Review: Le Petit Nord by Anne Grenfell and Katie Spalding

Original Publication Date: 1920

Genre: ??? (See my review)

Topics: Newfoundland, travel, orphans, wily missionaries,

 

 

 

 

 

Review by : Chrisbookarama

Le Petit Nord is a collection of letters written by an unknown narrator to her British friend Joan during her year as missionary in St Anthony, Newfoundland.

Long before airplanes and the Trans-Canada Highway, travel to the northern parts of Newfoundland was a long and arduous journey. The narrator first sails into St John’s and from there takes a train to Run By Guess as a little diversion before her heading north. The trip does not go well, as soon as she steps outside she is attacked by mosquitos and “the roadbed was not constructed on the principles laid down by the Romans.” This is her first experience on “the Rock.”

After her short vacation, the lady heads to Come By Chance and her journey begins in earnest as she boards a steamer for St Anthony. The little ship avoids ice floes and storms (by the way it’s now the end of June). Though she finds the scenery beautiful, she can’t get used to “the language of the people.” They do not say “How are you?” but “How’s da fish by’?”

When she finally lands in St Anthony, one of her first duties is to feed thirty-six orphaned children with one herring, a feat to put Jesus to shame. By this time, she’s learned not only is the pantry empty but she’s lost her luggage during the trip. She has nothing but it’s still more than what these children have. Many were found in isolated homes where the parents had died or disappeared, often long before the children were discovered; they were dirty, starving, and frightened. Unsurprisingly, the children are difficult and have developmental issues. She loves them all in her own way. She is firm with them but kind. She has lots stories of their shenanigans for Joan!

Speaking of Joan, she must have insulted Newfoundland in a letter, because  the lady takes her to task: “I want to violently controvert your disparaging remarks about this "insignificant little island."” She, in a short time, has come to love St Anthony and its people. They have no school, and the closest hospital is in St John’s. The poverty is extreme but:

When I look about me and see this poverty, the ignorance born of lack of opportunity, the suffering, the dirt, and degradation which are in so large a measure no fault of these poor folk, I am overwhelmed at the wealth of opportunities. Here at least every talent one has to offer counts for double what it would at home.

She greatly admires the women. When a road was needed to be built and the men were away fishing,  they chopped a path through the wilderness for it. In her letters, she speaks of characters like the kitchen maids Senath and Tryphena, a crewman of the ship The Northern Light she calls The Prophet (Prophet of Doom), and a Feminist named Elmira, who “had the courage of her convictions, and did not marry.” Her letters contain the tales and beliefs of the people, including stories of sled dogs, polar bears, and a creature called Yoho.

As for the lady herself, she has many adventures. She witnesses the Aurora Borealis and hears the sounds they make. She weathers a variety of storms, and takes a ‘cruise’ by dog sled. During her final days as missionary, she travels around the other ports of Le Petit Nord onboard The Northern Light and sees puffins, icebergs, whales, and dolphins. Everything you’d expect to find in a Newfoundland and Labrador Travel brochure!

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When I first read Le Petit Nord, I was under the impression that these were actual letters written by Anne Grenfell.* However, upon going over the story again for my review, I started to get the feeling something else was going on. First of all, who is Katie Spalding? What does she have to do with this? Anne Grenfell was the American wife of Dr Wilfred Grenfell, the founder of the St Anthony Mission. The narrator never mentions her own name nor does she mention the year. The narrator is English not American, so she can’t be Anne who was born in Chicago. I did some internet digging and found this thesis in Collections Canada that points out that Katie Spalding was the secretary for the Grenfell Association. Both she and Anne created "a collection of pseudo-letters” that was Le Petit Nord. They were writing propaganda to get money out of people in England for the Mission. Ruh-roh! I had fallen for it hook, line and sinker. I am scandalized! I just thought Anne was a really great letter writer.

Of course, even if it is propaganda, it’s entertaining propaganda. The foreword claims that all these events happened, only the names have been changed. Maybe these things did happen, or maybe they didn’t, but even of they did probably not to one person. I found the whole book delightful nonetheless, even if the narrator is Lady Von Fakerson. It’s funny and full of adventure. Any damage it did was well before my reading of it. Wily missionaries.

So, what is the genre? Fictionalized memoir? A epistolary novel?

This was a Librivox recording narrated by a real Newfoundlander, Sean Michael Hogan. Please listen to it, it’s great!

Download Le Petit Nord by Anne Grenfell and Katie Spalding at Project Gutenberg|Librivox|

*I had used the name Anne in this review before my discovery, I then changed it to ‘the narrator” or “the lady.”

Review: Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly

Original Publication Date: 1887

Genre: Investigative journalism

Topics: Asylums, abuse, mental illness, women

 

 

 

 

 Review by : Chrisbookarama

Journalist Nellie Bly, pen name of Elizabeth Cochrane, was tired of reporting for the “woman’s pages” of Dispatch. She turned to The New York World whose editor gave her an assignment, one he didn’t think she had much hope of accomplishing.

Nellie would pretend to be insane and have herself admitted to Blackwell’s Island Women’s Asylum, while there she would record all that went on inside. Her editor doubted she would get in and didn’t have a plan to get her out! Nellie was determined to get her story. From the beginning, she believed that the reports of abuse inside the hospital were exaggerated. She was about to find out how wrong she was.

First, she thought it would be easier to get to the asylum by way of a women’s temporary home, a kind of homeless shelter for working women. She felt the landlady would have experience with these cases. The first night, Nellie began acting erratically, calling the other women crazy, refusing to sleep, and claiming to have lost her luggage. After the police are called, Nellie was placed before a judge who for some reason believed she’s from Cuba. “How did you know?!” she says. She isn’t, actually, she’s from Pennsylvania, but she plays along and it’s kind of hilarious.

The judge sends her to be examined at Bellevue Hospital and she fears she will be found out. She needn't have worried. The doctors declare her a “hopeless case.” One asks her if she is a prostitute and she takes umbrage! She and a few other women, including a German woman with no English, are shipped off to Blackwell’s Island. And just like that, she’s in.

At the asylum, she meets several patients, some who have obvious problems and others who were put there and either recovered or were never sick to begin with. Many of these women were foreigners who could not speak for themselves, or women placed there by family. There was no hope of leaving for these women. No matter what their mental issues were the doctors didn’t listen to them.

The doctors were the least of their worries. Nellie complains of the cold and of the poor food. Worse still was the treatment of the nurses who were cruel, torturing and abusing the women. Taunting them and teasing them. They were even expected to clean the rooms of the patients and nurses.  Nellie was told more than once by the nurses that charity cases should be grateful for what they were given and “don’t expect kindness, you won’t get it.” This is how these sick women were treated.

Nellie gave up the pretence of insanity once she got to Blackwell’s Island and many times asked the doctors to test her. She called out the behaviour of the nurses and the alarming conditions of some of the patients but it helped little. Nellie was only released once a lawyer from the paper came to claim her.

The stories she hears from the patients are horrific. These women were poor and overwhelmed by their home lives. Some just had a bad day which was enough to send them to an asylum for a lifetime. The “treatment,” or lack of, did more harm than good.  The foreign women must have been scared out of their minds! They wouldn’t have understood what was happening.

Once her story Ten Days in a Madhouse was published, a grand jury was called and with Nellie’s assistance, the hospital investigated. Changes to the system were made.

When I think about this story, this true story, I’m struck by so many things. Nellie was in her early twenties. She was a woman in the Victorian era. She had no idea what she was getting into and no idea how she’d get out of it. She just jumped in with both feet. Talk about nerve!

Nellie’s reporting is clear headed and factual. She tells events as she experiences them. Although her writing is full of sympathy and frustration for the patients, it’s never overwrought. It never veers into the melodramatic. It’s a serious topic, but Nellie’s reporting is warm and at times even humourous.

I knew of Nellie Bly’s journalism, but this was the first time hearing her words. What an experience!

This was a Librivox recording read by Alys AtteWater. Alys has a pleasant, perky voice, just the voice for a plucky, twenty-something journalist.

Download Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly at  Librivox  or read the text at Digital Library.

Review: EIGHT COUSINS by Louisa May Alcott

Original Publication Date: 1875

Genre: Young Adults

Topics: Growing up, Morals, Child-reading, Happiness, Health

Review:

“Eight Cousins” is about Rose Campbell, a 13-year-old who shortly after becoming an orphan is put under the guardianship of  her Uncle Alec. He’s a doctor and temporarily away at sea, so until he returns Rose goes to live in “Aunt Hill”, the home of many aunts, great-aunts and seven male cousins. When we first meet her, Rose is treated by the Aunts as the frail and delicate creature every young woman of the should be, but when Uncle Alec comes back, he begins a long process towards a happier and healthier Rose, using very unorthodox methods (he was ready to burn her corset!).


I was already 30 pages in when I realized I’d already read “Eight Cousins”, many, many moons ago. I vividly remember two scenes in particular, but in my mind they became part of ”A Little Princess” (I confused my orphans…): the scene where Uncle Alec creates placebo pills from brown bread, and when he put together Rose’s room, full of exotic objects from his travels. Why these two in particular in a book full of other events? No idea.

The story is pure Alcott in it’s gentleness and focus on strong messages for young people, but it felt rather more outdated than “Little Women” and its sequels. In those more famous works, she seem to be writing for both adults and children, but this one comes across as more infantile. The moralizing and sentimentality in “Eight Cousins” (full of “little dears” that go to “little beds”, with ”little cups of broth”) become too much Tell and not enough Show. Here’s when the kinder of the Aunts tries to dissuade her sons from reading “popular stories”:

”A boot-black mustn’t use good grammar, and a newsboy must swear a little, or he wouldn't be natural,” explained Geordie, both boys ready to fight gallantly for their favourites. 

“But my sons are neither boot-blacks nor newsboys, and I object to hearing them use such words as ‘screamer,’ ‘bully,’ and ‘buster.’ In fact, I fail to see the advantage of writing books about such people unless it is done in a very different way. I cannot think they will help to refine the ragamuffins if they read them, and I’m sure they can do no good to the better class of boys, who through these books are introduced to police courts, counterfeiters’ dens, gambling houses, drinking saloons, and all sorts of low life.”

Still, Uncle Alec’s theories about what a young girl should eat, dress and be taught were radical for the time, and still refreshing now. He forbade corsets and tight belts, he recommended lots of fresh air and exercise, and defended that every girl should be educated on how to handle her financial affairs and (gasp) how her body works.

“Do you think that is a good sort of thing for her to be poking over? She is a nervous child, and I’m afraid it will be bad for her,” said Aunt Myra, watching Rose as she counted vertebrae, and waggled a hip-joint in its socket with an inquiring expression.

“An excellent study, for she enjoys it, and I mean to teach her how to manage her nerves so that they won’t be a curse to her, as many a woman’s become through ignorance or want of thought. To make a mystery or terror of these things is a mistake, and I mean Rose shall understand and respect her body so well that she won’t dare to trifle with it as most women do.”

 I've added “Rose in Bloom”, the sequel to “Eight Cousins”, to the wishlist. They are both available on Project Gutenberg.

Review: Roast Beef, Medium by Edna Ferber

Original Publication Date: 1913

Genre: Women's Fiction

Topics: women, careers, business, travelling salespeople, single mother, working mother,














Review:

Emma McChesney is a travelling salesperson. Maybe not such an unusual career choice for a woman now but in 1913 it definitely was. Emma is successful at it too. She is the best salesperson for T.A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats. And here's why in her own words:

I've lived petticoats, I've talked petticoats, I've sold petticoats, I've dreamed petticoats- why, I've even worn the darned things! And that's more than any man will do for you.

It's not an easy life for a woman- as the men are quick to remind her- there are long days and nights on the road and in hotels. The salesmen can hang out in the hotel parlors and joke with each other. Emma has to spend her evenings alone in her room. She has to be impeccably dressed or the men size her up instantly as 'that kind of woman.' "Morals don't figure with a man on the road, but when a woman breaks in this game, she's got to be on the level," as one character says. It's not fair but it's how it is.

Emma is one tough cookie. She holds her own whether she's battling it out with the T.A. Buck's son, or her nemesis Ed Meyer, or a hotel manager trying to put her in the shabbiest room. Emma is one of the strongest females I've encountered in literature.

Roast Beef, Medium is a collection of vignettes from the tenth year of Emma's career. Changes are afoot. Her son, 17 and full of himself, is about to start college, her boss is ill, and fashions are making petticoats obsolete. How will Emma face these challenges?

I found reading Roast Beef, Medium a bit challenging myself. I enjoyed it but the dialogue is written in the vernacular of the times. Sometimes I'd read a line and think, "Huh? What the heck are they saying?" Emma is a strong character but she did romanticize homemaking a lot. Sure I like taking care of my home but there are days when I wish I could Tom Sawyer someone into cleaning my bathroom for me. She might say she just wants to bake pies but she loves her job too much. You can tell by the way she takes on any challenges. No one ever gets the better of her, she's too quick for that.

If you're interested in a career woman from the past who wasn't a teacher or governess, I think you'll be impressed by Roast Beef, Medium. It's not a very long book either at only 126 pages. Recommended.

You may not have heard of Roast Beef, Medium but you might know one of Edna Ferber's other novels including Show Boat (turned into musical), So Big (Pulitzer Prize 1924) or Giant. Giant was made into a movie starring Rock Hudson, James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor in 1956.

Roast Beef, Medium is a free ebook from Girlebooks and includes illustrations.

Review originally published on Chrisbookarama.