
          Roses bloom and the month is June,
               (The heat is the worst, they say.) 
          The list was long in the morning's news,
               (They are so young to die!)
          Which strong heart will the bullet choose —
               Where will his body lie? 
          Boys go clattering down the street,
               (Which will come back to me?)
          I hear the tramp of the soldiers' feet,
               (Dear God, that such things be!) 
          What will they buy with the blood of men?
               (Hearts break, but they do not die.)
         Victory, Honour, — and War again?
               (Dead faces turned to the sky?)


02 May 2016

The Barefoot Fugitive and Other Mysteries



The Wild Olive
[Basil King]
New York: Harper, 1910

Basil King wrote the bestselling novel of 1909.

Who knew?

Hardly anyone.

That novel, The Inner Shrine, was published anonymously. Its story of a woman's reputation sullied by the base claims of a cad captivated readers almost as much as the mystery of its authorship. Speculation centred on Henry James, Edith Wharton and the daughter of William Dean Howells as King kept to the shadows. When The Wild Olive appeared the following year it was credited only to "the author of 'The Inner Shrine'." I'll be damned if the new work didn't do nearly as well. In its summary of sales for 1910, Publishers Weekly placed The Wild Olive third, behind Florence L. Barclay's The Rosary and A Modern Chronicle by Winston Churchill.

There's no accounting for taste. The Wild Olive is far better than the Barclay and the Churchill; it's also better than The Inner Shrine. In fact, The Wild Olive is the best
Basil King book I've ever read. It begins in mystery: a barefoot man, a fugitive, scrambles through darkness in the Adirondack wilds. Coming upon a tasteful, well-appointed house, he walks through open doors to find Judge Wayne, the very man who had just hours before sentenced him to death.

A great coincidence, I know. There will be others.

The fugitive – name: Norrie Ford – only entered the house because he thought he'd heard a noise made by one of his pursuers. 'Twas in fact the light tread of a lithe young woman dressed in white. Silently, she beckons Ford back outside, then leads him in silence to a remote artist's studio somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Champlain. There he's left, hidden from the law, surrounded by sketches and watercolours depicting trappers, voyageurs, Indians and nuns. The woman in white reappears daily, bringing food, clothing and companionship of a sort.

The clothes she brings belonged to her deceased father, a Virginian who made a great deal of money in the northwest of Canada. "I was born on the shores of Hudson Bay," she tells Ford. "My mother was married to a French-Canadian voyageur." Not a suitable topic for polite dinner conversation, perhaps, but Ford's saviour is proud of her past. Her present, however, is off-limits; she won't reveal so much as her name.

This mysterious figure may be a bastard born, but Ford recognizes her as the most refined of women; something to do with having been raised in a Quebec City convent, no doubt. And yet she retains such inhibition, such a spirit of freedom:
In her eagerness to buy the domestic place she had not inherited she reminded him of something he had read or heard of the wild olive being grafted into the olive of the orchard.
Ford is keen to impress that he is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted – the murder of an uncle – but to this wild olive his words means nothing:
"He was very cruel to you – your uncle? – wasn't he?" she asked, at last.
     "He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him in his sleep – whatever I may have said when in a rage."
     "I should think it might be." He started. If it were not for the necessity of making no noise he would have laughed.
     "Are you so bloodthirsty – ?" he began.
     "Oh no, I'm not; but I should think it is what a man would do. My father wouldn't have submitted to it. I know he killed one man; and he may have killed two or three."
Just as her mother helped her father escape from prison, so too the wild olive aids Ford in alluding the authorities. After an untold
number of days – a couple of weeks, I'm guessing – she serves as guide through dense forest to the shores of Lake Champlain. There he's handed a plan of escape to Canada, complete with canoe, map, money, train schedule and a ticket for England on RMS Empress of Erin (read: Empress of Ireland).

And so, Norrie Ford is given a second chance at life as "Herbert Strange", the... er, unusual name recorded on the steamer ticket. In this effort to make something of himself, Ford follows the mystery woman's suggestion that he make for the Argentine. "I happen to know a lot about it," said she. "Everybody says it's the country of new opportunities."

Indeed, it is. On a whim – he recalls passing mention made by the wild olive – the newly christened Strange seeks employment with Stephens & Jarrott, an American firm with offices in Buenos Aires. Eight years pass. Strange rises through the ranks, becomes engaged to a Jarrott relation, is transferred to New York, and then attends a dinner party at which he is seated to the left of the wild olive. To her right is Judge Wayne.


What are the chances?

Not bad, actually. One expects coincidences in an Edwardian novel, and there are several here, but setting aside the first, none beggar belief. The mystery woman's casual reference to Stephens & Jarrott, a firm to which she has the thinnest of connections, set Ford on a course that would bring him back to her. It was all quite unintentional on her part, but there you are... rather there he is.

I won't say any more for fear of spoiling the plot – it's so remarkably clever – except to say that the final page came as a complete surprise. The Wild Olive doesn't end so much as trails off leaving so many mysteries intact. What sent the wild olive's father to prison? How did her mother get him out? What of her French-Canadian husband? How did Ford escape his jailers? For goodness sake, what happened to his shoes?

Bloomer:
"You can't realize what all this means to me. If we succeed – that is, if you succeed – I hardly dare to tell you of the extent to which I shall be grateful."
     He felt already some of the hero's magnanimity as to claiming his reward.
     "You needn't think about that," he smiled. "I sha'n't. If by making Evie happy I can serve you, I shall not ask for gratitude."
     She looked down at her muff and smoothed its fur, then glanced up swiftly. "No; but I shall want to give it."
Trivia I: The most sympathetic character in the novel is Judge Wayne, a good soul who recognizes and struggles with the injustice of the justice system. When first we encounter the man – during Norrie Ford's first night on the lam – we see that he is going blind. Because he is beyond the help of the best German oculists, "poor Wayne" has descended into darkness by the time he and Ford share the same dining table. Ah, but the judge's hearing has grown more acute, right? I spoil things in revealing that he recognizes Ford's voice. However, Wayne keeps the knowledge to himself, choosing not to turn Ford in because, of course, justice is blind.

King himself was going blind when he wrote this novel.   

Moving Picture World
July 1915
Trivia II: In 1915, The Wild Olive became the first of seven Basil King novels to be adapted to the screen. A lost film, one of the very few images known to have survived is the publicity shot above of silent film star Myrtle Stedman as the Wild Olive. In the novel, she has a dog named Micmac. Forgotten English actor Forrest Stanley plays Norrie Ford.

Object: An attractive 346-page hardcover with eight illustrated plates by Lucius Hitchcock (who also provided illustrations for The Inner Shrine). My copy, a first edition, was purchased last month at Ottawa's Patrick McGaherne Books. Price: US$20.

Access: The Prince Edward Island Public Library Service succeeds were all other public libraries fail. Twenty-seven of our academic libraries have it in their holdings. Curiously, a third are found in Alberta.

Loads of copies being offered online at prices ranging from US$5 to US$564. Ignorance and greed aside, there is no reason for the wide range. Anyone looking to invest in a copy is warned that the Harper edition went through numerous printings, and was followed by a cheaply produced Grosset & Dunlap reissue. Those considering the later are warned that it features only one of the eight plates.

Speaking of ignorance and greed, print on demand vultures have been all over The Wild Olive. This post gives me an excuse to share an absurd old cover (right) from defunct Tutis Classics.

Good news is found in the fact that The Wild Olive can be read and downloaded here at the Internet Archive. I must add that an excellent audiobook recording read by Simon Evers is available gratis here through Librivox. Recommended!

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18 April 2016

Small-town Boy Makes Good, Founds Small Town



Jean Rivard
Antoine Gérin-Lajoie [trans. Vida Bruce]
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977
280 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:
A Journey Through Canada's
Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through


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