Showing posts with label Plaques. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Plaques. Show all posts

14 April 2023

A Very Acadian Scandal


Quietly My Captain Waits
Evelyn Eaton
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, [c. 1943]
355 pages

I first learned of Louise de Freneuse last autumn during a visit to Nova Scotia. A historic plaque outlining her life served as my introduction. Something I came upon during an early evening stroll through Annapolis Royal, the story it told beggared belief. Her entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography will explain my reaction.

There is little wonder that Louise de Freneuse inspired a historical novel. This description of the lady comes from original publisher Harper & Bros:
As courageous as she was captivating, she defied every convention and all the wilderness in a gallant fight for love and happiness.

New York Times, 8 September 1940

Quietly My Captain Waits was a critical and commercial success; comparisons were drawn to Gone With the Wind and Hollywood came calling:

Boxoffice Barometer, 22 February 1941 

Here I note that Evelyn Eaton's novel is set well before the "French and Indian Wars [sic]" and the capture of Quebec. It's likely that Louise de Freneuse's death pre-dates the Battle of the Plains of Abraham by more than four decades.

Quietly My Captain Waits begins on an early evening in 1691 with young Raoul de Perrichet's return to his family home in the French commune of Draguigan. Not twenty-four hours earlier, he'd caught serial adulterer Vanina in the arms of the Compte de Callian, "old enough to be her father and Raoul's grandfather, Bigre!" Sixteen-year-old Raoul had wanted her for himself – he'd enjoyed Vanina's delights in the past – and in anger and frustration molests petite Marie "who had always loved him."

Raoul now finds himself under threat of imprisonment; not for the molestation, you understand, rather for what he witnessed in Vanina’s bedchamber. The Comte, who has the King’s ear, cannot entrust his reputation to a boy’s discretion. Raoul finds a saviour in his dashing uncle, Pierre de Bonaventure, captain of the Soleil d’Afrique – “the fastest vessel in the world!” – who enlists his nephew in the navy and sets sail for New France.

Armed Services Edition, 1945

Raoul doesn’t prove much of a seaman, but de Bonaventure is happy to have him aboard for games of bezique and to share the occasional bottle. One drunken evening, l’Oncle Pierre tells a tale about a raven-haired beauty. All occurred seven years earlier in New France; she was the sixteen-year-old daughter of an important man while de Bonaventure was then a twenty-six-year-old nothing. When the important man learned of the relationship, he sent the girl to a convent. She escaped, cut her hair, dressed as a boy, and made for her lover’s ship as it was about to set sail for France. Her idea was that they could marry in the Old World, but de Bonaventure turned her away.

In Quebec City, Raoul meets the raven-haired beauty, and falls in love with her himself. This is, of course, Louise de Freneuse, the girl his uncle loved – and still loves – who is now a twice-married woman with children. De Bonaventure does all he can not to avoid her, but fails. When the Soleil d’Afrique is tasked with transporting the Madam de Freneuse to her second husband’s Acadian home, the two old flames come together and things become very hot.

De Bonaventure is so ignorant of his Raoul’s love for Louise that he hands over the nephew who is so ill-suited to life at sea. Raoul arrives at the settlement built by Louise’s husband, Mathieu de Freneuse, and is tasked with tutoring her children. 

Mathieu de Freneuse is a force to be reckoned with, matrimonial bedroom excepted. His passion for Louise is equal to de Bonaventure’s, but the poor man has long recognised that her own passion lies in the memory of an old love (see: Simon-Pierre Denys de Bonaventure). A Frenchman who has come to be accepted as a member of the local “Micmacs,” Mathieu finds sexual outlet amongst the tribe’s women. He encourages the teenaged tutor to undergo the same initiation he endured, and then enjoy the same benefits.

This Raoul does, but only to prove his love for Louise.

It’s complicated.

Remarkably – improbably – Raoul grows to become a great Micmac leader, but not before Mathieu de Freneuse and his settlement are destroyed by Iroquois warriors. Mathieu expires in the arms of the miller’s daughter, with whom, it turns out, he’d been having an affair.

New York: Permabooks, 1951

Quietly, the reader turns eighty pages, awaiting Captain de Bonaventure's return.

In her Author’s Note, Evelyn Eaton writes of the research she put into writing Quietly My Captain Waits.

Let us consider the nameless miller's daughter, who enters and exits the novel during Mathieu de Freneuse's final minutes. Gervais Tibault's existence spans not more pages. In the author's fiction, he is a favoured child, the first-born of her first marriage. A sensitive soul, better suited for the salons of Paris than the backwoods of Acadia,  Gervais Tibault is killed by Iroquois arrows. Eaton places characters she created – those not based on historical figures – as if they are all of equal weight, and yet the actions of the fictitious Raoul de Perrichet are far more consequential than those of Louise and Pierre.

Eaton uses the “fragments” fro which she wove her novel to good effect, but she does not tie them to fact. It is true that, Louise did in fact cross the Bay of Fundy in open canoe in winter, but it was not to meet de Bonaventure in a remote inlet, as in the novel. In reality – sans conjecture – Louise made for English-occupied Annapolis Royal. At the time, de Bonaventure was dead and buried in France.

At its heart, Quietly My Captain Waits is a love story inspired by scandale. Louise's very public relationship with the married de Bonaventure produced a son. We have avocat Mathieu de Goutins to thank for documenting their relationship. A pathetic figure in Eaton’s novel, he sent several letters to Paris complaining of the lovers’ conduct. De Goutins' puritanical outrage was shared twenty-three decades later by an anonymous reviewer in St Petersburg Times (30 June 1940):

You will soon be hearing a great deal about this book but take this reviewer’s advice if you are thinking of buying or renting it – save your money. Wait until you can see the movie version of it that will have to be censored.
     It is said that Hollywood paid $40,000 for it before it appeared in print – only a paltry $10,000 less than was paid for “Gone With the Wind.” It is a type of book that is this reviewers particular bete noir.
     We review few novels for the present trend is toward a particularly disgusting realism that seems to be increasing.

René Baudry, who wrote Louise de Freneuse's entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, had other issues. He makes no mention of Quietly My Captain Waits by title,  rather concludes with a veiled reference:

An American novelist has written a questionable novel about Mme de Freneuse. What need is there of adding imaginary episodes to the ardent and courageous life of this woman, the heroine of a true romance filled with adventure and passion?

The late M Baudry is mistaken. Evelyn Eaton was not an American novelist, although she did take out citizenship in her forties. Eaton was born in 1902 to Canadian parents in Montreux, Switzerland, and lived much of her early life in New Brunswick. After the death of her father at Vimy Ridge, the family moved to England. She studied at Heathfield School and the Sorbonne. While at the latter, Eaton became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Therese, whom she raised. Eaton married a Polish count, fled the Nazis, made her way to the United States, and wrote for the New Yorker. She published more than thirty books, encompassing novels, poetry, non-fiction, and biography. Her name doesn’t feature the Canadian Encyclopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, or the Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature, but she does have a highly informative entry at the Canada’s Early Women Writers.

Returning to René Baudry's comment, I remind that Quietly My Captain Waits is a historical novel.

Historical novels are works of fiction.

Works of fiction feature imaginary episodes.

Quietly My Captain Waits is a hell of a story.

Hollywood could not have done better.


At first he thought the ship was sinking, and that the two snoring men with whom he had gone to bed had left him there to die.
Trivia:  Hollywood has yet to adapt of the novel. Consensus is that another war intruded. Eaton used money from the sale to build a summer home on the Bay of Fundy.

Object: For the life of me, I cannot remember when and where I bought this book. What I can say for certain is that I paid no more than a dollar. I may have paid nothing. It once belonged to Cicely and Scottie Mitchell, a couple who lived at 12 Elmwood Avenue, Senneville, Quebec. If the notation on the frontispiece is accurate, it was added to their library on 18 March 1943. I found this postcard within its pages.

I'm happy to report that the Mitchells' house still stands. It's quite beautiful.

Access:
 The novel was first published in 1940 by Harper (New York) and Cassell (London). The Grosset & Dunlop followed a Literary Guild of America edition. In 1945, American GIs were treated to an Armed Services edition. In 1951, Permabooks' published the second paperback edition. Fifteen years later, Pyramid published a the first of its two mass market paperback editions.

The novel is currently in print from Formac as one of its Fiction Treasures titles. First editions, Armed Services copies, and vintage paperbacks are always tempting, but I recommend the Formac for its introduction by Barry M. Moody. It can be purchased through this link.



Surprisingly, there is no French translation, though there is a Portuguese: Até um dia, meu capitão!

Quietly My Captain Waits was read for the 1940 Club.



11 November 2022

Remembrance Day



A plaque dedicated to the congregants of St Matthew's Anglican Church who fell during the Great War. Henry Hutton Scott (second column, eighth down), was killed during the Battle of the Somme in the taking of Regina Trench. He was the second eldest son of Frederick George Scott, rector of St Matthew's. During the Great War, Rev Scott served as chaplain in the First Canadian Division. The clergyman wrote of the search for his son's body in his memoir The Great War as I Saw It (Toronto: Goodchild, 1922):
When I got into Regina Trench, I found that it was impossible to pass along it, as one sank down so deeply into the heavy mud. I had brought a little sketch with me of the trenches, which showed the shell hole where it was supposed that the body had been buried. The previous night a cross had been placed there by a corporal of the battalion before it left the front line. No one I spoke to, however, could tell me the exact map location of the place where it stood. I looked over the trenches, and on all sides spread a waste of brown mud, made more desolate by the morning mist which clung over everything. I was determined, however, not to be baffled in my search, and told the runner who was with me that, if I stayed there six months, I was not going to leave till I had found that grave. We walked back along the communication trench and turned into one on the right, peering over the top every now and then to see if we could recognize anything corresponding to the marks on our map. Suddenly the runner, who was looking over the top, pointed far away to a lonely white cross that stood at a point where the ground sloped down through the mist towards Regina Trench. At once we climbed out of the trench and made our way over the slippery ground and past the deep shell holes to where the white cross stood out in the solitude. We passed many bodies which were still unburied, and here and there were bits of accoutrement which had been lost during the advance. When we came up to the cross I read my son's name upon it, and knew that I had reached the object I had in view. As the corporal who had placed the cross there had not been quite sure that it was actually on the place of burial, I got the runner to dig the ground in front of it. He did so, but we discovered nothing but a large piece of a shell. Then I got him to try in another place, and still we could find nothing. I tried once again, and after he had dug a little while he came upon something white. It was my son's left hand, with his signet ring upon it. They had removed his identification disc, revolver and pocket-book, so the signet ring was the only thing which could have led to his identification. It was really quite miraculous that we should have made the discovery. The mist was lifting now, and the sun to the East was beginning to light up the ground. We heard the crack of bullets, for the Germans were sniping us. I made the runner go down into a shell hole, while I read the burial service, and then took off the ring.
Henry Hutton Scott
April 6, 1890, Drummond, Quebec, Canada -
October 21, 1916, Picardy, France

RIP

02 November 2022

Blue Plaque Special: Maritime Edition


The latter half of October was spent on a long road trip through Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Anyès and I travelled over four thousand kilometres in all, and yet didn't come close to hitting Prince Edward Island or Cape Breton. My European cousins would laugh at the notion that the Maritime provinces are small.

A first leg of the drive, getting to New Brunswick from our eastern Upper Canadian home, involved a stopover at Quebec City. We spent the first night at le Monèstere des Augustines, in which we'd stayed two years earlier. This time, instead of a suite, we chose to sleep a nun's cell. As I discovered, I'm considerably taller than a seventeenth-century woman.


I won't dwell on our time in Quebec City, though I would like to share a plaque I'd somehow missed on our previous trip.


I'm pleased to report that plaques are every bit as common in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Fredricton, New Brunswick (pop. 58,200) may have more plaques per capita than any other Canadian city. Amongst the earliest is one affixed to the side of a house that once belonged to Loyalist poet Jonathan Odell.


The plaque honouring Odell can found across from Christ Church Fredericton's Anglican cathedral. Its former rectory once served as home to Sir Charles G.D. Roberts.



Across the street, a few doors down, we found the home of sister Elizabeth. This discovery brought us to a very interesting news story:
In fact, the heritage plaque was not altered to identify her, as the headline suggests, rather it was replaced with another:


Can't help but feel the Fredericton Heritage Trust missed a teaching opportunity there.

Remarkably, there are no plaques dedicated exclusively to Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, though I know of one in Westcock, New Brunswick. It would appear brother Theodore Goodrich Roberts has no plaques at all! The home in which cousin Bliss Carman was raised has two, the earliest of which was installed at his Shore Street home by the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire in New Brunswick.

The more recent is the doing of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.


Halifax was the easternmost point of our travels. We found blue plaques aplenty, including this one affixed to the house in which we stayed:


Sadly, the city's blue plaques aren't terribly informative.


I doubt Halliburton House has anything to do with Thomas Chandler Haliburton, but can't say for sure.

Curiously, given its rich literary history, Halifax has little in the way of plaques honouring writers. The only one I encountered was affixed to the mothballed Court House.

That's me taking a photo at the top of this post.

The discovery surprised in that it honoured Philippe-Ignace-François Aubert de Gaspé. The author of L'Influence d'un livre, Canada's first French-language novel, lived his final months in Halifax.


The last night of our trip was spent in Rivière-du-Loup. We had trouble sleeping, and so got up early. The place I'd most wanted to visit this trip was the reconstructed Aubert de Gaspé manor, but St-Jean-Port-Joli was pitch black when we passed.

Next year.

I'm a huge Aubert de Gaspé fan.

Related posts:

01 August 2022

Agnes Maule Machar's Perfect August Day



Ah, August, month of my birth. I've always found it too hot and too humid – rarely more so than this year. In "The Passing of Père La Brosse," Agnes Maule Machar notes: 
...August nights are cool
In these north regions. Summer goes so soon!
I shouldn't complain.

"The Passing of Père La Brosse" is one of the longer poems in Miss Machar's Lays of the 'True North' and Other Canadian Poems (Toronto: Copp, Clark, 1899). "An August Morning," more typical in length, was read Saturday morning during a visit to Agnes Maule Machar Park in Gananoque, Ontario.

AN AUGUST MORNING
      In gleam of pale translucent amber woke
          The perfect August day;
      Through rose-flushed bars of pearl and amber broke
          The sunset's golden way. 
      The river seemed transfigured in its flow
          To tide of amethyst,
      Save where it rippled o'er the sands below,
          And granite boulders kissed. 
      The clouds of billowy woodland hung unstirred
          In languorous slumber deep,
      While, from its green recesses, one small bird
          Piped to its brood asleep. 
      The clustering lichens wore a tenderer tint,
          The rocks a warmer glow;
      The emerald dewdrops, in the sunbeam's glint,
          Gemmed the rich moss below. 
      Our birchen shallop idly stranded lay
          Half mirrored in the stream,
      Wild roses drooped, glassed in the tiny bay,
          Ethereal as a dream! 
      You sat upon your rock, enthroned a queen,
          As on a granite throne,
      And all that world of loveliness serene
         Held but us twain alone. 
      Nay! but we felt another presence there,
          Around, below, above;
      It breathed a poem through the fragrant air
          Its name was LOVE!




Related posts:

29 October 2021

The Scotts of Quebec City


Having praised Quebec City and its plaques bleu on Wednesday, I now condemn.

And with good reason. 

As one may divine, the above – 755, rue Saint-Jean – was built as a church. Dedicated to St Matthew, patron saint of tax collectors and accountants, its history dates to 1772. The grounds surrounding hold centuries-old bones of the Anglican faithful.

St Matthew's most notable rector was Frederick George Scott (1861-1944). A charismatic Anglo-Catholic, his views on religion fit well – as well as might be hoped – in a predominantly Catholic city. Outside the Church, Scott is best known as the Poet of the Laurentians. He produced thirteen volumes of verse in his 82 years. The favourite in my collection is a signed copy of Selected Poems, which was published in 1933 by Emile Robitaille, 30 Garneau Street, Quebec City.

In 1980, the Anglican Church of Canada gave St Matthew's to the Ville du Quebec. It was remade and remodelled as a library. In 2017, it was named after novelist and memoirist Claire Martin (1914-2014).

I'm a great admirer of Martin, and have sung her praises here and here.  She deserves greater recognition in English-speaking Canada. I wonder how she's remembered in French-speaking Canada? In the very same hour I took these photos, I purchased three signed Martin first editions at between six and eight dollars apiece.

I digress.

La bibliothèque Claire-Martin features a very attractive entrance detailing the author's life and work.

This is supplemented with a half-dozen displays lining the library's centre aisle.

Much as I was happy to see them, I was bothered that there was no recognition whatsoever of F.G. Scott. Not only that, there was no recognition of the reverend's third son, Francis Reginald Scott (1899-1985), who was born in the manse overlooking the aforementioned cemetery.

F.G. Scott was one of the most celebrated Canadian poets of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Son F.R. Scott was a founder of both the CCF and the NDP, was Dean of the McGill Law Faculty, fought dictatorial Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, and defeated the censors in Canada's own Lady Chatterley's Lover trial. F.R. Scott's bibliography consists of over a dozen books, including the Governors General's Award-winning Essays on the Constitution: Aspects of Canadian Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1977) and The Collected Poems of F. R. Scott (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1981). He is recognized as a pioneer in the translation and promotion of Québecois literature.

La bibliotheque Claire-Martin has no books by either man. In fact, there are no books by F.G. Scott in the entire Quebec City public library system. La bibliothèque de Québec has one – one – volume by F.R. Scott, Dialogue sur la traduction, (Montreal: Éditions HMH, 1970). I can't help but think this has everything to do with it having been co-written by Anne Hébert.

My copy, inscribed by Scott to Hugo McPherson, purchased thirty years ago at the Montreal Antiquarian Book Fair.
This is not to suggest that the Scott family is unrecognized. Sharp-eyed visitors will spot this century-old plaque dedicated to members of the St Matthew's Anglican Church congregation who fell during the Great War.


The second column bears the name of Henry Hutton Scott, F.G. Scott's son, F.R. Scott's brother, who was killed during the capture of Regina Trench. A chaplain in the First Canadian Division, Reverend Scott shares a moving account of the search for son's body in The Great War as I Saw It (Toronto: Goodchild, 1922). For those who haven't read it, this short piece from the 1 December 1916 edition of the Toronto Daily Star gives some idea of what to expect.


All this is to recognize the absence of recognition. La bibliotheque Claire-Martin has no plaques bleu dedicated to F.G. Scott and F.R. Scott. La bibliotheque Claire-Martin has no books by F.G. Scott and F.R. Scott.  

To borrow a phrase used by Jacques Parizeau, it's a bloody disgrace.

27 October 2021

Blue Plaque Special: Quebec City Edition


In the early days of the Dusty Bookcase – more than twelve years ago! –  I heaped praise upon London's blue plaques, singling out favourites affixed to the former homes of George Frideric Handel, Jimi Hendrix, and Canadian British Prime Minister Andrew Bonnar Law. "Despite all good intentions, and a great deal of effort, we have nothing that compares in this country," I wrote.

I was wrong.

As I discovered last week during a visit to my home and native province, plaques abound in Quebec City! Consider the above, which recognizes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1942 stay at 25, avenue Sainte-Geneviève (below).

One night? Two?

Never mind, it's worthy of a plaque.

As in London, the plaques of Quebec are blue. I saw them on nearly every street in the old city. Here we have two plaques, both dedicated to literary figures – Félix-Antoine Savard (1896-1982) and Luc Lacourcière (1910-1989) – who at different times called 2, rue des Remparts home:


Below is a photo of 5, rue Hébert, once the residence of  Sir James MacPherson Le Moine (1825-1912). A lawyer and historian, Sir James is the author of Quebec Past and Present (1876) and, appropriately, Picturesque Quebec (1882).

(A mystery: The Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Québec website lists the plaque as being located at 1½, rue Hébert when in fact it is at number five. Installed in 2001, it would appear to have been moved one address over at some point after 2006. Waymarking.com has a photograph of the plaque in its former location.)

My favourite plaque bleu is found at 34, rue St-Louis, which served as residence of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (1786-1871) between the years 1816 and 1822. Built in 1675, one of the oldest standing houses in old Quebec, it's now home to the restaurant Aux Anciens Canadiens.

You can't see the blue plaque in this photo, but it's there.


Sadly, the pleasure derived in seeing Quebec's blue plaques was tempered by the knowledge that Montreal has no similar programme.

Why not?

I speculated as to the reason in that twelve-year-old post... and have not changed my thought on the matter.

My last day in the province found me walking through Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. I passed 6879 Monkland Avenue. It once belonged to Irving Layton. The poet owned and lived in the house for more than four decades.


There is no plaque of any kind.

O Montreal!

Related post:

10 October 2019

Celebrating Constance Beresford-Howe



McGill student Constance Beresford-Howe had just received her BA when word came that she'd won the Intercollegiate Literary Fellowship Prize.

Old McGill, 1945
The accomplishment was duly recognized in the 12 May 1945 edition of the Montreal Gazette:


Beresford-Howe was back at McGill working on her MA when The Unreasoning Heart (1946) was published. That same academic year she wrote Of This Days Journey (1947), her second novel.


Eight more novels followed, the most celebrated being The Book of Eve (1973), the first volume in her Voices of Eve trilogy.


Tomorrow evening, the Writers' Chapel in Montreal will be holding an event in celebration of the life and work of Constance Beresford-Howe, culminating in the unveiling of a plaque in her memory.

Collett Tracey and Jeremy Pressnell, the author's son, will speak.

A wine and cheese reception will follow.

The Writers' Chapel
St Jax Montréal
1439 St Catherine Street West (Bishops Street entrance)

Friday, October 11th at 6:00 pm

This is a free event.

All are welcome!

Related posts: