The Toronto Art Students’ League calendars, 1893-1897

For a number of years, the Toronto Arts Students’ League published a calendar of their members’ art. Archive.org has these calendars for the years 1893-1904, but I am not sure of the history of the endeavour: when did they begin? when did they cease? I surmise that they did not continue long after 1900, as the quality of production and content deceased significantly in the first couple of years of the twentieth century. Significant, too, is that the years 1893-1897 contain both artwork (sometimes fabulous) by the students and poetry by influential and popular Canadian poets of the day.

Art Nouveau decorations

The decoration in some of the early volumes is beautiful. I might be biased, in that I am particularly fond of Art Nouveau, but even so… While some of the other volumes are more elaborate and glorious, the title page from 1899 is perhaps my favourite.

Some poems

1894 was a particularly good year for illustration, too: the decoration surrounds the poems, rather than pictures sitting on the opposite pages. I have included here the 1894 poems by Eleanor Corkhill Addison (using her maiden name, Eleanor Corquille Adams, with a twist on the spelling), Alice Maud Ardagh (Esperance), E. Pauline Johnson,  Agnes Maule Machar (Fidelis), and Nellie Spence. The second image is the full-page illustration accompanying Eleanor Corquille Adam’s poem.

 

The contents

Here is a list of the calendars that contain poetry, and the poets included therein. I have written down the names as recorded, with a gloss in brackets, as I find it interesting that some of the male authors are only mentioned by last name. It is also interesting that in the 1893 volume, Esperance  (Alice Maud Ardagh) is included as L’Esperance.

1893: Ninety-Three: A Calendar for the Year of Our Lord MDCCCXCIII (Toronto: Toronto Art Students’ League, [1892]).

Campbell, W.W. [William Wilfred]
Carman, Bliss
Crawford, Isabella Valancy
Fidelis [Agnes Maule Machar]
L’Esperance [Alice Maud Ardagh]
Lampman [Archibald]
Mair, Charles
McCarroll, James
Roberts, Charles G.D.
Seranus [Susan Frances Harrison]
Wilson, Daniel

1894: Ninety-Four: A Calendar for the Year of Our Lord MDCCCXCIV with Verses by Some of the Canadian Writers of Verse and Drawings by Members of the Toronto Art Students’ League (Toronto: Toronto Art Students’ League, [1893]).

1894, for all that it has lovely illustrations also introduces some problems. One poem is anonymous, and one author’s name cannot be deciphered. Can anyone help with these?

Adams, Eleanor Corquelle [Eleanor Corkhill Addison, née Adams]
Anonymous (“Reflections”)
Charlesworth, H.W. [Hector Willoughby]
Edgar, Pelham
Esperance [Alice Maud Ardagh]
Johnson, E. Pauline
Jykes, (Tykes?) W. Henry (?)
Machar, Agnes M.
McArthur, P. [Peter Gilchrist]
McKellar, D.A.
Spence, Nellie

1895: Ninety-Five: A Calendar for the Year MDCCCXCV with Some Selections from Canadian Writers and Drawings by Members of the Toronto Art Students’ League (Toronto: Toronto Art Students’ League, [1894]).

Campbell, W.W. [William Wilfred]
Carman, Bliss
Heavysege, Charles
Johnson, E. Pauline
Lampman, A. [Archibald]
Roberts, Chas. G.D. [Charles]
Sangster, Charles
Scott, Duncan Campbell

1896: Ninety-Six: A Calendar for the Year MDCCCXCVI with Verses by Charles G.D. Roberts and Bliss Carman, and Wayside Notes of Wandering over Canadian Roads (Toronto: Toronto Art Students’ League, [1895]).

Carman, Bliss
Roberts, Charles G.D.

1897: Ninety-Seven: A Calendar for the Year of 1897 with Sketches of Canadian Water-Ways and Appropriate Selections from Canadian Writers (Toronto: Toronto Art Students’ League, [1896]).

Campbell, W.W. [William Wilfred]
Lampman, Archibald
Roberts [Charles G.D.]
Sangster [Charles]
Carman, Bliss
Stewart, J.L. [James Livingstone]

The Elusive Identity of H.S. Caswell

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

H. S. Caswell ≠ Harriet Sophia, but perhaps H. S. Caswell = Henry Sheldon Caswell

by Karyn Huenemann

Another mystery of authorship surrounds H.S. Caswell, author of three texts issued in the 1870s by John Lovell, the major Montreal publisher of the time: Stories and Sketches (1872); Walter Harland; or, Memories of the Past (1874); and The Path of Duty and Other Stories (1874), also recorded as Clara Roscom; or, The Path of Duty, which contains the novel-length Clara Roscom, the full collection from Stories and Sketches, and another long story, Ernest Harwood; or, the Adopted Son. Ernest Harwood is listed on the title pages of Caswell’s published works, and may have been released as a single title, but no copy has been located. Caswell’s books appear in Early Canadiana Online, suggesting Canadian authorship, but it is often assumed that this H.S. Caswell was the American missionary Harriet S. Caswell (1834-1909). Evidence for this association is, however, tenuous.

Caswell’s longest work, Walter Harland, is a rather Tom Brown’s Schooldays “autobiography” of a fatherless boy from Elmwood, Quebec, who leaves his home to live with his maternal uncle near Hamilton for school, and from there to work in Montreal where he grows into the man who narrates the tale. No Elmwood exists today, but Elmwood Cemetery in northern Sherbrooke (established 1890) suggests that perhaps a village of that name once did. While Clara Roscom is set in Philadelphia and New Hampshire, and Ernest Harwood near Concord, Massachusetts, a significant number of Caswell’s stories in The Path of Duty are again set in Canada.

Harriet Caswell (1834-1909), the American author, was born Harriet Sophia Clark in 1834; she married Lemuel Caswell in 1869, and as a widow married Lewis Payson Broad in 1900. In 1892, Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts, published Our Life Among the Iroquois Indians (1892), the only book issued under the name of Harriet S. Caswell (rather than H. S. Caswell). Harriet Caswell-Broad’s life is recorded in a posthumous biography, “Blue Sky”: The Life of Harriet Caswell-Broad (Boston, MA: Pilgrim, 1911), written by her brother, Dr. Joseph Bourne Clark. A great deal more can be found online about Joseph Clark, a noted American missionary to the Iroquois of New York state in the mid-1800s. In his biography of his sister, Clark makes reference to “her book” (explicitly Our Life Among the Iroquois Indians) as if there she had only written one (20). He later mentions her work as editor of the Home Missionary in the period between 1885 and 1900, but makes no other reference to literary endeavours. During the years when H. S. Caswell was published in Montreal (1872-1874), Harriet Caswell was in Boston where she had started a school for disadvantaged women, as well as a Relief Agency, and contributed to an extensive number of other local social causes. Given Clark’s detailed account of Caswell’s activities during this period, it seems odd that he would omit the publication of a novel as well as a collection of short stories, later reissued with two novel-length additions. It seems more likely that Caswell, who apparently never visited Canada, was not the author of these works, many of which are set in Eastern Canada (as Quebec was then known), with themes that are more social than religious.

To date, no biographical records have been found to confirm the existence of a Canadian author H.S. Caswell during this period. Although a Hattie S. Caswell lived in Quebec at the time, she was born in 1862, too late to have authored the stories. A more likely prospect is Henry Sheldon Caswell, a schoolteacher who according to Canadian Census records lived in Sherbrooke, Quebec—the location of much of H. S. Caswell’s writing—continually from his birth in 1838 until his death in 1900.

“Silver and Jade,”

We no absolutely nothing about Muriel L. Sheppard, although it is likely she lived in Vancouver. There was a student, Edith Muriel Sheppard, living at Roseberry and 25th in North Vancouver with her parents (Mr. & Mrs. William H. Sheppard) in 1940, but that is the closest I have come.

Sheppard, Muriel L. “Silver and Jade.” Vancouver Sun (3 July 1943): 2.

Fragment, by Lyn Cook

Way back in September of 2012, I spoke with Lyn Cook on the phone. The call was initiated because of my interest in her work both through our project and my love of Canadian children’s literature. During that call, in amongst a richness of information about her life and family, she let slip that she had published three poetry chapbooks during the 1940s: Fragment, Harvest, and Soliloquy.

“That’s odd,” I commented, “we have no record of them.”

“Well,” she said (and I paraphrase), “I wrote my poetry under my grandmother’s maiden name: Margaret Culverhouse.” (Margaret Culverhouse is actually a combination of Lyn Cook’s middle name with her maternal grandmother’s maiden name.)

The lights went on for me, as Margaret Culverhouse was on our list of poets (as a contributor to the Canadian Poetry Magazine) that I could find absolutely no information about. One mystery solved, but I still had no luck locating the chapbooks. It turns out that the only known copies were those kept by the author and her family. She promised in a subsequent conversation to look them out for me, but it obviously slipped her mind (to give her her due, she was 94 years old at the time, although a very spritely conversationalist). In our entry for Lyn Cook, I had noted (given her comments) that the three poetry chapbooks were published under this pseudonym, but it turns out that my inference was erroneous: there is no publication information on any of the texts.

Yesterday, her son, Christopher Waddell, send me scans of his copies of the three chapbooks, with permission to post them online. I will upload them into the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory collection, but I wanted to share them with you here, as well. So here is the first of the set, Fragment, signed in 1946 to “Judy” (her niece Judy Misener) ,as “memories of a war” during which she worked as a meteorological observer for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

“The Confessor,” by Gertrude MacGregor Moffat

Moffat, Gertrude MacGregor. “The Confessor.” A Book of Verses (Toronto: Macmillan, 1924): 9.

“The Pines of Timagami,” by Mildred Low

A state of emergency was proclaimed yesterday here in BC as a result of the hundreds of wild fires that are engulfing our forests right now. Worse, it turns out that many of these fires have been caused by humans, and not even by accident. It is beyond my ability to comprehend, that anyone would be able to intentionally cause such devastation to our natural world, and the animals and indeed people who live in it.

In 1925, journalist Mildred Low wrote this article about the Temagami Forest Reserve in northern Ontario. She calls the forest “nature’s great university,” and expounds upon the benefits of understanding the forest, the trees, the waters, and our relationship to the natural world that sustains us. If only we all listened to such voices.

Low, Mildred. “The Pines of Timagami.” Nature Magazine (June 1925): 357-60.

Schoolday Impressions (1927), by Evelyn Craig Rusby

Evelyn Craig Rusby‘s daughter, Judy Schuett, has graciously sent me copies of her mother’s two chapbooks, the first of which I am sharing with you here. Schoolday Impressions is, as the name suggests, a collection of poetry that “Eve Lynne” obviously wrote during her high school years (her high school graduation photo is the frontispiece). Her second chapbook, Spring Fever, was written during her time at the University of Toronto, and is dedicated “To fellow members of the Women’s Press Club of the University of Toronto.”

“Eve Lynne” (Evelyn Craig Rusby). Schoolday Impressions. 1st ed. Vol. 1 (Burlington, ON: Author, 1927).

(Although the title of Schoolday Impressions page reads “FIRST EDITION VOLUME I,” Spring Fever, her only other known book, is not labelled as volume two of a set.)

“Summer Vacation,” by Isa Grindlay Jackson

You may remember that Isa Grindlay Jackson’s great-grandson, Jason Johnson, was in touch with us to share information and photos about his great-grandmother. Paths of inquiry led us to Sarah Carter, in the History Department at the University of Alberta, who in turn sent me a link to the digitized newspaper archive of Peel’s Bibliography of Prairie writing. There, I discovered the expected 400-odd submissions to the Western Farm Leader, but also a few select tidbits sent to newspapers such as The Carbon Chronicle and  The Wetaskiwin Times. Here’s a poem for summer.

Jackson, Isa Grindlay. “Summer Vacation.” The Wetaskiwin Times (2 July 1931): 5.

 

“My Forest,” by Emily MacNab

Searching the internet in an attempt to differentiate E (Emily MacNab) from ME (Mary Ellen) MacNab, I ran across this poem in the University Magazine, published at McGill University. My notes suggest that both were Mrs. William MacNab, which is possible, but I need to know for sure. Mary Ellen certainly was, but I can find no marriage details for Emily.

MacNab, Emily. “My Forest.” University Magazine 18 (1919): 378.

A sad goodbye: Lyn Cook (1918-2018)

On 15 July 2018, the day after children’s author Lyn Cook died, her son Christopher contacted us with the news. Evelyn Waddell, who wrote her children’s books as Lyn Cook and poetry as Margaret Culverhouse, was one of the few authors in our project who was still living when we began our digital revisions in 2008. I spoke to her a number of times on the phone, and exchanged emails with her regarding our work and specifically her entry, which she helped to write. At 95, the age she was when we last spoke, Evelyn was a bright, intelligent woman with a sharp sense of humour and a delight in sharing her life and thoughts with us.

When I visited Ontario in 2012, I was really upset that I did not have time to drive up to Port Hope, where she was living at the time with her daughter Deborah; it would have been fabulous to meet her in person. I was honoured that she and her family appreciated to our project sufficiently that they let us know so soon after her passing.

The following is her obituary, published in the Toronto Globe and Mail on 17 July 2018.