I was contacted the other day by Brooke-Lynn Andersson, an undergraduate at the University of Victoria, with a unique sort of question for us. A research assignment in her Children’s Literature course focuses on a particular text’s readership, rather than the text itself. Hunting through the shelves of Russell’s Books in Victoria, she found a copy of Elisabeth S. Colwell’s A Word Book for High Schools (1930), with the owner’s name written on the flyleaf: Beatrice Bunker.
So the question she posed to us was: could this Beatrice Bunker possibly be our Beatrice Bunker Rowley, a.k.a. the poet R. H. Grenville?
Luckily, as those of you who have followed our blog through the years will know, I have had the fortune to be in close touch with Beatrice Rowley’s family in a way that I am not connected to anyone else in our project. Serendipitous for Brooke-Lynn, as I have numerous samples of Bea’s handwriting that resemble the signature in the volume Brooke-Lynn is studying sufficiently to verify ownership. The collection of letters I have is better proof as a set, but you can see by the capitol “B” and the lower-case “r” here especially that he hand is the same, despite the years that have passed.
Brooke-Lynn has also sent along a couple of pages from the inside of the volume, showing the study notes Bea made as a girl, and an early sketch of a woman’s head. I have sketches and drawing she made later in life, as well: she continued to write and draw up until very late in life.
April 198914 January 2000
What are the chances, that a student looking to learn about the owner of an obscure high school text found in a used bookstore would be able to track down the biography of the owner, herself an author worth studying, and thus learn and be able to share more about Canadian readers, Canadian literature, Canadian women’s history… Thanks, Brooke-Lynn, for contacting us; this is why we do what we do.
Mary McKay Scott, founder of The Woman’s Journal in Ottawa, has a new entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, so I was poking around the interwebs trying to discover which journals she had published in, either as Mary McKay Scott, or under her pen name, “Yarrow.”
Here is what I found.
Scott, Mary M. “Yarrow” Goes To The Country.” The Civilian: A Fortnightly Journal Devoted to the Interests of the Civil Service of Canada 7.1 (May 1914): 5.
I have recently sold off my British Raj library. While at the bookstore, I saw this little gem just lying about on a pile (if you have ever been to McLeod’s Books in Vancouver, you can picture what I mean), and the proprietor, Don Stewart, kindly gifted it to me.
I know that this volume is available on the Internet Archive, but I was delighted by the annotations—obviously from a student’s hand—and thought you all might be interested as well. And so I am posting it here for you.
Dickie, D[onalda]. J., ed. The Canadian Poetry Book: A Book of Modern Verse. A Supplementary Volume to the Temple Poetry Books. London & Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, [1922].
In April 1927, Dorothy Stacey married Harcourt Brown. A novel’s review shouldn’t usually begin with the author’s marriage, but in this case, the material for Dorothy Stacey Brown’s previously unpublished mystery novel, Murder Among the Standing Stones, was gathered during the couple’s cycling honeymoon through Brittany.
Here I am, today, sitting in the sunshine on the terrace of the Belvedere Bike Hotel in Riccione, Italy, while my husband of 33 years is out on a 100km ride. So while it is not quite the same, it seems fitting that the book I read this morning was Murder Among the Standing Stones.
A more complete description of Dorothy and Harcourt’s travels, and how they led to the creation of the novel, can be found in the prologue to the 2020 Kindle edition of the novel by her daughter, historian Jennifer S.H. Brown. Similar to the couple’s cycling honeymoon, the main character of the novel is in Brittany gathering copy for a “cycling tourist” book, having had previous success with a similar book on cycling in Ireland. He is also an FBI agent, on forced R&R after injury in the line of duty, which plays into his role in solving the murder.
The book was originally written as an entry into Dodd, Mead & Company’s 1936 “Red Badge” mystery competition, which required a murder, among other elements, all of which Brown dutifully provides. In terms of actual plot, character, setting, and writing ability, I have to say that I was quite pleasantly surprised by Murder Among the Standing Stones. I guess I was not expecting much, given that it didn’t win the award, and Brown did not go on to actually publish it. I can’t think why not. Full disclosure: a great deal of my pleasure reading is British detective fiction, so I know of which I speak. Murder Among the Standing Stones is solid. It is not Dorothy L. Sayers or P.D. James by any means, but I certainly enjoyed it more than I do Ruth Rendell.
In terms of characterisation, it is of its time: which is to say that the characterisation does not lend itself to overt emotional love scenes, despite the romantic subplot, which is unquestionably its weakest element. The main character, Michael Pierce, too, is more in keeping with British detectives, including his intimation to the guilty party, towards the end, that it would be best to “do the right thing”: very Lord Peter Wimsey; not very Sam Spade. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I liked it, but is it also poor characterisation? Should our Canadian author have had an RCMP agent instead, for better verisimilitude? Did 1920s RCMP authors subscribe to a similar moral code? Hard for us to tell from this temporal distance. From the perspective of a reader, rather than a critic, I didn’t care.
The plot had no holes I could perceive, and no glaringly annoying red herrings. The main action takes place over the space of three days, between summer solstice and the Eve of St. John, two important moments in Bretagne cultural mythology, which lies at the centre of the mystery. Brown has done her research, and her editor–daughter includes footnotes to send the reader to her sources should we want to learn more about the actual folklore underlying the story. The clash between tradition and modernity, folklore and academia, is well presented—if a tad sensationalized, a bit Midsomer Murders—and remains a concern even today, albeit in increasingly sophisticated ways.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed Murder Among the Standing Stones. I wish it had been published at the time, and I could have a beautiful little 1930s first edition to add to the collection on my shelf.
Way back in October, I received some papers from Jim Macdonald, a relative of author Estelle Jean Worfolk. “She was my father’s niece. My full name is William James MacDonald,” he writes: “I got James from her father. James Edward MacDonald.” I am not sure what that makes him, in terms of second-cousins… even less so given the two different systems of determining such relationships… Regardless, he was very helpful, and we have now updated Estelle Jean Worfolk‘s entry in the project.
I poking about Google News, I found this little poem by Estelle Worfolk, which seems appropriate to share today.
Worfolk, Estelle Jean. “March Morning.” The Montreal Gazette (2 March 1936): 12.
A few weeks ago, Stuart Murray, Professor of Rhetoric and Ethics at Carleton University in Ottawa, contacted us. His grandmother had been a good friend of one of our authors, Verna Bessie (Harden) Bentley, who appears in newspapers as Mrs. O.C. Bentley, and who wrote as Verna Loveday Harden. His grandmother, Dr. Murray tells us, worked at Metropolitan Life in Toronto; it is possible the two women met there, as Verna Bessie Bentley was a stenographer. In her later years, he tells us, Verna Bessie Bentley lived in Barrie, Ontario, but we can still not find information about her death or burial place.
In going through his grandmother’s papers, Dr. Murray has discovered a number of typewritten poems that he has scanned to share with us. He is not certain if these poems were copies of poems published elsewhere, so I have poked about a bit to determine what I can.
I own Harden’s In Her Mind Carrying (1959), which I previously scanned and posted on our blog, as I have recently as well with the University of Alberta’s copy of Postlude to an Era (1940); and we have indexed the Canadian Poetry Magazine and The Crucible, so we know which of her poems were published there. We also have recorded a few of her other contributions by title, so I have listed those here, as well. (See below.)
I discovered, also, that UBC holds a copy of When This Tide Ebbs, so I schlepped out to UBC yesterday, thinking to scan it in to post for you as well. It turns out, though, that UBC makes one sign a form promising not to publish any image, which in my estimation runs counter to the whole ethos of open access information that Canadian universities purport to ascribe to, but perhaps I shouldn’t complaint too strongly in this instance, as the UBC copy is actually uncut: I could only take pictures of the cover, and pages 1, 4–5, and 8. I could, however, peak into the uncut pages and see the titles.
So I now have a list of the content of all three chapbooks, as well as the indexes our project has created; and I have gleaned the titles of all the poems that newspapers.com can find for me.
Dr. Murray’s papers
Of the poems Dr. Murray has found (listed here with the dates on the typescripts), some are identified as having been published in specific periodicals: the Toronto Daily Star, New Outlook, and The Crucible calendar (as distinct from The Crucible magazine itself).
“Goldenrod in Winter” (17 November 1935)
“We Mourn Our King” (23 January 1936) “(Daily Star)”
“Song for April” (14 March 1936) “(New Outlook, April 1936)”
“Conjecture” (17 May 1936)
“For Those in Peril on the Road” (17 March 1936) “(Daily Star)”
“Harvest Festival,” “September,” and “Holiday Tour in Quebec” (27 September 1937) “(For Crucible Calendar, 1938)”
“Lost Autumn” (21 November 1938)
We have determined, also, that “Harvest Festival,” “Song for April,” and “Lost Autumn” were included in The Crucible (New Year 1938, Spring 1939, and July 1939 respectively). “Conjecture” and “Lost Autumn” were also included in Postlude to an Era. The others easily might have been included in other periodical publications that I have not discovered, but they were not in her published collections, and so indeed might be appearing in public for the first time here. They are all, regardless, appearing now having been out of the public eye for far too long. I hope you enjoy them.
Here are the lists of titles and locations.
Postlude to an Era (1940)
5: “O, Now Are All the Lovely Things”
6: “Martyrs, 1940”
7: “To England in Danger” [also published in the Ottawa Citizen, 12 June 1940]
8: “Re-Armed” [also published in The Crucible 3.4 (Apr 1939): 22]
9: “Christmas, 1939”
10: “The Empire Answers (The first Canadian Contingent arrives in England)” [also published in the Ottawa Citizen, 19 February 1940]
11: “Zero Hour (March, 1939)”
12: “To an Idiot, September, 1938”
13: “Lost Autumn (November, 1938)” [dated in Dr. Murray’s papers 21 November 1938]
14: “Spring on the King’s Highway” [also published in The Crucible 6.3 (Spring 1940): 18, and the Ottawa Citizen, 1 June 1940] and “Rapture”
15: “The Poet”
16: “That You Might Know” [first published in The Sault Star (Sault Ste. Marie), 15 September 1938]
17: “Gallantry” [also published in the New Canadian Anthology, page 86]
18: “Bondage” [also published in The Crucible 4.1 (Autumn 1936): 4]
19: “To a Young Girl” [also published in the New Canadian Anthology, page 85]
20: “Conjecture” [dated in Dr. Murray’s papers 17 May 1936] and “Rain Along the Ottawa”
21: “Northern Quest”
22: “We Ask for Joy” [first published previous to 15 September 1934, when it appeared in the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, attributed to New Outlook] and “This Troubled Place”
23: “The Star (December, 1936)”
24: “The Choir”
25: “Inland Waters”
26: The Heart That Love Has Touched”
When This Tide Ebbs (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1946)
1: “When This Tide Ebbs” and “At the Gates of Old Trinity”
2: “Post Mortem”
3: “To a Small Boy Sleeping” [first published in the CPM 1940]
4: “Intruder” and “Let Spring Come Slowly” [also published in the Christian Science Monitor previous to 4 February 1944, and picked up and reprinted by multiple newspapers in the USA and Canada]
5: “Time, Who Had Boasted” and “Reprieve”
6: “Airman’s Wife”
7: “O Dear, Familiar”
8: “The Green Place” [first published in CPM 1943] and “Nor Joy, Nor Pain” [first published in CPM 1945]
In Her Mind Carrying (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1959)
3: “In Her Mind Carrying”
4: “Saint John Harbour” and “The Bee-Yard” [first published in Saturday Night magazine)
“From the Duchess’s Diary” 4.1 (Autumn 1936): 4. Story. (as “The Duchess”)
“Harvest Festival” 5.1 (New Year 1938): 6. Poem.
“Lone Tree” 1.1 (Spring 1932): 7. Poem.
“Mendicant” 2.3 (Christmas 1933): 3. Poem.
“Out of the Babel of Sound” 8.2 (Spring 1941): 8. Poem.
“Shopping” 1.4 (Mid-Winter 1933): 12. Poem.
“Some Recent Canadian Books: The Cloud and the Fire by Dorothy Sproule, Heritage by Elsa Dunning, Candle and Cup by Helen T. Douglas Robinson, and Songs from the Silence by Prescott Shortt” 8.2 (Spring 1941): 20-21. Review.
“Song for April” 6.1 (Spring 1939): 3. Poem.
“Spring on the King’s Highway” 6.3 (Spring 1940): 18. Poem.
“The Life We Live” 4.2 (Winter 1937): 11. Poem.
“To a Young Mother” 2.1 (Spring 1933): 7. Poem.
Contributions to the Canadian Poetry Magazine:
“Civilization” 1.4 (Mar 1937): 31. Poem.
“This Life We Live” 1.4 (Mar 1937): 32. Poem.
“Garden of the Ursuline Convent, Quebec City” 2.4 (Apr 1938): 52. Poem.
“Re-Armed” 3.4 (Apr 1939): 22. Poem.
“Lost Autumn” 4.1 (Jul 1939): 26. Poem.
All Valiant Dust” 4.3 (Dec 1939): 17. Poem.
“To a Small Boy Sleeping” 5.2 (Dec 1940): 27. Poem.
“Now Have the Lowly” 5.4 (Aug 1941): 25. Poem.
“The Recording Angel Speaks” 6.4 (Mar 1943): 19. Poem.
“The Green Place” 7.2 (Dec 1943): 20. Poem.
“O Poet Sleeping” 7.2 (Dec 1943): 21. Poem.
“Beauty for Ashes” (Review of Mariel Jenkins) 7.3 (Mar 1944): 35. Poem.
“Sonnets for Youth” (Review of Frank Oliver Call) 8.1 (Sep 1944): 38. Poem.
Harden, Verna Loveday. Postlude to an Era (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1940).
In composing a post about a number of orphan poems of Verna Loveday Harden, I discovered I needed to hold this volume in my hands… how could I not scan it to share with you, given that it is long since out of copyright, and such a short, lovely little chapbook? Here are the page images, as well as a searchable pdf for you to download.
Annette Fulford, who writes the World War I War Brides blog, sent me a poem she found by one of our war-bride authors, Ida Grindlay Jackson. If you poke about our past posts, you can find the fascinating story of Ida’s peregrinations.
I just read one of those books that I wanted to remain inside.
“Mom, are you making dinner?”
“No, I’m busy with my book.”
“I thought you finished it an hour ago.”
“I did.”
I should have guessed this about East of Temple Bar, Joan Suter’s first novel, by the opening pages, which felt so engagingly real. Having read only the first chapter, I sent a quick message over to Brian Busby — who recommended it, and whose copy I was reading — to rave about how I wanted my dear friend Kit in England, who had been a sub-editor on The Guardian, to read it. Sadly, she does not have access to a copy. I’m now on the hunt for two copies to purchase: one for her, one for myself. It has certainly made it onto the shelf of books I want to own in first edition.
Joan Suter Walker is best known for her 1953 humorous memoir, Pardon My Parka, the account of her experiences as a war bride moving to Val-d’Or, Quebec, which won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1954. I can’t believe that it could be better than East of Temple Bar, which stands so strong as a first novel. Something feels so real about the world of Fleet Street in the 1930s that she creates, but that should be no surprise given her biography.
Born in London in 1908, and educated there and in Switzerland, she began by writing advertisements for Harrod’s, then briefly worked as the editor of Children’s Sketch before becoming a sub-editor for the Amalgamated Press, a role fictionalized in her novel. As in the novel, too, she was also a freelance writer of short fiction. Other elements of her biography also feature in her novel — her own varied experiences split between her two primary characters, Eve Smith and Hugh Fenwick — but it is her familiarity with the life of a working reporter and the ethos of Fleet Street that creates the authenticity of character and scene that is the foundation of East of Temple Bar’s success.
At one point, though, I almost stopped reading. After the first chapter of impressive writing, there is a point at which the momentum of the narrative crashes up against an emotional wall. Full stop. Let me explain. You can decide if I am being too harsh. You know I got over it.
Hugh and Eve meet by accident in the autumn of 1930, and through completely believable circumstances she is instrumental in launching his career, and he gives her the push she needs to pursue hers. She is immediately successful, and despite his minor jealousies the two remain supportive friends and end up taking an office together, both ultimately going freelance, and carrying on their several relationships with other individuals. On page 29, though, just before a set of four ominous asterisks, comes the romantic foreshadowing.
It was very silent for a moment in the little office. Hugh opened his mouth to say, “But, Eve, what about you and me? …” But the telephone bell rang and he lifted the receiver to hear the voice of his favourite blonde. He settled back in his chair, the receiver cradled to his ear and winked at Eve, and the moment was lost.
Perhaps if it hadn’t been, the whole course of Eve’s life might have changed. She might never have become Mrs. Roger Pelham and Lewis Randall wouldn’t have wakened up in the middle of the night cursing the day he ever met her.
This is only page 29. And this is not a Harlequin Romance – one does not necessarily trust that all will work out in the end, and Suter has already shown that she is quite willing to force her characters through difficult emotions and her readers with them. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live through what was to come in Eve’s life, to be honest. It is to Suter’s credit that while the foreshadowing was not deceptive, the characters’ lives were handled with care — or maybe the readers’ lives were. Hard to say. At least, this reader felt, at the end, that what Eve and Hugh and Roger and Lewis lived through was very real, and while heart-rending at time, neither contrived nor untenable. I felt Eve’s pain, at so many points, but when she recovered, that felt honest, too. There were one or two places where I wanted to smack her for being a bit obtuse, but I was not a woman in the 1930s, and I recognize that the gendered navigation of that world are beyond my ability to judge in retrospect. The final scene reveals the depth of self-knowledge and strength Eve has gained through her trials: again, not so much as to be unbelievable, but enough to justify her moving forward.
I’m not very good at plot summary without spoilers, so I won’t try. Joan Suter herself married quickly and later divorced, then emigrated to Canada and married a Canadian army major, James Rankin Walker. There are parallels in the book, but they don’t exactly line up, so I can’t read Pardon My Parka and expect to have any glimpse of what happens beyond East of Temple Bar. But I wish I could. I generally think that sequels tend to reveal a lack of imagination (in Hollywood at least), but in this case, I really wish there were one.
Way back in 2012, I was out in Ontario celebrating the 100th anniversary of the War of 1812, staying in Brant County, one-time home to Sara Jeannette Duncan, E. Pauline Johnson, Adelaide Hoodless, and other notable early Canadian women. Although Brantford was fascinating, I was rather sad that it lies so far from Westport, up near Kingston, where author Lyn Cook lived at that time. I had spoken to Lyn Cook a number of times by telephone; she was a delightful woman: sharp, engaging, knowledgeable, and with a sense of humour that made me really want to meet her in person. But alas, on that trip, it was not to be. The next best thing, though, was visiting the… bookstore? library? home? of Mr. Nelson Ball, who had been slowly selling off his Canadiana library over the years, and who had a store of Lyn Cook first editions. Having already depleted my book budget, I could only choose one, so I purchased The Secret of Willow Castle, the favourite childhood book of Lisa Wood, my host in Brantford. She loved this book so much, she tells me, that she forced her parents to take her to Napanee, to see where it takes place. Doubtless Napanee has changed since 1834, but one always hopes to find something of the story still lingering…
For The Secret of Willow Castle is based on real people: Henrietta MacPherson and her family existed; she appears on both the 1861 and 1871 Canadian census records, still living with her parents. A comment in the end matter of the book tells us that “in the town of Napanee, Ontario, Henrietta’s home still stands now, as it did in 1834, on the river bank looking towards the falls. The mills are gone but a plaque in a hillside park marks their place, and the willows still trail their branches in the quiet waters of the pond.” The house is in fact now the Napanee town museum, with its own website. So too is there ample historical evidence of Henrietta’s cousin John Alex, who weaves his way in and out of her life, an inspiration to her growing sense of honour and responsibility. John Alex is in fact John Alexander MacDonald, destined to be the first Prime Minister of Canada. There are sufficient indications of his growing political acumen, and discussion of his future should he choose to enter politics, but never is he firmly identified. The unaware reader does not stumble over the politics in the story, which are natural comments made by the adults, not ideologies masking as narrative. Politics are only interesting to Henrietta because she is a curious child who wants to know what the adults around her are discussing. The reader, like Henrietta, learns just enough to stay interested: “’Tis not usual for young ladies of eleven to be interested in politics, childie, but if you want to know, I’ll tell you” (31), her father tells her, and includes her in his discussion with John Alex about William MacKenzie’s leadership, couching his discussion in terms that young Henrietta will understand.
Despite its extensive and solid connection with Canada’s real history, I read The Secret of Willow Castle with no introduction other than that a friend had liked it. I knew nothing of the history of Napanee, or its connection to John A. MacDonald or Canadian history as a whole. To me, The Secret of Willow Castle was an entrancing story of a young girl being raised by an affluent and morally honourable family in the early 1830s. The tone of the novel reminded me of Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins (1875), undoubtedly my favourite book as a girl, as the sense of a young girl needing to learn her place in the world, not only as a woman but as a member of an entitled family, resonates in both.
The story begins with young Henrietta MacPherson—having recently celebrated her 11th birthday—awaiting the arrival of her favourite cousin, John Alex. John Alex brings her a present, but in her excitement, she demands that she receive it immediately. The moral current of the novel is set here, for her father allows her to open the present, but not to actually use it until she learns to behave in a more controlled manner. John Alex agrees, noting that she will learn such control as she grows older. While Henrietta is not—and does not become—a meek, obedient child, such as this scene might suggest both the author and the parents would like, she does learn both control and responsibility through the course of the story. Allowed to accompany her father to the gristmill they own, she discovers a mysterious new friend, Sarah, who has created a “secret castle” in a willow tree by the river. The girls become fast friends, hiding notes in the tree when they cannot meet, but contriving to meet whenever they can. The friendship between the girls is the underlying thread that weaves through the other events in Henrietta’s story: being barred from a skating party; attending a fair; meeting the neighbour’s slave, Jim, and questioning the morality of his situation; helping to settle a long-standing feud with another family; visiting the local wise woman for medical aid; being surprised with a trip on a river schooner; and participating in the day-to-day life of young girls in the mid 1800s. The girls’ lives are thrown into turmoil, though, when Sarah, an orphan servant to a neighbour, is at risk of being sent away to a family fallen on hard times. Just as the crisis reaches its climax, Henrietta falls dangerously ill. Narrative expectation tells us that all must work out in the end, and the reader can almost—but not quite—see the path of Sarah and Henrietta’s story before it unfolds. There is no overarching dramatic tension in the story—despite a few tense scenes—but drama and excitement are not the point of The Secret of Willow Castle. This novelhas significantly more substance than the faster-paced sensationalist story often written for youth today. The Secret of Willow Castle is both an extremely well researched and seemingly faithful representation of early Canadian life, and a heart-warming portrayal of a young girl’s growth into a strong, liberal-minded young woman to whom friendship and family remain paramount.
In April 1927, Dorothy Stacey married Harcourt Brown. A novel’s review shouldn’t usually begin with the author’s marriage, but in this case, the material for Dorothy Stacey Brown’s previously unpublished mystery novel, Murder Among the Standing Stones, was gathered during the couple’s cycling honeymoon through Brittany.
Canada's Early Women Writers: Authors lists 