Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning, October 7, 2024

Expanding the View, 2

(I published Part 1 of Expanding the View on October 3; a link is provided at the end of this companion post.)

Montreal Standard Time publishes officially on October 24 but, as always happens, it’s making its way into bookstores (the better ones, il ne faut pas dire) now, and it can be ordered directly from the publisher, Véhicule Press. My “author copies” — a perk! — were delivered last week. I was happy to meet this handsome volume. Trade paperback! French flaps, very sexy! Eye-catching graphics! Looks good on any shelf! Attractive in multiples! Don’t hold back!

Neil Besner, Marta Dvorak, and I selected writing included in Montreal Standard Time, and provided our own contributions; as did literary executor Mary K. MacLeod. In writing the annotations — for that was my assignment — I allowed my absorption in the research to subvert common sense. I excavated holes much deeper than the shallow depressions — God knows, a condition with which I should be familiar — the project could accommodate. The annotations that appear in the book are, necessarily and properly, much, much reduced from my first scribbling. Now and again, I feel the barbering was a tad more barbarous that might have been ideal, but this is nothing more than the same old story every writer tells on every editor. In my experience, the writer is rarely right in these matters of matter and how much should remain.

In the full knowledge that far and few are readers with the time and will to sift through the tailings of my mining — spines straight, minds alert, and eyes peeled for the few glistening nuggets that might remain and merit fondling — I’m proceeding with posting the “director’s cut version” on the assumption that — somehow, somewhere — two or more of you are gathered in my name (I think that’s been said before, can’t think of where or by whom), and that, what the hell, nothing is harmed by making the longer versions available for anyone of a Talmudic bent who might want to consult the commentary. The sacred scripture itself, of course, you’ll find when — as opposed to “if” — you acquire your soon-to-be-treasured copy of Montreal Standard Time.

So, that’s about all you need to know by way of explanation for what follows; I won’t add much in the way of gloss to the gloss — the lily is already collapsing under the gilding — beyond saying that the selection Neil and Marta and I arrived at collectively was certainly different from that you’d find had we been operating as lone wolves. (I don’t think they’d disagree with me on this, and if they do they are at liberty to say so!) We didn’t love each and every feature equally or as well. Left to my own devices, I don’t think I would have included “What Is This Thing Called Jazz?” Mostly, it makes me want to holler, “Were there NO editors on the desk that week?” I think it’s meandering and undisciplined; as a reader, I found it frustrating (just as you, dear readers, might find my unexpurgated notes, and for the same reasons.) But Marta and Neil felt strongly that it was more than a little worthwhile — it’s also a piece that was flagged as favourite by some early readers of the book — and I’m content to be an outlier, a voice in the wilderness, an apostate, and probably just wrong in my estimation that it sounds like it was written late at night in a club called “Le Hot Mess.” What interested me, mostly, about “Thing Called Jazz,” was that it certainly grew out of conversations MG had at home with her husband, the jazz pianist John (often called Johnny) Dominick Gallant, who is his own fascinating study. The annotation in the book is a tiny fraction of what you’ll read here; I’ve left my error re: the end of their marriage. It was officially over and done in 1949, not 1947. Lest anyone think me cold or uncaring in disclosing my aversion to that writing, I hasten to add that I’m impressed as all get-out by the sheer volume of MG’s production. Note that three of the four features annotated below were published in March of 1946, and those roughly 10,000 words were among the many more that were researched and written when she was, gulp, twenty-three year old.

Enough said. For the record, for the few who care, here’s instalment two of the first version. Cheers, best, BR

Don’t Call Me War Bride, March 2, 1946.

Elizabeth and Kenneth MacKenzie — assuming that MG used their real names, not pseudonyms — have sunk without trace. Their names are common and the other identifying details of place and association are too vague to extract from available records that details that will satisfy our curiosity about such questions as  did the marriage last, did they stay in the Montreal region, were there children, is either still (unlikely) alive? No obituaries linking their two names surface via the usual search engines, nor do any of the obvious identifiers — 17th Duke of York, CPR, war bride — generate Boolean joy when applied. The 1949 voters list for Verdun - Lasalle lists a Kenneth MacKenzie who works for the CNR, not the CPR, as MG states, and his wife (inconveniently) is named Margaret. It’s not impossible that our war bride was Margaret Elizabeth and the Kenneth had taken his skills as a pipe fitter over to the other railway, or that MG simply got it wrong. Enticingly, a Margaret Elizabeth MacKenzie died on June 2, 1990, in Montreal. Her children are named, but no mention is made of a husband, who proves (on investigation) to have been Donald, who was married to Patricia when he died in 1999. This kind of post-mortem enumerating and family tree shaking could go on for a long time with no good result. Anyone who might have information about the MacKenzies that could illuminate future editions of this book is kindly requested to be in touch. For now,  let’s leave them in peace and, retrospectively, wish them well.

It wasn’t until late in 1943 that “war bride” started to take on the meaning with which we typically associate the term, i.e. a woman (most often British, but also from any country of the war theatre) who married a Canadian serviceman and emigrated to Canada. (There are occasional mentions of “war grooms” too, but they are very rare.) Until then, “war bride” referred to Canadian women who married Canadian men during the conflict and (most usually) whose husbands were deployed overseas. In this regard, MG was a war bride.

That the war adventure would result in an influx of spouses from away was always known. As early as August 10, 1942, Paul Manning, prophetically and accurately, summed up the situation in The Montreal Star, in an article that appeared under the colourful if cumbersome headline “Canada’s R’arin, Tearin’ Troops in England Become Famous for Their Parts in Romeo Roles / Feminine Hearts Constantly A-Flutter; Cupid Taking Toll / Frisky Lads Put Zip Into Sleepy Old Land Villages:”

“The girls think it’s fine being married to a Canadian. But when the war ends, there are going to be social repercussions which will probably upset two continents.

Many a girl believes that she is married to the son of some Canadian wheat king. The visualize themselves sailing toward the New World after the war, living happily forever after on a 1,000-acre ranch. … When, at last, they arrive in Canada, some of these girls will be in for a hard time. Some will find that the “vast wheat ranch” doesn’t materialize. Instead will come the routine of settling down to the rugged life a small Canadian town. Maybe that town will be a mining centre or a mill town. The bride may find that her husband’s family regards her as an interloper. …”

On two other occasions — speaking of nonfiction — MG wrote about War Brides. A year earlier,  for the Standard of Oct. 13 1945, as a photo essay (roto), she published, “These are the first impression the war brides formed of Canada.” On that occasion, she traveled with a trainload of newly arrived war brides from Halifax to Montreal. She remembered and referred to that assignment years later, in 1978, when she provided the introduction to Joyce Hibbert’s The War Brides (PMA). That essay was later included in her nonfiction collection Paris Notebooks (MacMillan, 1986), from which this passage is taken.

“Traveling on a special train of war brides from Halifax as a young and ignorant reporter I kept asking them to comment on what they saw. We were in New Brunswick in a drenching rain. Nearly every aspect of the Canadian landscape struck me as moving and poetic then, for reasons that were historical or literary or had something to do with Canadian painting and where were at a remove from the land itself: a field was nota field — it was a Goodridge Roberts. I foolishly expected a reaction tuned to mine. “What does it look like to you?” I asked tense and exhausted women, many of whom had not travelled much even in England.

‘It looks rather like Surrey,’ said one poor bride, in desperation. Of course, it does not; I could not understand then that she had nothing to match it to.

….

“Most war brides, I think, were helped and welcomed, but I can remember interviewing one — a grave, quiet, self-possessed girl from Scotland — who had arrived into an atmosphere of such demonic intolerance and hatred that I was actually afraid fro her. Her husband, unwilling to choose between his bride and his psychotically possessive family, some of whom actually slept in the same room as the young couple, sat in an armchair, looking defeated, fiddling with the dials of a radio. The next day I went back to see her, uninvited and without a professional excuse. I did not tell anyone what I was doing, for this was known as “getting involved,” which was a sin against the Holy Ghost. I talked to her, standing in the dark hall of that haunted, evil flat, and offered to try to borrow the money to get her out of it. She did not reject the offer out of hand, or reproach me for my impertinence, but considered the possibility calmly. The fact that I did not have the money myself but wold have to raise it (if, indeed, I could) may have weighted in the balance; but what she told me was that she would never back on her word — she meant her marriage vows — and that as long as she could stand on her two feet she would manage. She would find a job and she would drag that beaten, jobless husband out of his armchair and into a home of their own if it killed her. She said, ‘He’s a good boy,’ the ‘boy’ deciding his civilian status in terms of reality; she had probably met him in officer’s uniform, giving orders. I don’t know what became of her.”

1964 - the tail end of Johnny Gallant’s time at the Montreal Ritz

What is This Thing Called Jazz? March 23, 1946

Cole Porter wrote “What is This Thing Called Love?” in 1929. It remains a favourite of singers and jazz players. Billie Holiday’s Decca recording from 1945 would have been making the rounds when MG wrote this in the late winter of 1946. (Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington — after whom she named her poodle — were among the singers she named as her favourites.) If MG never gets around to actually answering the question posed by this title — and that a precise reply is impossible is maybe her point — it’s not for want of research. She cites a dizzying array of sources, but makes no mention of her in-house consultant, her then husband, John (often Johnny) Dominick Gallant (1918 - 1995). He grew up in Winnipeg,  and as early as 1925 was performing student recitals as a student of Louise MacDowell. In 1938, he performed two of his own compositions — “Song of Daphnis” and “Etude for the Whole Tone Scale” — for the Winnipeg Junior Musical Club, and shortly thereafter hit the road.

By July 21, 1941, he was established in Montreal. This is from the Star:

“Johnny Gallant, who this season joined Stan Wood’s orchestra which supplies the music in the spacious ballroom [Belmont Park] has already won a legion of admirers. Johnny who plays the piano and also sings ‘Scat’ songs, was born in Winnipeg where, after leaving school he appeared as an entertainer in the well-known “Rendez-vous.”After a season there he joined a vaudeville unit that took him to the West Coast. An engagement with a travelling band followed and on his return to Winnipeg, two years ago, he became a member of Bus Totten’s orchestra which was featured for a solid year at the popular “The Cave.” Coming to Montreal a few months ago he was chosen by Stan Wood as his pianist in the orchestra and his individual contributions, musical and vocal, are outstanding features nightly.”

Johnny Gallant among the cast.

He joined the RCAF and spent the war entertaining troops as part of a Forces band called “The Blackouts.” By 1946, repatriated, he was a first year student at McGill University, and building a sterling reputation as an able arranger and pianist. He presided over the music at the Ritz Hotel through the early 60’s — providing the piano accompaniment for a vast array of visiting chanteuses, then moved to London after marrying Hope Messer Holt. That marriage lasted long enough to produce two children, Julian and Lucinda, both musicians. John moved to Dublin, then back to London, and finally to Winnipeg. He died in 1995, and is buried there in the Elmwood Cemetery.

The marriage ended in 1947. MG, respecting his privacy as much as her own, did not often speak of it, nor of him, but when she did it was with fondness. She would note that he was proud of her, that he thought whenever he read her stories she was writing about him. To two interviewers she made remarks germane to “What Is This Thing Called Jazz?”

“My husband Johnny, who was a musician, was crazy about Béla Bartók but he didn’t go beyond that. To him, modern music stopped there. And to me, French music stopped with Debussy and Ravel – I hadn’t gone any further than that when I met him in the summer of 1942 at the home of mutual friends. I was nineteen, and a young married couple I knew were also friends of his. The husband was going to be in the army and Johnny was already in the RCAF, the Canadian air force. We were both invited for Sunday lunch. The couple had some recordings of Shostakovitch (remember this was 1942), and some piano reductions of some of his work. The young man and our hostess played (she wasn’t a professional musician but she played), and I thought I had never heard anything so silly. Then he played part of the Fifth Symphony, and she said to me, well do you like it?, and I said, there’s no melody. But Johnny said, it’s full of melody. It’s you who doesn’t know how to listen. So I thought, Tiens! Tiens! I’d never been talked to that way. So I thought, I’d better find out.”  Mavis Gallant in conversation with Marta Dvorak, “When Time is a Delicate Timepiece,” 2009. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2009.

And to Jhumpa Lahiri, Granta Magazine 106, 2009: “There were things I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to play the piano, I don’t know why. I came from a family where everybody played instruments. My father, as a young man, played cello. He brought it with him from England as a young man. It was behind the sofa chez nous. You’d see the case lying on its side. My mother played the violin and my grandmother played the piano. They played together … I married a musician, and he wanted to teach me the piano, but the moment he said, ‘This is middle C, ’I said, ‘Don’t do it! Please, no!’ It seemed to me a lot of fiddling. It wasn’t what I wanted to learn.”

The story “Wing’s Chips”(1954), where the narrator recalls her failed piano lessons as a child, takes on a new dimension when read with these disclosures in mind.

This accompanied the letters to the editor occasioned by “Why Are We Canadians So Dull?”

Why Are We Canadians So Dull? March 30, 1946

“Being a Canadian is a fact of my life. I would be a Canadian even if Canada ceased to exist, because it is a part of myself. I have no identity problem concerning Canada…” So said MG to Geoff Hancock in 1977. Given the opportunity, she  would assert and affirm her nationality, which isn’t to say she didn’t look at her homeland critically; she kept close tabs, at a distance, on the shifting, sometimes tortured, shape of the nation. In her introduction to Home Truths (1982) she wrote, “I have sometimes felt more at odds in Canada than anywhere else, but I never supposed I was any the less Canadian. Feeling at odds is to be expected; no writer calls a truce. If he did, he would probably stop writing. I know that I could not suddenly turn myself into a Norwegian or a Pole or, to be reasonable, since I am English-speaking (and not, please, ‘Anglophone’), into an Australian or an American or an Englishwoman. (The persistent use of ‘English’ in Quebec to designate me and people like me leaves me wondering if any amount of definitions will ever do. I have constantly to explain that if I were Anglaise I would hold a British passport and not a Canadian one.)”

This feeling of location / dislocation, of taking up a place at the edge of the circle of the tribe to which she felt allegiance, but from which she was also estranged, was in place early on is evidenced in Why Are We Canadians So Dull? This gleefully provocative j’accuse, the title a deliberate provocation, her take no prisoners inquiry into the intrinsic banality of the nation and her compatriots (at least, the English speaking ones) was certainly prompted by the attention Canadian news outlets, as well as Time Magazine, gave to Scholarship for Canada, a booklet written for the Canadian Social Science Research Council by John Bartlet Brebner (1895 - 1957), a Canadian historian employed since 1926 by Columbia University. Brebner’s essential point was that unless Canadian universities were better funded, and unless there were more opportunities and enticements for academics to remain in place, there would be a constant southward flow of talent. It’s a point that’s been so often made that it’s hard to imagine it must once have been novel; in 1946, it attracted a lot of attention.

Also Canadian-born, and also at Columbia, was James T. Shotwell who, with Brebner’s assistance, oversaw the production of The Relations of Canada and the United States: A series of studies prepared under the direction of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of Economics and History - a series of 25 reports; 44 volumes were planned when the series was launched in the mid-30’s. Shotwell said the series would provide “the basis for a new approach to the whole study of the civilization of these two North American countries, the interplay of their cultures, their economic interdependence and their political affiliations.”

MG makes note of Canada and her Great Neighbor, by H. F. Angus. Published in 1938, it was one of the books in the Shotwell series, 451 pages intended to advise Americans what Canadians thought of them. Predictably, what small interest it garnered came from Canada.

John MacCormac (1890 - 1958, his name is misspelled in the article) was another Canadian working stateside. Ottawa born, he wrote for a number of Canadian papers before joining the New York Times in 1924 and becoming a star reporter. He had just been kicked out Hungary for his writing about the country after the revolution when he died in 1958. Canada, America’s Problem, appeared in 1940.

The quote attributed to Robert Leigh Weaver is from “Notes on Canadian Literature,” in The Nation, February 16, 1946. Robert Weaver (1921 - 2008) is best remembered as the producer of Anthology, a groundbreaking literary program on CBC Radio, and for The Tamarack Review, which he co-founded in 1956. MG’s relationship with Weaver was uneasy. She criticized his introduction to The End of the World and Other Stories, the first collection of her short fiction published in Canada; she also disliked the book itself, the physical package. Published by McLelland and Stewart in 1974 in the New Canadian Library series it is, no doubt, a homely thing. In 1977, in her interview with Geoff Hancock, she pointed out that Weaver had said her stories weren’t political, which she found laughable.

Predictably, there was reaction from readers. The first volley appeared in the Standard of April 22, 1946:

Sir, — Bravo, Miss Gallant! Bravo, Standard! Cheers, hurrahs, salaams, huzzas and assorted exclamations of joy on your article “Why Are We Canadians So Dull?” Miss Gallant hit the nail on the head with every sentence. Every Canadian should be hit on the head with every sentence. That article should be engraved in gilt and set up in every public place across Canada. Thanks to Miss Gallant fro bringing the truth to us and congratulations to The Standard for their willingness, not only to print, but to feature this article. Sydney Litwack. Outremont Quebec.  (This would be Sydney Zanville Litwack, who at this time was involved as an actor in Montreal’s vibrant English theatre scene. He sounds a bit curmudgeonly and old but he was born in 1927, so would have been 19 / 20. He moved to Los Angeles — he was registered for the draft there in 1947, became an American citizen in 1956 — and had a long and successful career in film and television production design, and died in 2013. He was born in Cornwall, Ontario. None of his obituaries noted his Canadian origins.)

Sir, — Will you please tell your staff writer, Mavis Gallant, if she finds Canada too dull she can always get to _____* out of the country. She’s away off the beam. Maybe she doesn’t appreciate Canadians but people in other countries do. While in the Navy I found that in any contry where Canadians were along with service men of other countries the Canadians were by far the most popular. Best that you and your staff writers smarten up. David Forrest. Geraldton, Ont. * Heck.

Sir, — I want to congratulate Mavis Gallant on her article. Some of us boys on this ship thought it was wonderful and noting but the plain fact about Canadians. After seeing all sorts of other countries Canada is sure slipping badly among the reso of the world. A single man nowadays has no future to look forward to; he is just existing, he cannot put aside a few dollars to prepare for a home and family on account of the immense taxes he has to pay. Is this our Young Country Canada they preach to us from Ottawa? Leslie Bodolay. Saint John, N. B.

Sir, — I have just finished reading Mavis Gallant’s “Why Are We Canadians So Dull?” and I am sore, I am fed up. In fact I’m practically raving. … For M. G.’s information, Canada is not, and in the near future will not be, a homogeneous whole. Two different nations with different language, religion, culture and outlook on life inhabit the territory of Canada. … Mrs. N. Samuel, Montreal, Que.

Sir, — Congratulations for your write-up branding the Canadian as the champion dumb cluck of the whole world. You are right. The Canadian taxpayer can take more kicks in the face and remain dumber than any other living creature on earth… Maria D. Cloutier, Quebec City, Que.

As well, on April 26, Finnish-born Eva-Lis Wuorio, another staff writer at the Standard — she went on to become a prolific writer of juvenile fiction — wrote a rebuttal that was given similar space and featured on the cover.

“Your writer says we have not produced anything new and original. I think for the space of years we have existed, for the size of our population, we have not done so badly. There is Mr. Bell with his telephone, there is Dr. Banting. There is the Group of Seven in painting, dozens of world-famed singers and actors of today are Canadians, many a Canadian sits in Parliament in London, for that matter our hockey players and other sportsmen have not done badly, and why, any time a United States firm needs an important job of auditing done they send for a Canadian auditing staff because ours are better trained.”

It’s probably the only time that anyone thought to note the excellence of the auditors as one of the reasons for Canada’s greatness. Eva-LisIt’s good-natured but sincere and not particularly original, apart from the shout-out to Canadian auditors, which I’ve never seen anywhere else. Eva-Lis, despite her strong feelings for her adopted land, moved to the Channel Islands.

Give the Kid a Gory Story, June 29, 1946

To Jhumpa Lahiri, in Granta Magazine, MG said, “I like children. I had no desire to bring up children, that was a different thing. But I like them and I often feel sorry for them. The first time I ever saw children being hit in the face was when I came to France. I couldn’t stand it. You’d go to a park and the mother’s first gesture was to. . . I’d never seen that. The face slap.”

Her first publication in the Standard, “Meet Johnny,” was a portrait of a child determined to forge on city streets an independent path, strong-minded in a way that would inevitably and necessarily place him in opposition to his adult overlords. The first of the more than 100 short stories she would publish in The New Yorker, “Madeline’s Birthday,” (September 1, 1951), depicts a woman / girl on the cusp of adulthood bristling against the strictures of the self-absorbed, feckless elders whose care is a kind of imprisonment. For the rest of her 6-year tenure at the paper, and all throughout her fifty year period of production as a writer, primarily, of fiction, children and their management or mismanagement by their superintending adults, frequently and dangerously incompetent, would be an abiding theme.

To Karen Mulhallen in 1989, in an interview published in Numéro Cinq (September, 2014), MG said, “People who understand young people are not sentimental about them at all. I’ve noticed that people who are sentimental about children don’t understand them, they’re trying to make the children enter into a fantasy life of their own.”

In her writing for the Standard, whether substantially in the longer features, or more glancingly in the mini-essays and captions for the photo-stories of the rotogravure, MG is extraordinarily strong-minded when it comes to offering opinions about children and their rearing. She doesn’t make allowances for faulty parenting. (I would be astonished if she would ever have sanctioned the use of “parent” as a verb.) If your child is shy, it’s because you’re doing it all wrong and you’re damning your kid to a life of future misery if you don’t mend your ways. Do your children have irrational fears? You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, just smarten up. Her easy and unsparing assurance — Mavis knows best — is surprising — some might say off-putting — given that she herself, still in her mid-20’s wasn’t, and would never be, actively in the game.

In “Give the Kid a Gory Story,” she’s registering a current that’s still in the air but that now mostly animates debate about the effect of social media on young minds. Post war, and for some time afterwards, the abiding concern was for the deleterious effect on children of comic books, movies, and, to a lesser extent, traditional and often gory, folk and fairy tales. Such concerned and concerning stories appeared regularly in the pages of North American papers. Children who ran away were said to be inspired by comic books.  J. Edgar Hoover drew a direct link from a Superman comic with a scenario involving the derailing of a freight train to an episode involving boys getting up to no good on the tracks. Comics were blamed when a 12- year boy murdered a nine year old girl in Vancouver in 1945, and when a 12-year old in Chicago died by strangulation after hog-tying himself on his bed, a comic was found on the floor with a similar death depicted. In her short story “From Zero to One,” MG’s Linnet Muir remembers the Pip and Squeak comic strip in which a dog and penguin were parents to a rabbit, and how modern educators were opposed to this owing to possibility of its engendering biological confusion among its young readers.

As for similar concerns connected to folk and fairytales, a quick survey of some of the stories that enlivened the newspapers at that time discloses:

Richmond Times Dispatch. May 20, 1945. “Children Are Disturbed by Dreams Of Big Bad Wolf in Fairy Stories. Dr. Marjorie Sloan, psychiatrist on the staff of the Children’s Memorial Clinic, believes that fairy stories serve a definite purpose in the development of the child and her experience has not shown that they are injurious. Normal active youngsters need an outlet for their fantasies, which are a part of the child’s psychology, she maintains.”

Knoxville Journal. Feb 18, 1946. “Fairy Tales Necessary for Children Under Ten. Children under ten, roughly grouped, need fairy tales, folk tales, poetry to stimulate and feed their emotions. They need imagination to protect them from the harsh realities of life. They need to know about Santa Claus, Cinderella, The Seven Dwarfs, Aesop’s Fables, Br’er Rabbit, and all the other delightful people who belong in fairyland.”

The Kansas City Star. July 8, 1946. “A Knowledge of Fairy Tales Is a Fine Part of Childhood. Fairy tales open the minds of children to imagined beauty, power and achievement. Then, when the time comes for them to work for their place in adult life, they will have a richer background upon which to draw.”

Montreal Gazette, via New York Times. November 28, 1946. “Children’s War Toys Held Healthy Outlet.” Dr. Vladimir G. Eliasberg, child psychiatrist and psychology professor at Rutgers University is quoted as saying that war toys and Grimm’s Fairy Tales (he said that had “fallen on evil days”) provided the “same outlet for a child as the adult gets from reading murder mysteries.”

The more specific impulse for this feature was probably the publication, a few months prior, from Pantheon, of Margaret Hunt’s translation of the Grimm fairy tales, with an introduction by Padraic Colum, and commentary by Joseph Campbell. (See Books Section, Time Magazine, February 5, 1945: “Bright Dreams and Blood.”) Fairy tales have always offered rich fodder for satirists, and MG paraphrases Robert Benchley’s “Milgrig and the Tree Wilfs.” It first appeared in No Poems, 1932, and was anthologized in A Subtreasury of American Humor, edited by E.B. and Katherine White,1941, and in The Benchley Roundup, 1976.

Anne T. Eaton was a pioneer of the study of children’s literature and library services for children; her name was still reverently spoken when I attended the UBC Library School in 1978. From 1917, Miss Eaton spent 30 years as librarian of the Lincoln School of Teachers College, Columbia University, then taught at St. John’s University.  She was for about ten years the editor of the children’s book section of the New YorkTimes book review.  She was still volunteering at St. Luke’s School Library, reading to children once a week, well into her 90th year, and died three days before her 90th birthday in 1971. Miss Eaton would have approved of the recommendation of Ludwig Bemelmans, whom MG, in part convent-educated, certainly had in mind when she wrote “Madeline’s Birthday,” preserving the spelling of the name of the little girl who lived in Paris in the vine covered house and went out walking with her friends in two straight lines. All the other stories that MG cites are found in Grimm, and her enduring fascination with “Jorinda and Joringel” is evident in her story “Jorinda and Jorindel” (the title slightly different, either through error or a deliberate change) published in The New Yorker in 1956. In her introduction to Home Truths (1982) MG says that “Jorinda” was written in Montreal, in the 40’s, when she was working at the Standard.

MG wraps up her writing with an allusion that would have been understood in the day — in Canada, at least — but now requires a gloss. Brock Chisholm (b. 1896) was a psychiatrist who was the head of medical services for the Canadian army in WW 2. A humanist, highly rational, he developed a wet blanket reputation in the post war years when he spoke of his pessimism about the future of the human race. He particularly riled the nation, and became the target of lavishly snorted scorn, when, as the Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare, in 1945, he declared that children should be dissuaded from belief in Santa Claus, saying that such a child “will become the kind of man who develops a sore back when there is a tough job to do, and refuses to think realistically when war threatens.” Not surprisingly, this Grinch-like posture seemed too dire a leap, and there followed a barrage of angry letters to editors, and irate editorials, and grousing in the House of Commons. Nonetheless, he ascended the ranks of the WHO and served as Director General from 1948 - 1953. Perhaps his presence as a prophet of post-war doom is best summed up by this headline in the Montreal Gazette, May 21 1946:  “Brock Chisholm Predicts Death For World Lying To Its Children.” He died in Victoria, B.C. in 1971.

Here’s the first of these “Original Notes” postings.