A Stray Impressionist Finds his Home

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) had travelled and wandered far in his life, and though he thought the tropics would keep him, it was in the far east that he discovered home. In the fall of 1889, he was unhappy and staying in New York when an art editor at Harper's suggested he write a book on Japan. While Hearn worked on his book proposal for Harper's, the art editor travelled to Montreal to talk with Sir William Van Horne to see if he could provide passage across Canada for Hearn and an artist. Sir William agreed and offered $250 upon Hearn's arrival in Montreal. The requirement was for Lafcadio Hearn to write an article about the trip across Canada on one of Sir William's Canadian Pacific Railway trains.

On March 8th, 1890, Hearn and C. D. Weldon, the artist, left New York by train and arrived in Montreal greeted by the cold and ice:

Ice, many inches thick, sheets the pavements; and lines of sleighs, instead of lines of hacks, wait before the station for passengers. No wheeled vehicles are visible,--except one hotel omnibus: only sleighs are passing. They have for me quite an unfamiliar picturesqueness.

Hearn's glimpse of Montreal was unfortunately short. It would have been interesting to read of his impressions from a longer stay in Montreal, but he did leave a short description:

The city is very solid and very gray--a limestone city largely: comfortable, conservative looking. Nothing that strikes the eyes has a foreign aspect, --except a few old French houses recalling memories of New Orleans: the newer and larger buildings awake remembrances of New York and Philadelphia in their less modern quarters.

These excerpts are from the "required" article published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1890; in the article Hearn also reflects on the nature of modern travel. He sees that a circuit of the world was possible, according to his calculations, in 35 days and six hours. He outlines the various stages and durations. It was on his mind. He was fondly attracted to Elizabeth Bisland, a fellow journalist, who had left New York on a race to be the first to circumnavigate the world in the shortest time. Bisland was playing catch-up with Nellie Bly who had already left on her trip around the world. It was the attempt of the owner of the Cosmopolitan Magazine's to compete with Bly and The World. Nellie Bly won.

Hearn's article continues with wonderful descriptions of Canadian scenery for many pages; just what Sir William Van Horne was looking for I am sure. They arrived at Vancouver where they boarded the Abysinnia which departed on March 17th.

It was on this day, the 4th of April, 1890, when Lafcadio Hearn first glimpsed Japan, the country that this "civilized nomad" could at last call home:

Then with a delicious shock of surprise I see something for which I had been looking, --far exceeding all anticipation --but so ghostly, so dream white against the morning blue, that I did not observe it at the first glance: an exquisite snowy cone towering above all other visible things--Fujiyama! Its base, the same tint as the distances, I cannot see--only the perfect crown, seeming to hang in the sky like a delicate film,--a phantom.

It is a Maxim of the Book Business

Stephen Leacock (1869-1941), pictured here in a youthful pose, wrote a very good book on Mark Twain (1932), and he begins this biography with two forceful truths of the time: "The name of Mark Twain stands for American humour. More than that of any other writer, more than all names together, his name conveys the idea of American humour." These statements of fact could equally be used for Stephen Leacock in relation to Canadian humour of the period. But like Twain, Leacock's seasoned wit can still make us laugh; can still make us see the bubbles he is trying to pop, and the human frailty and weakness too. One of my favourite stories is perhaps less known and perhaps on the silly side, but it deals with the book world: The Reading Public: a Book Store Study, found in his Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (1915). Here he lightly sends up the booksellers and readers of the day. When I read this piece I hear the voice of John Gielgud as the bookseller strangely enough. Such is the effect of his extraordinary performance as Charles Ryder's father in the BBC adaptation of Waugh's Brideshead Revisited which has stayed with me for so many years. It just seems to fit the character.

Not wanting to ruin it for anyone I shall hold my tongue, but early in this Leacock story his character, a professor, reflects that: "it is a maxim of the book business that a professor standing up in a corner buried in a book looks well in a store. The real customers like it." This story feels very much drawn from personal experience and I wonder, even though the story seems to be set in New York, which bookstore managers in Montreal during the early part of the last century may have seen themselves, or others, as the original of Mr. Sellyer the "sales manager"? The bookshops in Montreal during this period included The Montreal Book Room, A. T. Chapman, F. E. Phelan, the book department of Henry Morgan & Co. Ltd. and W. H. Scroggie Ltd. among many others. Perhaps there are descendants of these booksellers who still bring out the old story at family get-togethers of how their relative was the real Mr. Sellyer.

Stephen Leacock was born in Swanmore, Hamshire, England on December 30, 1869. In May of 1970, a commemorative plaque was placed on the house in Swanmore where he was born.

Stephen Leacock died on this date, March 28, 1941.

Terence Hearsay; or, the Benefits of a Friend's Discerning Eye

When at St. John's College, Oxford, in the 1870s, A. E. Housman became friends with Alfred W. Pollard and eventually, in their fourth year, shared five rooms with another student in an old house near the College. Their friendship continued though they both went their separate and successful ways. Pollard went on to become a well-known bibliographer and scholar, employee of the British Museum, and editor of the journal The Library for many years. While Housman eventually found his place with a slim volume of verse and a position as a scholar. That slim volume of verse that A. E. Housman had prepared for publication was initially entitled The Poems of Terence Hearsay. Alfred W. Pollard modestly recalled the event for a publication of reminiscences of Housman published in 1937:

Housman knew that books of mine had been published by Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., who had gained rather a special reputation for bringing out prettily printed volumes of verse, and asked me to arrange with them for its publication at his expense. Of course there was no difficulty as to this (I think Housman put down 30 pounds and got it back with a small profit), but my being entrusted with the manuscript led me to suggest that Terence was not an attractive title, and that in the phrase "A Shropshire Lad," which he had used in the poem, he had much a better one. He agreed at once, and I think the change helped.

Pollard was correct in seeing Terence as a tentative title, a pretense on the part of the poet, and thankfully provided that necessary discerning viewpoint for for his friend when it was most needed. The Shropshire Lad was indeed published in 1896, the same year as the photograph of Housman (above) was taken in London. The print run was 500 copies, of which 150 were shipped to the United States. Only 381 copies were sold by the end of the first year. A. E. Housman's brother, Laurence, author and playwright, recalled how he purchased the remaining 6 copies of the first edition two and a half years after publication, and then thirty years later, when he started Housmans Bookshop, he began to sell them at 12, 20, 30 and then 70 pounds for a signed copy. Checking values in today's market, it seems a signed copy of A Shropshire Lad is somewhere in the $25,000.00 + range.

The Housman brothers were on occasion mistaken for each other; The Dean of Westminister mistook A. E. for Laurence, and once the Headmaster of Westminister mistook Laurence for A. E. In the year before A. E. Housman's death, his brother told him of another occasion:

I had been giving a lecture--not on poetry; at the end a man came up to me and asked if I was the author of A Shropshire Lad. I said, "No." "Any relation?" "Yes, I am his brother." "Ah, well," was the kind reply, "that's something to be proud of. I, too, have a brother who is the better man."

A. E. Housman was born on this date, March 26, 1859.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.