Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, July 12

Have you feathers on your skin?

3.07 a.m. Golly. Look at that date. July 12. Less than a month remains until August 11, the official natal day of Mavis Gallant (MG), the apex of her Centennial celebration. I wish I could say my efforts on her behalf have born conspicuous fruit, that all the picnic sites have been reserved, that the parade permits have been applied for and issued, that fireworks are in short supply, that the Prime Minister is in hourly contact with his speech writers, that couturiers are seen at all hours rushing in and out of Rideau Hall, their minions freighted with bolts of fabric and tubes of glitter, that hair stylists are reporting an uptick in the number of clients coming through the door with photos of MG, and requesting a do “just like hers,” that the Post Office has settled on an image for use on a stamp. Candles for a cake? Icing sugar? Sparkles in rainbow hues? If you haven’t secured yours yet, well, good luck, friend. But no. I suppose it’s possible the small sparks from my feeble flint will catch some kindling, that there’ll be a late summer blaze; I am not, however, and sad to say, holding my breath. Que sera sera.

(When I was a child, and an enthusiastic if unwitting malapropper of popular songs — this would have been round about 1961 — there were two women whose names I often heard crooned via the crystal set and to whom I assigned rich identities; they were almost like imaginary friends. I was well on my way to being lost in life’s dark forest before I realized that Doris Day was not, in fact, invoking the intuitions of that great existentialist Kay Sara-Sara, and that Jimmie Rogers, singing about the flora and the fauna in English country gardens, was not saying how much he missed Shirley Pardon. Many were the hours I devoted to wondering about Shirley, about why she would have bolted from such a fragrant, tuneful paradise. For what? For where? Did she not realize how much Jimmie, an agreeable tenor and so able a whistler, hankered after her repatriation, stuck among the ferns and robins with only a small chorus and a nameless harpsichordist for company? Come home, Shirley Pardon, you prodigal daughter. All is forgiven.)

Anyway, there’s still lots of work to do between now and August 11, and it’s not a great time to be stepping back for a couple of days, but retreat I must, briefly, owing to a couple of pressing and long-standing commitments to which deadlines are attached. I don’t for one second suppose anyone will be shackled to their computer, constantly hitting “refresh,” but as I promised to be as faithful as my energies would allow to this diary-keeping, I didn’t want to vanish, even temporarily, without a word.

A few tag ends to clean up before my hiatus herniates. I’ve been spending some more time dallying with the pious sadism that is Mrs. Mortimer’s The Peep of Day, the Victorian Bible primer MG refers to in her novel A Fairly Good Time, and which I acquired for myself, and wrote about the last time I checked in here. Even accounting for the Victorian sensibilities that made such a production possible, it truly is beyond the pale.

Is the cat’s body like yours? — No; it is covered with fur.

Is a chicken’s body like yours? How many legs has the chicken? — Two.

And so have you. But are its legs like yours? No; the chicken has very thin, dark legs, and it has claws instead of feet.

Have you feathers on your skin? Have you wings? Is your mouth like a chicken’s beak? Has the chicken any teeth? — No; the chicken’s body is not at all like yours. Yet the chicken has a body—for it has flesh and bones and blood and skin.

Has a fly got a body?—Yes, it has a black body, and six black legs, and two wings like glass. Its body is not at all like yours.

Who gave bodies to dogs, horses, chickens, and flies? Who keeps them alive?

In the name of not giving it ALL away, I’ll keep the answer to myself and invite you to peruse this gem for yourself. I shall not speak of it again. Until I do.

My thanks to Sarah Ellis — her book, illustrated by Nancy Vo, As Glenn As Can Be, was published this spring by Groundwood Books, and is truly a wonder — for pointing out that The Peep of Day figured in the childhood of Emily Carr. In The Book of Small, she wrote, All our Sundays were exactly alike. They began on Saturday night after Bong the Chinaboy had washed up and gone away, after our toys, dolls and books, all but The Peep of Day and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, had been stored away in drawers and boxes till Monday, and every Bible and prayerbook in the house was puffing itself out, looking more important every minute.

(Sarah goes on to note, An English contemporary Molly Hughes, in A London Child in the 1870’s describes it: “It is very insistent and realistic about hell and apparently there is only one virtue, obedience to parents and kind teachers which leads, of itself, to a life of bliss beyond the sky.”)

Further to the last diary entry, from July 10, I had written that MG briefly attended the Julia Richman high school in New York at around the same time as Patricia Highsmith and Lauren Bacall, i.e. 1936 - 37. I’d wondered if Highsmith and MG, who surely would have a lot to say to one another, might have intersected. Ace detective and historian Linda Granfield — who, like Sarah, has written mostly for young readers, and who is an excellent researcher — sent this followup.

Good morning, Slim,

For your growing photo file: I checked out the Julia Richman H.S. yearbooks for 1934-1940. Absolutely no Mavis Young (no de Trafford either) in any of the books. Patricia Highsmith ("Budding scribe.") and Betty Bacal (one 'l' and no sign of Lauren) ("...may your dreams of an actress overflow the brim") are in Class of 1938 (PH) and Class of 1940 (BB).

Extra photo where Betty is clearly the girl on the left although no caption on the photo.

So, why no Mavis? I went through the club pages--also no Mavis.

MG is full of mystery!

Linda Granfield is hereby named House Historian and will receive her weight either in ducats or duct tape, whichever is available at the Dollar Store down at the corner. Here are her enclosures.

I got the information about MG at Julia Richman from John Metcalf , and John got it from Terry Rigelhof, who was digging into MG’s whys and wherefores before he was sadly sidelined by illness. If MG left the school, was expelled for truancy (or whatever other reason) one would suppose she wouldn’t have found a place in the Yearbook, and I don’t suppose she would have been much of a joiner of clubs; but why would I say that, how would I know? I can imagine she might have submitted a story in to the school’s literary magazine, The Bluebird, of which Patricia Highsmith was the editor. Maybe it was snubbed. Maybe between them there was bad blood. Maybe, maybe, maybe. All that is certain is they both found their way.

It was on yesterday’s date, July 11, in 1959, a month before what would have been her 37th birthday, that MG published in The New Yorker a story, “Travellers Must be Content,” that would become a chapter in her short novel, Green Water, Green Sky.

It would be too much to say that this novel, especially its spookily scary depiction of a descent into madness, was a template for Sylvia Plath when she came to write The Bell Jar; but it’s not an impossible stretch to say you can hear, in Plath’s 1963 novel, thematic and stylistic echoes of GWGS, which she read and admired. I’ve mentioned that influence before, written about how all writers pick up voices or accents from the great echoing cave of their own reading. Was MG familiar with The Talented Mr. Ripley, published in 1955. The character of Wishart in “Travellers Must Be Content,” then in Green Water, Green Sky, is definitely a type — self-absorbed, snobbish, withholding, repressed, gay, or assumed to be — and MG would have observed Wishart prototypes among the social climbers and hangers-on who frequented the English colonies of Cannes or Nice or other resort towns of the Côte d’Azur: gigolos whose contracts may or may not have extended to the provision of sexual services. Venice is the setting for the first story in the novel — it was published as “Green Water, Green Sky” in The New Yorker, on June 27, 1959 — and perhaps MG, via Wishart, was nodding cordially in the direction of Thomas Mann’s Gustav von Aschenbach. But it’s also true that when Wishart comes into a room, you might sniff the air and wonder if it was Ripley who’d entered.

See what I mean?

Off to the store, now. Thanks for your kind attention, I’ll be back before the end of the week, and then it’s the big push through till August 11. What do you think? Should I commission an MG doll to mark the occasion? If I do, it’ll be an idea lifted from Marnie Parsons, who is the publisher at Running the Goat Book and Broadsides, in Tors Cove, Newfoundland. She specializes in children’s books. Marnie is publishing Lola Flies Alone next month, which I wrote, and Bill Pechet illustrated. Years ago, I was waiting to board a plane. There was a child in line, and she had dressed for the occasion. A little bit mermaid, a little bit ballerina, a little bit fairy, a little bit unicorn. She became Lola, and she's making her first solo plane trip to visit her Grandmother. Her mother makes her take a Traveling Alone Pledge, promising to be good and kind and generous and brave. These are qualities Lola displays en route, each time adapted to her outfit, and all with the able assistance of the flight attendant, Arshbir. Marnie had the great idea that to encourage pre-sales -- yes, this is a commercial pitch -- she would commission a craftsperson, Holly Floyd, to make Lola and Arshbir dolls. Which she did. And they're beautiful.

If you pre-order before August 15, you're entered in the draw to win them. Holly says: "The dolls' bodies are made with quality quilting cotton, the hair on Lola is made with fleece, the turban is made with wool felt as is his tie. Lola’s wings are made with felt and her Cape is made with quilting cotton! The faces are hand embroidered." Of course I'd say this, but it really is a sweet book, and Marnie P does the work of the angels, for sure. Here’s a photo taken by Rachel Dragland, Marnie’s daughter and Running the Goat henchwoman, of Lola and Arshbir at Cape Spear, as far east as you can travel in this blessed land, where travellers can be content, unless they have to pass through Pearson.

Anyway, I think an MG doll would be a great idea. Don’t you? I’ll see what I can arrange, we’ll have a contest of some kind. Which I can enter. And also win. MG loved dolls as a child, played with them very intently, paper dolls who became the characters in stories she would tell. “She talks to herself all the time,” her mother told a concerned visitor. Luckily, the narrative urge never withered and died. It prospered. It grew. She talks to us now, too. Thanks to Sarah Ellis and Linda Granfield for their able commentaries, and to all of you for reading, à bientôt, xo B