Lily Adams Beck

As promised, here is the second of our “Adventures in Research,” previously published on the now-defunct CWRC project blog.

Lily Adams Beck: A joyful narrative of discovery

by Karyn Huenemann

When I first joined CEWW, the database included 471 authors. The parameters for inclusion were that the author be sufficiently identified as Canadian, and that she had published at least one book of poetry or fiction before 1940. That’s a lot of names; I tried to learn them all, in case I should stumble across their books—or previously undiscovered authors—in bookstores. Browsing the books section at Value Village, I stumbled across an author whose name seemed familiar, possibly one of “our ladies”: L. Adams Beck. The title was The Ninth Vibration (1922). Reading the blurb about the text, I sincerely hoped that my memory was correct, because it sounded like a fascinating collection of stories, playing to my interests in both early Canadian literature, and literature about Asia written by resident and visiting European women.

The Ninth Vibration is indeed a unique text—or, rather, L. Adams Beck is a unique author. Nominally Canadian, as she lived a large portion of her life in Victoria, BC, and called Canada home, she travelled extensively and was fascinated by Eastern mysticism. Her literary career began when she was as old as 60 (in 1920), yet she published 35 books and numerous stories and articles in the 11 years before her death in 1931. Given my interests, I took it upon myself (with the help of Linnea McNally who was revising Beck’s biographical entry, and Nancy Blake at SFU inter-library loans) to hunt out as many sources for her periodical publications as I could, and to straighten out our previously confused bibliography of her extensive works and multiple pseudonyms. The path to success was long and somewhat convoluted…

Through extensive reading of obituaries and early twentieth-century “author bio” articles, I learned the extent of her contemporary acclaim. Her works were extremely popular, running to numerous reprints: Dreams and Delight (1920), for example, was reprinted in 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, and 1926. She published under only three names, but was known by many more in her social, familial, and public lives. By 1927, she was cross-referencing her female publication names, possibly to increase sales: books would be authored by “L. Adams Beck (E. Barrington)” or “E. Barrington (L. Adams Beck).”

The author herself

Image from N. de Bertrand Lugrin, “L. Adams Beck—The Lady with the Mask.” Maclean’s (1 Nov. 1925): 72.

Lily Adams Beck was born Elizabeth Louisa Moresby in about 1860. Her second husband’s name was Ralph Coker Adams Beck, hence her publications as L. Adams Beck. She is also referred to in some media reports as Elizabeth Louisa Beck, Eliza Louisa Moresby Beck, Lily Moresby Adams, or Lily Adams Moresby. The Moresbys were an eminent naval family: her father was Admiral John Moresby, son of Admiral Fairfax Moresby, after whom Moresby Island, BC, is named. Lily travelled with her family at an early age and, especially after her marriage to Ralph Adams Beck, became an inveterate traveller to Asia, fascinated by both Asian religion and philosophy. She constructed for herself a spiritual philosophy based on Buddhism but incorporating Hindu mysticism, and many of her stories are articulations of how mysticism in general, or her own philosophy specifically, influenced her European characters in their otherwise traditional lives. (My favourite of her texts is her children’s novel, The Joyous Story of Astrid [1931], which presents a comprehensive and comprehensible eschatological philosophy to her young readers.) She wrote three genres of fiction: her non-fiction historical biographies were published under the male pseudonym “Louis Moresby”; her fictional (romantic) biographies were published under the pseudonym “E. Barrington”; and her works incorporating Eastern mysticism were all published under what was essentially her real name: “L. Adams Beck.”

Her periodical contributions were many. While we know that she did publish in at least six periodicals, no one has created a comprehensive list of her shorter works, despite her popularity, her fascinating topics, and her interesting life. One of the sources that I found—and Nancy managed to bring to SFU so I could hold it in my hands!—was a scrapbook held at Brigham Young University, in Logan, Utah. It has no author; it is just a collection of articles about Asian politics, literature, art, and philosophy, as well as European life in Asia in the early twentieth century. My records indicated that it contained an article by L. Adams Beck. Nancy was overjoyed when she discovered that it in fact contained four articles by Beck. Unfortunately, we had no indication of what periodical they came from; we could only tell—from typeface and format—that all four were from different issues of the same journal. And so the hunt began.

Carole Gerson, primary researcher for CEWW, suggested using other articles obviously from the same journal to try and pin down the title. After a few attempts to find other authors online, we finally located a reference to one of the illustrators in the magazine: the illustration in question was identified as coming from Asia: The American Magazine on the Orient, a source perfectly in keeping with the theme of the scrapbook. With that information, we were actually able to track down volumes of the magazine containing Beck’s articles for sale over the internet: at only about $12 US per copy. It turns out that research is one of those areas of life where it is immensely helpful to know at least part of the answer before you ask the question. Given the search capabilities of the world-wide-web these days, it often takes only one good clue to unearth a plethora of undiscovered or at least previously unconnected information. Our entry on Lily Adams Beck is now not only more correct, but far more comprehensive than it ever could have been before the advent of the internet, fabulous research abilities of the ILL employees notwithstanding.

More about Isa Grindlay Jackson (1884-1981)

Isa Grindlay, c1918

The saga continues. The little we knew about Isa back at the beginning of the project was captured in her entry in the now-static database housed by the library at SFU. Our current entry, in addition to being far more thorough, is far more correct. But not as correct as we would like, it turns out.

The first set of changes occurred in about 2010, when the database at SFU was revised completely with the help of our diligent RAs, Linnea McNally and Alison McDonald. Our entry was recently revised as a result of questions posed by Dr. Samantha Philo-Gill, who wrote about the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in France during the First World War. That story is detailed in an earlier post. The influx of new information led to the updated version in the current project, but the story does not end there. More than the unravelling of biography that Dr. Philo-Gill and I managed, was the serendipitous discovery of our project by Jason Johnson, Isa Grindlay Jackson’s great-grandson.

On Canada Day, Jason commented on both our blog post about Isa and the digital copy of Ripples from the Ranks of the Q.M.A.A.C (1918). His kind offer of help (which I inferred from his comment that he had photos and publications of hers) was gratefully accepted. It turns out, too, that he lives only half-an-hour away, so last Sunday I visited for coffee and genealogy. When I arrived, he had laid out about 50 photos of Isa and her family, with stacks of documents and clipping neatly piled beside. I was in heaven! The only problem was, of course, that there is far too much information for us to include in what is already a more-or-less completed entry.

I am really hoping that Jason and his brother manage to find the time to go through, organize, or even catalogue the treasure trove of information about this author’s life. All of our authors are interesting, by virtue of being part of our Canadian literary history, but Isa Grindlay Jackson stands out. She lived a fascinating life, inhabiting a number of disparate spaces, reflected in her poetry and recorded in the diary that Jason has read and annotated.

Our entries list her movements, but do not delve into the deeper experiences of her life: in 1910, at the age of 26, she immigrated to the newly formed province of Alberta; lost a husband and enlisted in the WAAC in the First World War; homesteaded north of Edmonton through the Great Depression and the Second World War; and finally moved to Vancouver, where her second husband died in 1955 and she in 1981, almost reaching her centenary. Hidden within her biography is the fodder for an investigation into the intersection of her strength with the hardships she endured, one of so many women who both settled and wrote about Canada, and Canada’s place in the British Commonwealth, during the first half of the twentieth century. Isa Grindlay Jackson’s life and work would make a fabulous topic for a graduate thesis; were I at the beginning instead of nearing the end of my academic career, I would jump on this one. I’d love to see someone else take up this torch.

 

The Story of Sonny Sahib (1894; 1895), by Sara Jeannette Duncan

In January of 1895, a reviewer for the British journal The Academy waxed eloquent about the delights of Duncan’s The Story of Sonny Sahib, which had just been released in book form.

And oh, what a relief to turn from this dismalness [Miss Theo Gift’s Wrecked at the Outset] to Mrs. Everard Cote’s charming, winsome, and every way delightful Story of Sonny Sahib! True, it begins somberly in the darkest days of the great Mutiny, but after the first sad chapter there is nothing but brightness and grace and beauty. It is a very slight, filling little more than a hundred small pages, and perhaps the restoration of the brave little Sonny Sahib to the father who had believed himself childless as well as widowed reads more like a fairy-tale than like a transcript from the life of every day; but, then, in the India of a generation ago fairy-takes sometimes came true, and whether true or not they are very welcome after even a short course of contemporary realism. The Story of Sonny Sahib can be read easily between, say, London and Brighton in the fastest train, and it will make that or any other hour brief with pleasantness. — Review of The Story of Sonny Sahib. The Academy (5 Jan. 1895): 10.

The novel began its life as a submission to a story competition that was subsequently serialized in The Youth’s Companion (Boston) between 12 July and 16 August 1894. It is a simple tale of the bravery of a young British boy, saved by his ayah during the Sepoy Rebellion, and reunited with his father after revealing his honourable British character. The trope was not new; the best example is perhaps Kipling’s Kim, published seven years later, in 1901. (I’ve always wondered to what extent Kipling knew Duncan’s work. They were both journalists working in India, but as far as I am aware they never met: Duncan lived India after her marriage to Everard Cotes in December of 1890; Kipling left India in 1889. Duncan was in Calcutta in the spring of 1889, however, so who knows… but there is no documented evidence of a meeting.)

Given the jingoism of the story, Sonny Sahib is not one of Duncan’s most admirable of works. It is interesting as a collection of stereotypes but, as a children’s story, is sadly unrelieved by Duncan’s characteristic irony. It is nevertheless interesting to see the differences between the six-chapter serialized version, posted here (page images and searchable pdf, and the ten-chapter published version, available through the Internet Archive project.

 

 

A poem by Rosanna Leprohon for July 9th

Leprohon, Rosanna. [Entry for July 9]. Canadian Birthday Book. Ed. Seranus [Susan Frances Harrison]. Toronto: Robinson, 1887.

Spring Fever, by Evelyn Craig Rusby

In January of 2012, Evelyn Craig Rusby‘s daughter, Judy Schuett, discovered her mother’s name in our Index of Authors. Recently, she wrote to provide more information about her family, and generously offered to send us copies of her mother’s chapbooks, Spring Fever (likely written while an undergraduate at the University of Toronto) and Schoolday Impressions (written when she was a high school student). I will post Schoolday Impressions at a later date, as it will be more difficult to digitize: I don’t want to crack the binding of such a delightful little volume. Here, though, for you all to enjoy, is Spring Fever.

“O Canada,” by Catharine Nina Merritt

Although Catharine Nina Merritt was a more prolific writer than her sister Emily Lena Merritt, her death in 1928 meant that she was omitted from Women of Canada, a collection of biographical sketches of prominent Canadian women published in 1930. Nonetheless, Catharine’s biography slips into Emily’s entry, so we do know a bit about her and her family.

St. Catharines, Ontario, was named after Catharine and Emily’s grandmother, Catharine Rodman Prendergast Merritt. As the War of 1812 drew to a close, their grandfather, the Honourable William Hamilton Merritt, Sr., purchased the land upon which the original town of St. Catharines, Ontario, was situated. He named the developing town after his wife, who was apparently, in his estimation, a saintly woman.

This post arises, though, because in researching Catharine, I discovered that she wrote “O Canada.” What? you say, as did I. And so to Google.

The music for our national anthem was written by Calixa Lavallée and the words that we know are adapted from the original lyrics written by Robert Stanley Weir. The Canadian Encyclopaedia Online gives a good account of the choice for the national anthem, which was ultimately determined by a contest held in Quebec City in June 1880. It can be surmised, then, that this version of “O Canada,” set to the music of Calixa Lavallée, is Catharine Nina Merritt’s contribution to that competition. I’m not sure I don’t like hers better. It almost scans…

“O Canada / Music by [Calixa] Lavallée / Words by Catharine Nina Merritt.” CIHM 43474: “Filmed from a copy of the original publication held by the Metropolitan Toronto Library, Canadian History Department”

Here, too, is Emily Lena Merritt’s biography from Women of Canada (Montreal, QC: Women of Canada, 1930).