15 November 2011

A Communist's Bodice Ripper?



The Governor's Mistress
Warren Desmond [pseud. Dyson Carter]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950

Oh, yes, a bodice is ripped, but I'm not so sure that this novel quite fits the genre. There's little romance in The Governor's Mistress, and passion, though present, is not as pervasive as cover copy would have you believe.

VIRILE - VIOLENT - WARM - WICKED - This was Angeline

Virile? Can a woman be virile? The OED answers in the negative. But then Angeline isn't violent either. She is warm though... and, it is implied, wicked in the sack.

Angeline – referred to as "Angel" on the book's back cover (and nowhere else) – is Angeline Paradis, a beautiful English spy who is sent into the heart of 17th-century New France. Hers, cover copy tells us, "is a tale kept out of school-books". Makes perfect sense; after all, Angeline was the creation of the author, and exists nowhere outside this book. She moves through pages populated by figures from our history... and it is here that this novel begins to falter. There is a supposition that the reader will know these men – they are all men – that is misguided. Frontenac? Yes. Radisson? Yes. But how many of us are familiar with the scandal and intrigue surrounding François-Marie Perrot, who served as Governor of Montreal from 1669 to 1684?

This Montrealer recognized his name.

That's all.

Pity the poor American reader, who I'm assuming has been taught little of the political machinations of New France. After all, it was to these folks that The Governor's Mistress was marketed. Its author, Dyson Carter, a card carrying member of the Communist Party of Canada, hid behind the pseudonym Warren Desmond only so that the novel might be sold south of the border.

The Governor's Mistress isn't so much a bad book as an irritating one. Stuff happens... but so often this takes place off-stage. When Radisson is put on trial for treason, an event that never actually occurred, he escapes the courtroom by painting his face with ghoulish features: "Thus had Radisson used the phosphorus oil he brought with him from Rupert's workshop." And thus we hear for the first and last time of Rupert's workshop.

Ultimately, The Governor's Mistress is a grand disappointment. The Harlequin set will find little in the way of romance, those seeking something spicy will be left dangling, and readers like myself who'd hoped for an oddball Marxist reading of life in New France will be met with nought but paper, ink and glue.

Object and Access: One of the publisher's more competent productions, the type is actually quite legible. I counted only two typos, which might just be a NSL best. Twelve copies are currently listed for sale online at between US$4 and US$18.29. All appear to have significant flaws, which leads me to think that mine could be the best copy out there. One copy – one – is housed by the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. After that: rien.

14 November 2011

POD Cover of the Month: Rila of Ingelside



L.M. Montgomery's Rila [sic] of Ingelside [sic], another fine product from Createspace. Their slogan: "Publish your words, your way."

Rila of Ingelside can purchased through amazon.uk.co for a mere £26.76.

First edition:

New York: Stokes, 1921
A bonus:

The Prince Edward Island house upon which Ingleside was modelled.

11 November 2011

Remembrance Day



Edward Maurice Busby
(1891-1962)

My grandfather... not forgotten.

05 November 2011

The Bank Swindler's Signature



A brief addendum to Wednesday's post, in which I happened to mention that my copy of Lucius A. Parmelee's The Confessions of a Bank Swindler is signed. One correspondent asks me to post the signature. I'm happy to do so.

Must say that for a man who made his money in large measure through forgery, it does seem rather awkward.

02 November 2011

A Bank Swindler Tries to Cash In



The Confessions of a Bank Swindler
Lucius A. Parmelee
Waterloo, QC: Duval, 1968

The author begins by boasting that a member of the Canadian Banking Assocation once suggested he be offered a pension as an inducement to retire, adding: "I achieved fame of a sort and did very well." These more modest words set the tone.

Born in 1889, Lucius Parmelee was blessed in being a member of family of affluence and influence. Newspaper editor and three-term Liberal member of parliament Charles Henry Parmelee – that's him on the right – was an uncle. Another uncle once served as Quebec's Minister of Protestant Education. The latter's good work is reflected in this, nephew Lucius' only book; until Conrad Black, The Confessions of a Bank Swindler was likely the best written work by a Canadian criminal. I provide as evidence this passage in which the author looks back to his earliest years in Waterloo, Quebec:
One must remember that in this day there was no auto, radio, TV, and the thousand and one distractions, which are today offered to gratify our jaded appetites. Nor were they distracted by the innumerable incidents of a bizarre, and even sinister nature, which is the record of our daily lives. I do not agree with the French philosopher Rousseau, that the solution to the world's ills consist of a return to a state of nature. I do feel that there have been times in the past history of mankind, when the clock of destiny could well have been arrested, for a temporary breathing space, at least. Our characteristically North American attitude of service to the Gods of progress, may well mean serving an illusion.
No common criminal.

As a young man , Parmelee set off down the straight and narrow as a bank clerk, only to develop a rooted resentment toward the very industry in which he was employed. The low pay, which our grand banks expected to be supplemented by clerks' families, led to his resignation. Parmelee tried his hand at a number of occupations, including farmhand and barkeep, but returned to the banks as an unwelcomed visitor during the Great War:
From a moral point of view I had no scruples whatever. They paid their employees atrocious wages. They offered very little in the way of a life career. They obtained subsidy from the general public, due to the fact that their employees must have help from their parents for a few years, and in the case of the institution in which I served they had no pension plan. All in all I considered them bigger, and more cowardly robbers than myself.

Make no mistake, Parmelee's crimes were not robberies; they were swindles carried out though study, impersonation and forgery. The author's criminal activity spanned three decades, interrupted by an ill-considered investment in a chicken ranch, work at a wartime munitions plant and time spent in San Quentin. His final foray into financial fraud, in 1947 Ottawa, was in his own words a "disaster". He hit the Royal Bank, the Bank of Toronto, the Bank of Montreal and the Dominion Bank, walking away with some $17,000... only to be arrested a few hours later at a railway station in Vars, Ontario. Contemporary crooks will learn no tips from The Confessions of a Bank Swindler; Parmelee's scams and schemes were dated well before his book was published. The world into which he was ultimately released, on 15 June 1955, was foreign. "Montreal proved a revelation to me", he writes, unable to reconcile the metropolis with the tranquil city of his youth. The Confessions of a Bank Swindler owes its existence to the late Weekend Magazine, which in 1956 published a rudimentary version of the memoir. I expect the reception wasn't quite what editorial director Craig Ballantyne had anticipated. Readers took considerable offence to Parmelee's unrepentant nature; the banks, it would seem, were unassailable. The swindler's memoir attracted no interest from McClelland and Stewart, Macmillan or Ryerson; it ended up being self-published through a little printer in the author's birthplace.* No fame followed. Having gone straight, the man was accorded no obituary. Crime pays.

Object: A trade-size paperback, my copy is signed and includes a Weekend Magazine clipping that appears to have been used for promotional purposes. The first edition, I think, the only other I've seen – also signed – was published in mass market by a short-lived Montreal house called Bodero.


Access: There are no copies of either edition listed for sale online; look instead to the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and the Toronto Public Library. Seven of our university libraries hold the book. Library and Archives Canada? Don't ask.

* This was the very same printer that two years earlier produced John Glassco's self-published Squire Hardman.

Related post:

01 November 2011

'November the First' by the Master of All Poets



One of the more restrained poems composed as "a truthful guide" by James Gay, self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Canada and Master of All Poets.
NOVEMBER THE FIRST

Being one of the oldest settlers in your town,
I cannot remember of seeing such a beautiful day;
On the first day of November, see the stars so clear and bright,
They give us light,
All through the night.
Young gents and ladies walk out bold,
The weather is not too hot or cold;
Jack Frost has kept his hand away,
Those young and old can sport and play
All through the night till the break of day.
The leaves in October have passed away;
Like man on earth, he cannot stay,
Falling more or less each day,
Our bodies soon return to clay,
Thousands do never give this a thought;
Then what will be their awful fate?
With millions this word, too late, too late.
Leave off this sinful life, and try to act more clever,
Put your trust in Providence, life changes like the weather.
Related post: Local Poet!