“Two Ears,” by Marjorie Pickthall

Pickthall, Marjorie. “Two Ears.” Marjorie Pickthall: A Book of Remembrance, by Lorne Pierce (Toronto: Ryerson, 1925).

More gems discovered while poking about looking for obscure answers, such to the question: Was Marjorie Pickthall’s first publication—”Two Ears”—part of the “Circle of Young Canada” column in the Toronto Globe?

“Two Ears” was first published in 1898, and according to Lorne Pierce, after that publication—for which she received three dollars— she began to contribute to the “Young People’s Corner” column in The Mail and Empire. In 1899, she submitted “Two Ears” and a poem, “Song of the Nixies,” and won awards for both of them (to the tune of $15). What I still can’t figure out is whether or not “Two Ears” was originally published as part of the “Circle of Young Canada.” It would almost certainly have had to have been, but I would love to see a digitized copy of the column. The Toronto Public Library has digitized some articles, including “The Children’s Circle” on page 7 of most issues, but searches don’t turn up “Two Ears.” This does suggest, though, that the “Circle of Young Canada” might have begun life as “The Children’s Circle”… but I can only download the articles they have digitized, even though I can view the entire paper. The mind boggles.

Regardless, here is the story, “Two Ears,” from the pages of Marjorie Pickthall: A Book of Remembrance as well as an article about Pickthall from the 25 July 1925 edition of The Globe (p. 18).

Ballades and Bits (1937), by Isa Grindlay Jackson

Ballades and Bits (Toronto: Ryerson, 1937) is the second of Isa Grindlay Jackson‘s two published books of poetry. The first, Ripples from the Ranks of the Q.M.A.A.C. (London: Erskine Macdonald, 1918), by Isa Grindlay, was published before her marriage to Lionel Leslie Jackson (1888-1965), while she was was stationed at the Scottish Command School of Musketry in St. Andrew’s, Scotland, as a member of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps, or QMAAC). Her first husband, Canadian Charles Grindlay (1887-1916), had died in the trenches in November 1916.

Her history, as well as the history of our discovery of her fascinating biography, is recorded in other posts as well as her full entry in the Canada’s Early Women Writers project. The current volume was a gift from Isa Grindlay Jackson’s grandson, Jason Johnson, who was so generous in helping to create our bio-bibliography of his grandmother.

An Index to The Paint Box (1926-1930)

Val Lem at the Ryerson University Library, called to my attention an artist, Rowena Gross, who attended the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art in 1927-28, and published in The Paint Box, a school publication intended to advance interest in the decorative arts, especially in BC.

What makes Rowena Gross particularly interesting to our project is that she also illustrated Lilies and Leopards (Ryerson, 1935) by Annie Charlotte Dalton, as well as designing the cover for Dalton’s The Call of the Carillon (posted earlier on our website).

Val sent me a link to the complete run of The Paint Box, which has been digitized by the Emily Carr University of Art + Design here in Vancouver, so I have diligently gleaned the names of all of the contributors so we could add the women authors to our Database of Canada’s Early Women Writers. The volumes may be useful for artists’ biographers, as they list the names and addresses of students; the 1930 volume also provides short biographies of some graduates. It appears, though, that our Rowena attended for only two years before branching out into her artistic career. I am only beginning to research the finer details of her life, which will be available in our project in a few weeks. The point of this posting is to share with you the comprehensive index of contributors to The Paint Box during its five-year run.

The index below lists all authors and artists identified by name. Dates in isolation indicate a written contribution; other contributions (art, executive committee rolls) are labelled on a separate line.

In addition to the index, I wanted to share this image with you. Each volume has two pages for autographs; in the Emily Carr collection, only in volume 2 (1927) have the autograph pages been used.

 

A Student Potter	1928
Amess, Fred	1928; 1929; 1930 cover design, 1928; woodcut, 1928; linoleum cut, 1929
Atkins, Violet; as Vi Atkins	1929
Bell-Irving, B.	1926
Binning, Bertram	1930 business manager, 1930
Brown, Louise	1930
Carter, Edith	1926
Carter, Margaret	1930
Cianci, Vito; also as V.S. Cianci	1926; 1927; 1928; 1930 editor, 1927; woodcut, 1928
Corry, Margaret	1926; 1927
Cummings, Parke	poem from Saturday Evening Post, 1927
Cuppage, E.M.; also as Mrs. Cuppage	1929
Currie, Ada F.	1928; 1929 woodcut, 1928; linoleum cut, 1929
Davey, Brenda	1926
De Pencier, Betty	1927
Erb, Marion	linoleum cut, 1930
Farley, Lillias	woodcut, 1928
Farmer, Madge	1927; 1928; 1929 editor, 1929; woodcut, 1928; linoleum cut, 1929
Findlater, Betty	1929
Fisher, Orville	linoleum cut, 1930
Fowler, P.M.	1926
Fuller, Phoebe	linoleum cut, 1929
Gatewood, Frances V.	1926; 1927; 1928
Gordon, Mary	linoleum cut, 1930
Gostick, Marg	linoleum cut, 1929
Gross, Rowena	1927; 1928 editorial staff, 1928
Harris, Irene E.	1929 editorial staff, 1929, 1930; linoleum cut, 1929, 1930
Harrison, Katherine	1927; 1928 cover designer, 1927; business manager 1928; woodcut, 1928
Hensman, Dorothy	1926; 1927; 1928
Herchmer, Laurencia A.	1927
Hill, Sybil	1927; 1928 editor, 1928; woodcut, 1928 (often about First Nations: those Hills?)
Hoffar, Irene	1930 woodblock design, 1928; linoleum cut design, 1929; linoleum cut 1930
I.E.H.; likely Irene Harris	1930
I.W.	1930
Jensen, Maude	1926 woodblock design, 1928
Johnson, Ruby; also as R.J., R. Johnson, and Ruby Johnston	1927; 1929
King, Hermione	1926 business manager, 1926
Kirkpatrick, Phillis M.; also as Phyllis	1926; 1927; 1929 woodblock design, 1928; linoleum cut, 1929
Lennie, Beatrice; also B. Lennie and Bee Lennie	1927; 1928; 1930
Lewis, Margaret	1928 woodcut, 1928
Lyne, Marjorie	1929 cover design, 1929
M.A.L.	1927
M.C.	1930
MacDonald, Ione; linoleum cut, 1930
MacDonald, J.W.G.	1927; 1928
MacIntosh, H.	1927
MacPherson, Alice M.; also as Grease-Monkey Al Mac in 1930	1929; 1930 linoleum cut, 1929
Marega, Charles	1926
Mason, Dorothy	linoleum cut, 1929
McGregor, E.	1927
McKechnie, Eleanor	1929
Meilleur, Peter	business manager, 1927; editorial staff, 1928; woodcut, 1928
Melvin, Grace W.	1928. 1929; 1930
Moore, Ellen M.	1926; cover design, 1926; cartoon sketches
Moore, Rosalie	linoleum cut, 1930
One Who Knows	1930
Park, Marjorie K.	1928; 1929
Park, Norma	linoleum cut, 1930
Patterson, Monica	1930
Pluto	1927
Priestman, Roger B.	1927
Quinn, Bert	1927 assistant business manager, 1927
Robertson, Masie	linoleum cut, 1929; woodcut, 1930; cover design, 1930
Scott, Charles H.	1927; 1928
Sharland, Mrs. T.J.	1927
Sharpe, Alice	editorial staff, 1929; woodblock design, 1928; linoleum cut, 1929
Sherman, Maud	1926; 1927 woodcut, 1928
Smith, Kate A.; Mrs. Frank Hoole	1928; 1929 linoleum cut, 1929; linoleum cut, 1930
Sutherland, Mary B.	1926; 1927; 1928
The Potter	1928
Tisdall, Dorothy A.; also as D.A.T. and Pindy Tisdall	1929; 1930 business manager, 1929 (Pindy Tisdall) moved to Kamloops after graduation
Turpin, Dorothy	editorial staff, 1928, 1930
Tweedie, Edith	1929; 1930 editorial staff, 1930
Underwood, Evelyn	linoleum cut, 1929
Vanderpant, J.	1928
Varley, F.H[orsman]	1927; 1928
Vera, Ada and Theodore	1928
Walker, Eula B.; “alias ‘Peter at the Dam’”	1928; 1929; 1930
Ware, Ruth; also Ruth Ware Notzle, and R.W.N.	1927; 1929; 1930 editorial staff, 1929 married Clifford Arthur Notzle, 27 Sept 1930
Weatherbee, Vera	woodcut, 1928; linoleum cut, 1929
Weston, Betty	woodcut, 1928
Wilcox, Laura	linoleum cut, 1930
Williams, Margaret; also M.A.W., Margaret A. Williams, and M.A. Williams	1926; 1927; 1928; 1929 editor, 1926; woodcut, 1928 moved to Los Angeles, CA, after graduation

 

“In Memoriam,” by Blanche Elmore

Another research enigma.

We know basically nothing about Blanche Elmore, and Ancestry.ca is notably unhelpful on this one. She was born in England; she lived in Toronto in the 1890s; she wrote at least five poetry chapbooks, all entitled Poems (1st through 5th series, all published in Toronto). A sixth collection was published in Detroit, that contains poems from at least the 3rd and 4th series volumes: my guess is that if I could hold the other three volumes in my hand, I would discover that the Detroit edition is an anthology of previously collected works, perhaps even a pirated publication. Copyright was constantly infringed upon at the time, given differing national copyright laws between Canada, Britain, and the US.

Another though I have is that the poem I am including here could actually be autobiographical, in which case we are dealing with Mrs. Blanche Elmore, née something else.

It would be wonderful if somewhere out there in the digital ether-world a relative could step up and tell us more. But I’m not holding my breath.

Here is the poem for you: Blanche Elmore, Poems, 4th series (Toronto: Imrie, Graham & Co., 1989) 7-8.

C.A. Frazer: Another research mystery

Adapting the SFU entry for C.A. Frazer for inclusion in our new Canada’s Early Women Writers project, I have run up against a wall; or rather, a chasm. There are holes in our knowledge that need addressing, and I am not sure the answers to my questions are known. Let me share with you.

Many sources—notably Lewis Horning and Lawrence Burpee in A Bibliography of Canadian Fiction (1904) and Henry Morgan in Canadian Men and Women of the Times (1912)—list Miss C.A. Frazer—with a “z”—as the co-author of the fairy tale collections A Wonder Web of Stories (Montreal: Grafton, 1892) and With Printless Foot: A Holiday Book of Fairy Tales (Montreal: Sabiston, 1894); the other author is Margaret Ridley Charlton. The title pages of these collections, which are now both available in the Internet Archive, list the author as Caroline Augusta Fraser and C.A. Fraser—both with an “s”—respectively. The University of Alberta copy of Atma: A Romance (Montreal: Lovell, 1891), by A.C.F., is attributed (in hand-script) to “Miss C.A. Frazer.” Internet Archive thus lists all three titles under the author C.A. Frazer, but I have questions.

The first is: where does the attribution of Atma to C.A. Fraz/ser come from? The answer may be the following convoluted path, which our earlier research followed:

In the genealogical catalogue Major Alpin’s Ancestors and Descendants (1915), a Charlotte Fraser is listed as a sub-editor for the Montreal Star. Research on Ancestry.ca reveals a great deal about this Augusta Charlotte Fraser (c1849-1896), but there is no documentary evidence on Ancestry.ca that she authored any full-length texts. Nonetheless, the date and location are correct, and how many A.C. Frasers (A.C.F.) could there be in Montreal? And isn’t Augusta C. Fraser rather similar to C. Augusta Fraser? So ran the logic, I assume (this was before my time).

So you can see how we got here, with the three titles attributed to Augusta Charlotte Fraser, who for some reason chose also to publish as Caroline Augusta Fraser. And you can see, too, where my doubts come from. It becomes more interesting as we delve deeper.

Atma: A Romance is set in the Punjab at the time of the Second Sikh War (1848-49). It is a typical novel of British India at the time, incorporating the tone and tropes common in literature produced by those who actually lived in India (although it contains no actual Hindi words, as much of their literature does). It does not feel like the work of a female author from Montreal who also wrote fairy tales for children. That being said, it is hard to judge a novel of war and spirituality against fairy tales for children, and the introduction used in both Wonder Web and Printless Foot could possibly be the same voice. Still, it is not obvious to me, given the A.C.F. / Augusta Charlotte Fraser / Charlotte Fraser / Caroline Augusta Fraser / C.A. Frazer conundrum, that we have here a single author.

Throw into the issue a text entitled In the Days of Sir Walter Raleigh (s.l.: s.n., 1900), also for children, attributed in our older entry to Margaret Ridley Charlton and C.A. Frazer—but only to Charlton in the two reference books cited above—and I become even more questioning. At the moment, our entries assume that we have here only one author, with the caveat that we have concerns; I will update the entries, and our blog audience, as more information becomes available. I am really hoping that someone out there is asking, too, and can help us out.

Titles pages:

Martha Craig: Scientist, Author, Charletan?

As promised, here is the fifth and final of our “Adventures in Research,” previously published on the now-defunct CWRC project blog. This was written by one of our research assistants, Lindsay Bannister, and represents only a small portion of the information she has amassed about Martha Craig over the years. This research has been supported by the invaluable contributions of historian Nevin Taggart, of County Antrim, Ireland, whence Craig’s family hails.

Martha Craig’s Story of Reincarnation

by Lindsay Bannister

Martha Craig as Princess Ye-wa-go-no-nee. (Legends of the North Land, frontispiece)

Days after his death, an article in the North Bay Nugget revealed the true identity of writer, lecturer and conservationist Grey Owl (Archie Belaney) (1888-1938). While Grey Owl publicly identified himself as the son of an Apache woman and Scottish man, he was, in truth, an English man fascinated by North American indigenous cultures.   Nearly forty years prior to this revelation, the Irish-born writer, explorer, and scientist Martha Craig (b. c1875) lectured to crowded halls and auditoriums in Toronto, New York and Washington D.C. as Princess Ye-wa-go-no-nee. “Will you believe me,” Craig asked an audience in Brooklyn, “when I tell you that in the life before this one, I was a Canadian Indian girl [?]”

Craig’s complicated life story is difficult to piece together. Newspaper reports detail the story of an intelligent child born in County Antrim in present-day Northern Ireland. Craig’s family sent her to England and France for formal schooling. The writer developed an interest in the sciences; however, she eventually pursued a career in journalism because it allowed her the freedom to travel. In the late 1890s, Craig left Ireland for the United States, where she might have encountered President William McKinley. Craig’s interest in indigenous cultures led her to Canada where, in Northern Ontario, she met Anishinaabe chief Buhgwujjenene (d. 1900) and (possibly) resided with the Ketegaunseebee or Garden River First Nation. According to an article in The Friend, Craig was adopted into the Nation and given the name Enookwashooshah meaning “Brave One.” (“Princess Ye-wa-go-no-nee” was later adopted as part of Craig’s on-stage persona.)

Two years later, in March 1902, Princess Ye-wa-go-no-nee entertained two thousand spectators in Toronto’s Massey Hall with a lantern show titled “1,000 miles in a canoe in the land of Hiawatha.” In 1905, Craig gained considerable attention for her trek to Labrador. Newspapers describe Craig as the first woman to explore Labrador. (In truth, Craig’s journey may coincide with Mina Hubbard’s own extraordinary expedition; in her journal, Hubbard refers to “Miss Craig,” a pesky journalist for Century Magazine.) Afterwards, Craig returned to the lecture circuit; however, her career then veered in an unexpected direction.

“All life is a vibration,” Craig explained to an audience in Brooklyn: “Through this vibration, […] it is possible to separate the soul from the body, or to live continuously. Therefore, […] it is a crime to die of disease or old age” (“Girl’s Weird Story about Reincarnation”). In this same lecture, she outlined her theories about reincarnation, describing her past life as Meta, the daughter of the chief of a Labrador tribe. The lecturer was an easy target for cheeky reporters but, incredibly, her inquiries into the nature of gravity and the aurora borealis garnered the attention of researchers at the Académies des sciences in Paris. Craig published her findings (First Principles: A Manifesto of the Vortex Theory of Creation, London: Harrison, 1906) in addition to her book of poems, Legends of the North Land (c1910?).

After 1907, Craig disappears from the public record. While a 1905 New York City census situates the journalist in Brooklyn, few details have emerged in regards to her later career. It is highly possible, given Craig’s frequent wanderings, that she might have left the United States, married, or assumed a new identity. Curiously, cataloguers at the British Library attribute a 1907 book, Men of Mars by “Mithra,” to Martha Craig. Is Mithra our writer?

Because of her brief association with Canada, we will include a short snapshot of Craig in our database. The writer’s connection with Canada might be fleeting; however, her unusual career gestures towards broader issues. Unlike Grey Owl, the writer did not conceal her true identity as Martha Craig of County Antrim, but she did use clothing in order to fashion an indigenous persona. In light of ongoing conversations about clothing, identity, and cultural appropriation, what does Princess Ya-wa-go-no-nee reveal about white settler representations of indigenous cultures? And how does Craig’s strange story tie into the larger legacy of colonialism?

Lindsey Bannister

Works cited

Craig, Martha. “My Summer Outings in Labrador.” Cosmopolitan (July 1905): 325.

“Don’t Die, Vibrate Away.” New York Times (12 December 1905): 7.

“Genealogy of the President.” Chicago Tribune (28 February 1898): 1.

“Girl’s Weird Story about Reincarnation.” Amador Ledger (15 June 1906): 1.

Hubbard, Mina. The Woman Who Mapped Labrador: The Life and Expedition Diary of Mina Hubbard. (Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2005): 335.

“Noble Words of a Dying Indian Chief.” The Friend (22 December 1900): 178.

Addendum

Lindsay wrote part of a subsequent blog, but it was never published. Still, it has some interesting additions to her story of Martha Craig.

Filling in the Gaps

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post detailing the remarkable life of Martha Craig. Craig was an Irish-born poet, scientist, and explorer whose lectures provoked Canadian and American audiences. Since then, Karyn Huenemann (Data Entry Supervisor for the Canada’s Early Women Writers project) and I have discovered more information about this unusual figure: around 1907, Craig abandoned her North American lecture circuit and travelled to Europe. After attending the Sorbonne, she became one of the first women to lecture at the University of Salamanca, until her academic career was cut short by the First World War. Craig returned to France as a nurse. After the war, the shell-shocked writer travelled back to her family home in North Ireland, where she lived in relative peace and stability until her death in 1950.

We must thank Craig’s great niece, Anne Milliken, and Nevin Taggart, of the North Antrim Local Interest List, for clarifying some of the murkier details of her life story. Without Anne and Nevin’s help we would not have discovered that the poet was also a pioneer in aeronautical engineering, who, according to a signed declaration dated 1914, worked to improve the design of dirigibles (as the document suggests, these improvements were of potential interest to the British Government—whether or not the British military used these designs is yet to be determined).

Adelaide Hunter and her Far-Flung Relatives

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

Adelaide Hunter Hoodless and Amelia Hunter Tennant

by Karyn Huenemann

Adelaide Hoodless, portrait hung at the Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead

This is a bit of a shaggy dog story, so I hope you will bear with me; the way it weaves in and out of past and present peoples’ lives brings me back to one of my favourite epigraphs, E. M. Forster’s “Only connect…”

This year [the original post was published on 20 November 2012] marks the 200^th anniversary of the War of 1812, a moment in history that has always interested me greatly. Notable is that many of the battles between 1812 and 1814 took place in Brant County, Ontario, a location that has similarly always interested me greatly. At a Children’s Literature conference down in North Carolina in 2007, I met fellow academic Dr. Lisa Wood, now a close friend, who lives in Brantford and teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University. Putting these details together, it is not surprising that last September I pulled my history-loving daughter from school and travelled across to Brantford ostensibly to see a historical reenactment of the Battle of Malcolm’s Mill, the last battle of the war fought on Canadian soil.

My daughter was very patient with my concomitant design of visiting the homes and haunts of the myriad of, as she calls them, “dead women writers” who hailed from the Brantford area. My interest in Brantford began over 20 years ago when I discovered Sara Jeannette Duncan, but the more I learned about early Canadian women writers, the more fascinated I became with the seeming coincidence that so many Canadian “female first” achievers came from Brant County: not only Sara Jeannette Duncan, but also E. Pauline Johnson, Emily and Augusta Stowe, June Callwood, and Adelaide Hoodless. There are others, I know; I have not compiled a comprehensive list, although I would love to.

The evening after we arrived in Brantford, Lisa (whose historical period is the 18^th century) called in her early Canadian Literature expert and friend, Dr. Kate Carter, whose name many of you may know, as she worked on the Orlando Project. Over tea—or was it wine?—we drew up our game plan. During the discussion, Lisa casually mentioned: “oh, yes, Adelaide Hoodless: she’s a relative of mine…” and my spidey senses began to tingle…

Adelaide Sophia Hunter (1857-1910) was born at what is now the Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead near St. George, Brant County, national headquarters for the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada, the first branch of which Hoodless was instrumental in founding. Her father died shortly after her birth, and her mother struggled to keep the homestead running, while still managing to educate her children. Adelaide moved in with her older sister, Lizzie, while attending “Ladies’ College,” where she met John Hoodless, who became her husband. Their fourth child, John (1888-1889), died in infancy, apparently from tainted milk. Adelaide Hoodless took it upon herself to campaign for better attention to sanitation in the delivery of milk in urban settings; from there, her career as a domestic science educator and an activist for women’s education took off. In addition to a number of articles and government publications, she published Public School Domestic Science in 1898, “a compilation of recent scientific findings derived from the application of chemistry to the understanding of food values, preservation, and preparation” (DCB), aimed at prospective teachers.

Adelaide and John Hoodless

Lisa’s great-great-grandmother, it turns out, had been adopted by Adelaide Hoodless’s sister Amelia. Lisa had tried to discover more, but the records were sketchy and inconclusive. Even the Dictionary of Canadian Biography notes that Adelaide was the youngest of 12 children, a list (found in family records on ancestry.ca) that does not include an Amelia. When we visited the Adelaide Hunter Hoodless Homestead, the director remembered Lisa from their shared attempts at discovering more about the elusive Amelia, whom even the historians at this National Historical Site were not 100% sure was not apocryphal. Intrigued, and loving a mystery, as well as helping others, and of course playing on ancestry.ca, I promised to try to track down a real, documented connection between Adelaide Hoodless, the seemingly non-existent Amelia, and Lisa’s great-great-grandmother, Mary MacKay.

Late into the night, Lisa and I poured over ancestry.ca. We telephoned her mother to get all the details she could remember about who married whom in Mary MacKay’s more immediate circle, including the name of the adopting family (verified by the historian at the Adelaide Hoodless Homestead): Tennant. Eventually, we found what we were looking for: a Mary MacKay listed on the 1881 Census of Canada as living with James and Amelia Tennant and their 5 children, in Toronto. From there, we traced Mary MacKay’s line to her immigration to the United States, and virtually met her descendants searching back up their family tree into Canada. Mary married an American man named Solon Washington Barnes, and we even have photographs of her husband and son, as well as records of all of her other children. Significantly for my friend Lisa, Mary MacKay bore Gertrude Barnes in 1897; who bore Gertrude Buckle in 1916; who in turn bore Mary Kerpan in 1937; and Mary Kerpan is my friend Lisa’s mother.

Solon Barnes, Junior

But we had travelled a long way from Adelaide Hoodless, which is of course where my interest began and still lay. The shaggy dog has travelled all the way from a small homestead near St. George, Ontario, in the 1850s to Michigan, USA, and back to Brantford, Ontario, so close to where it all began. In tracing this web of relations, we discovered that—despite the Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry—Adelaide Sophia Hunter Hoodless was born on 27 February 1857, youngest of possibly 13 children* of David Hunter and Jane Hamilton of St. George, Brant County, Ontario. It feels satisfying to have solved a mystery that others have wondered about for years; I love ancestry.ca.

(*Two boys appear in family records, both born in 1853: Joseph (1863-1913) and George. We can find no record of George on ancestry.ca, so he either never existed or is a twin who didn’t survive until the 1861 census.)

 

Enid McGregor

In October 1920, Enid McGregor (b. 1889), the youngest sister of author Gertrude MacGregor Moffat (1884-1923), wrote a description of Wallingford Hall, the women’s residence at McMaster University, which had opened the previous month. Enid, who graduated from McMasters with a BA in 1912, was Librarian and a Reader in English there for many years, and had been part of the creation of Wallingford Hall; she is almost certainly one of the women in this photograph.

 

 

Beatrice Caroline Rowley (“R.H. Grenville”), 1917-2017

I did not post this last September, for personal reasons. Bea Rowley—R.H. Grenville—died on the 4th of September, 2017, in Victoria, BC. I received the news from her step-son, Charles, and daughter, Cathy, both of whom have been very helpful on our project. I have visited both Cathy in Toronto and Charles here in the Lower Mainland, and feel connected to their family through our work together. My sorrow was deepened in that Bea’s poetry spoke to me in a way that most of our poets’ works do not. So last year, I felt I could not write a encomium that appropriately expressed the complex combination of professional interest and personal appreciation that I have for Bea, her poetry, and her family. By October, it seemed too late, so here, on the first anniversary of her death, is my inadequate acknowledgement of Bea’s passing, and of our gratitude to her and her family.

* * * *

One of the interesting aspects of our project is that, because our dates of inclusion end at 1950, most of our authors are no longer with us. It is very special, then, to be able to speak to one of them on the telephone, as I have done with Beatrice Rowley back in the summer of 2011. At that time, she was rather flabbergasted that anyone would still be interested in her poetry. I like to think that over the past few years—as indeed emails with her step-son Charles and daughter Cathy have suggested—online interest in her poetry has helped her to understand the enduring legacy good poetry such as hers leaves.

“They say I’m a celebrity!” she grinningly told Cathy, who was with her on her 100th birthday in July. This was in response to letters from “the big shots,” as Cathy calls them, who wrote to congratulate her on reaching her centenary: the Queen, the Prime Minister, the Governor-General, the Lieutenant-Governor… As well as letters from these eminent people, Cathy read her mother poems from The Fountain in the Square, Bea’s only published book of poetry. It is not only in reaching 100 that Bea will be remembered, but for her contribution to Canadian literature, now made increasingly accessible

“I do not fear the dark, for what is night?
Only the shell that holds the pearl of light. (“Night Piece,” by RH Grenville)

Her work retains all those lovely qualities of genuine poetry that the moderns persist in rejecting: I mean poetry thought, clarity, imagery that we recognize as authentic, music, meaning, poignance, and a certain heart-breaking fathoming of the wonder and mystery of human life.” Archibald Rutledge, Foreword to Fountain in the Square

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.