The Dusty Bookcase

03 January 2023

A Forgotten Mystery; a Shattered Dream

The Twenty-First Burr
Victor Lauriston
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922
292 pages

Victor Lauriston was born William Edward Park on 16 October 1881 in the hamlet of Fletcher, not far from Chatham, Ontario. As an adult, he changed his name because he thought Park too plain for a writer. This was in 1918, sometime between the sixth and seventh rewrite of The Twenty-First Burr.

The Twenty-first Burr is a mystery novel populated in part by characters with assumed names and hidden identities. It begins with twenty-year-old Laura Winright's rushed return to North America after two years touring Europe. I've read enough old novels to know that such a young lady would not have been been permitted to go off alone to the Old World. That Laura did so – and in the midst the Great War – is a mystery left unexplained and unexplored.

"Was she a spy?" asks my wife.

Good question.

Our heroine's haste has everything to do with a telegram sent by her father, Detroit department store baron Adam Winright. Laura never lived in the Motor City, rather she was raised at the family mansion, Castle Sunset, at Maitland Port (read: Goderich, Ontario) on the shore of Lake Huron.

Laura's return takes nearly everyone by surprise, most of all George Annisford, her betrothed. Not only does he fail to meet her ship as it docks in New York, he scolds her in a wordy telegram:

Oh, see here, chick! You've come down on us like the wolf on the fold. We haven't time to send out for crackers and cheese. Of course your father is just fine and dandy. Why shouldn't he be?

But Adam Winright is not fine and dandy. By the time Laura reaches Maitland Port, her father is dead.

Laura is convinced he was murdered, but brother Tom, her lone sibling, isn't convinced. What's certain is that Adam Winright was being blackmailed by a man signing himself "Andrew Webster." Brother Tom sends for Detroit private detective Harry Burnville to get to the bottom of it all.

Going further into the story risks doing the mystery a disservice, but only because plot is not its strong point. What makes The Twenty-First Burr worth reading are its characters. George, goodnatured and ever-positive, hides a fragile heart. Mrs MacTurk, the Winright's Scotch housekeeper, is a sour old bird who obsesses over apparitions and keeps a logbook of her sightings. My favourite character is the widow Villard, who sniffs in contempt at the memory of a young actress who it turns out... Ah, but that would be spoiling things.

Contemporary reviews invariably focus on Glory Adair, a nurse and amateur sleuth who relies on palmistry in bettering Burnville, her professional rival .

The Twenty-First Burr certainly has its flaws. Any speculation that Laura may have been a spy is quickly put to rest by her forgetfulness, which serves no purpose other than to slow the plot. This reader was amused by the amount time lost to rail travel, all of which could have been avoided if only Lauriston hadn't chosen to have the principle players live so far apart.

No doubt some weaknesses have to do with all those drafts. According to the author, the first was written in 1905, nine years before fighting broke out in Europe. The conflict is rarely mentioned, and then only in passing; it's effect on the home front is nonexistent. This reader counted four able-bodied young men, not one of whom is fighting overseas. And then we have the conclusion, in which Glory, who solves Adam Winright's murder, shares observations and clues not found elsewhere in the novel.

The Twenty-first Burr is anything but a fair-play mystery, but I don't hold a grudge. The characters are captivating and the locations are so uncommon as to be interesting. Mystery lovers living in Grimsby will be flattered by descriptions of their town as it was one hundred years ago: "the stone road, the fine country homes, the peach orchards, rank on rank of green trees orderly as soldiers on parade."

The worst thing about The Twenty-First Burr is that it shows such promise, yet was Lauriston's only mystery. McClelland & Stewart used the plates from George H. Doran's American edition. Neither publisher went back for a second printing.

Lauriston spent his royalties on buying those same plates. He hoped that they would one day be used in returning the novel to print. An author's fantasy, it ended in 1941 when they were sold for use in the war effort.

The Windsor Daily Star, 21 August 1941

The accompanying article – 'Chatham Writer's Dream Shattered After 19 Years' – begins:

Sale of 700 pounds of lead and copper plates in New Britain, Connecticut, recently, put an end to a dream that has lived in the persevering mind of Victor Lauriston, Chatham novelist, ever since he sold his first book 19 years ago. He had hoped sometime to use the plates for a reprint of the book, "The Twenty First Burr," [sic] a detective story.
Metal in the plates will be melted to help win the war. Owing to exchange regulations, proceeds of the sale will go to pay a 16 years' storage bill.

Lauriston lived well into old age, dying two days after his ninety-second birthday, yet he wrote only one more novel. A roman à clef titled Inglorious Milton, according to the Border Cities Star (20 October 1934), it "set every tongue in Chatham wagging." Lauriston's papers hold the manuscript, along with numerous letters of rejection. The novel was finally published by the Tiny Tree Club, a branch (sorry) of Chatham's literary society. I've not read it, but should. The Border City Star article compares it to Joyce's Ulysses.

I can only assume society members are portrayed in a flattering light.

Object: Light brown boards with black impressing. The jacket illustration is by Margaret Freeman. My copy once belonged to a woman named Olive Shanks.

At the time of the 1921 census, Miss Shanks, then age 29, lived with her parents (John and Hattie) and siblings (Bessie and Mark) at 146 Park Street, Chatham, Ontario.

146 Park Street, Chatham, Ontario
November 2020

In 2019, her copy ended up in my home, having been purchased from bookseller David Mason. Price: $90.00.

Access: The Twenty-First Burr was published by Doran in the United States and in Canada by McClelland & Stewart. Neither edition enjoyed a second printing. As of this writing, two copies are listed for sale online, both from London booksellers: London, Ontario's Attic Books offers a jacketless copy of the Doran edition at US$35.00; London, England's Any Amount of Books is asking £30.00 for its jacketless Doran. The McClelland and Stewart edition is nowhere in sight.

Sixteen of our academic libraries hold copies of one edition or the other, as does Library and Archives Canada.

The Twenty-First Burr can be read online here thanks to the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive.

01 January 2023

A One-Hundred-Year-Old New Year

31 December 2022

'The Dying Year' by S. Frances Harrison

THE DYING YEAR

The old year dies! Of this be sure,
The old leaves rot beneath the snow.
The old skies falter from the blow
Dealt by the heavens that shall endure
When sky and leaf together go.

And some are glad and some are grieved.
Much as when some poor mortal dies;
The first sensation of surprise
Is lost in sobs of his bereaved.
Or cold relief with dry-dust eyes,

That view his coffin absently,
And wonder first how much it cost,
And next, how came his fortune lost,
And how will live his family.
And how he looked when he was crost.

But tears—no, no—they only surge
From those who knew him. They were few;
He had his faults; he seldom knew
The thing to say, condemn, or urge;
Tis better he has gone from view.

So neither do we weep—God knows,
We have but little time for tears!
A time for hopes, a time for fears,
A time for strife, a time for woes
We have—but hardly time for tears.

O it were good, and it were sweet.
If we might weep our fill somewhere,
In other world, in purer air,
Perhaps in heaven's golden street,
Perhaps upon its crystal stair!

For "power and leave to weep" shall be
The golden city's legend dear;
Though wiped away be every tear.
First for a season shall flow free
The floods that leave the vision clear!

So if we could we would, Old Year,
Conjure a tear up when you go,
And pace in solemn order slow
Behind your gray and cloud -borne bier,
Draped with the wan and fluttering snow.

Yet what is it, this year we miss?
An arbitrary thing, a mark;
A rapid writing in the dark;
Dead wire, that with a futile hiss
Strikes back no single answering spark.

There is no year, we dream and say,
Again, no year, we say and dream,
And dumbly note the frozen stream,
And note the bird on barren spray.
And note the cold, though bright sunbeam.

We quarrel with the times and hours,
The year should end—we say—when come
The last long rolls of March's drum.
And too—we say—with grass and flowers
Should rise the New Year, like to some

Gay antique goddess, ever young,
With pallid shoulders touched with rose,
Firm waist that mystic zones enclose,
White feet from violets shyly sprung.
Her raiment—that the high gods chose.

And yet the poet, born to preach
With yearning for his human kind,
His verse but sermon undefined,
Will fail in what he means to teach,
If he proclaim not, high designed,

The Old Year dies! It is enough!
And he has won, for eyes grow dim
As passeth slow his pageant grim,
And many a hand both fair and rough
Shall wipe away a tear for him—

For him, and for the wasted hours,
The sinful days, the moments weak.
The words we did or did not speak,
The weeds that crowded out our flowers,
The blessings that we did not seek.

—From S. Frances Harrison's Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891)

26 December 2022

The Very Best Reads of 2022: Ladies First

Late last night, as Christmas festivities drew to a close, I pulled Victor Lauriston's The Twenty-first Burr (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) from the shelves. It seemed appropriate way to end the holiday. One hundred years earlier, my copy was presented by the author to a woman named Olive Shanks.

I enjoyed the first four of its twenty-eight chapters, but know I won't be finishing the novel before year's end, meaning it's time for the annual Dusty Bookcase recap of best reads, books to be revived, etc.

This was a year unlike any other in Dusty Bookcase history. For the first time, women wrote a majority of the titles; twelve of the twenty-two reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes and Queries.

Sara Jeannette Duncan's A Daughter of To-day and Joanna E. Wood's The Untempered Wind stand well above the other twenty. Both are available in Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series, which goes some way in explaining how it is that only male authors feature in my annual selection of the three books most deserving of a return to print:

Philistia
Grant Allen

London: Chatto & Windus,

1901

It was publisher Andrew Chatto who encouraged Allen to try his hand at fiction. This debut novel, first published in 1884, furthers the author's writing on philosophy, naturalism, religion, and socialism. Ironically, its ending was spoiled by Chatto's intrusion.

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global

Publishing, 1947

A noir thriller set in Quebec City, Whispering City pre-dates Hitchcock's I Confess by five years. Both have their weaknesses. Brown's adaptation of the former – likely the first novelization of a Canadian feature film – improves upon its source material.

Moonbeams from the

Larger Lunacy

Stephen Leacock
Toronto: S.B. Gundy, 1915

Leacock's legacy suffered a blow this year when McGill announced that the building named in his honour, would be renamed after a venture capitalist who had pledged $13 million to the the university.

It's the stuff of a Leacock story.

As series editor of Véhicule Press's Ricochet imprint, I was involved in reviving Arthur Mayse's 1949 debut novel Perilous Passage. 'Telling the Story,' the introduction provided by the author's daughter, Susan Mayse, is one of my favourite in the series. Reprinted in Canadian Notes & Queries, it can be read through this link.

Recognition this year goes to England's Handheld Press for its reissue of Marjorie Grant's 1921 novel Latchkey Ladies.

I knew nothing of Marjorie Grant or Latchkey Ladies before reading this March 22 review in The Times.

Finally, sadly, I report that the New Year's resolutions made last December didn't go far:

I resolved to focus more on francophone writers, yet read just one: Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (and then only in translation).
I resolved to feature more non-fiction, and yet this writer of non-fiction reviewed nothing but fiction.
I resolved to keep kicking against the pricks. This was easily done. Witnessing the miscreants of the Freedom Convoy roll past on its way to Ottawa gave extra incentive.

This December I make no resolutions.

Here's to the New Year!

Bonne année!

An Egotist of Yesterday

A Woman Who Did
Spoiled by a Publisher

Quebec City Noir

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

Just Kids

West Coast Canadian Noir

25 December 2022

'Christmas' by S. Frances Harrison

CHRISTMAS

Who will sing the Christ?
Will he who rang his Christmas chimes
Of faith and hope in Gospel ray,
That pealed along the world's highway,
And woke the world to purer times—
Will he sing the Christ?

Or that new voice which vaguely gives—
One day its song for Rome—the next,
In soul-destroying strife perplext
For England's faith and future lives
Shall he sing the Christ?

Or the sweet children in the schools,
That hymn their carols hand-in-hand
All purely, can they understand
The wisdom that must make us fools—
Can they sing the Christ?

Or yearning priest who to his kind
From carven pulpit gives the Word,
Or praying mother who has erred,
And blindly led her erring blind—
Have they not sung the Christ?

"Lord! I of sinners am the chief!"
One, seated by his Christmas fires,
Hearkens the bells from distant spires,
But hangs his head in unbelief—
He cannot sing the Christ.

Grant to such, Lord, the seeing eye!
Grant as the World grows old and cold,
All hearts Thy beauty may behold.
Grant, lest the souls of sinners die—
That All may sing the Christ.