Drop Dead Gorgeous Prose and Prohibition

My grandmother, mother and aunt in Atlantic City, circa 1927. You can see La Victoire Restaurant int he background. too bad you can’t see the other strollers. Alas.

Well, I just read in the NYT that the same person who directed Moulin Rouge, Baz Luhrmann, is making a 3-d version of the Great Gatsby. I love Moulin Rouge, the movie.

It stars Leonardo di Caprio, Carrie Mulligan and Toby McGuire, so great casting.

3D eh? I supposed to get the younger generation interested in classics. I hope it works. Redford’s Great Gatsby movie was not a great success. (I just saw that lately, as well, on TV.)

I recently listened to a dramatization of the book on BBC Radio Four, and what writing! Drop dead gorgeous prose. (I read the famous book back in college. American Lit with Last of the Mohicans and a lesser Melville work.) The same station had another dramatization, of letters between Fitzgerald and his editor. Very professional. The editor made only a few suggestions and Fitzgerald was open to them.

Anyway, my Jazz Age story is about Montreal. It’s kind of a radio play right now. Milk and Water features an imaginary meeting between my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services, Montreal and my husband’s grandfather, Tom Wells, a Westmount businessman who sells water and soft drinks.

A few years ago, when cleaning out my father in law’s house, I found a card of condolence from Mayor of Montreal Camillien Houde, addressed to Tom Wells’ widow, May. 1952 I think.

Camillien Houde was the Mayor responsible for forcing my grandfather to resign in 1930, so I was intrigued. “Hey,” I yelled to my husband, “Camillien Houde knew your grandfather.”

I have a scrap book of news clippings from around 1930, kept by my Aunt Flo.  All are about the forced resignation, over some Water and Power Purchase. So I did a little more Internet sleuthing, this was 4 years ago, and discovered that there was a file at City Hall under my grandfather’s name.

I visited their archives in the basement and photocopied the contents of the file. (A scholar told me that I might have trouble accessing it, as she did, but I just plunked down my grandfather’s ID card from 1929. The nice archivist asked me why I was English, if my grandfather was French.) The file contained more press clippings and some documents and letters.

Since then, I’ve done a lot more research, mostly from home as the Internet now contains lots of info. I was planning to write a Two Solitudes story involving the two ancestors… but it was only when  I saw the PBS Programme Prohibition that it hit me: My grandfather was at the height of his powers during the Prohibition Era.

Maybe that’s why the family always vacationed in Atlantic City! ( I had plenty of snapshots to prove it.)

So I did more research, which led to to another BIG Quebec story, the infamous, game-changing Laurier Palace Fire. And it led me into the murky world of Montreal Civic Politics in the 1920′s and into the sleazy worlds of tabloid and so called  ’respectable’ journalism. The Newspaper Business as it existed back then.

Suffrage and Quebec and Temperance

A temperance pledge signed by Herbert Nicholson, around 1910, when he was in his early twenties, to please his parents no doubt. He moved out West and was always in debt, so they feared he had fallen into bad habits. Since he roomed with a bartender and, yikes, a young woman stenographer, he probably did!

“I hereby promise with the help of God to abstain from the consumption of intoxicating liquor including wine beer and cider.”

Anyway, here’s another quote from Anna Howard Shaw, US Suffragette that reveals the close ties between women suffrage and the temperance moviement.  Herbert’s sister Edith clipped a picture of this famous woman from a newspaper for posterity, but Edith wanted women to get the vote for more personal reasons: they wanted more from life. She wanted more opportunities for women and security outside of marriage.

“We do not fear that little band of professional anti-women going around the country advocating home, heaven and mother. The only purpose they serve is that by holding out their skirts they act as a screen for the liquor traffic, the gamblers, the vicious, and those interested in dance halls, and places where young girls are ruined.”

As I write my play, Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927, and as I read the report of the 1925 Coderre Inquiry into Police Corruption and, more to the point, incompetence, where my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services,  was implicated, personally. The charge of corruption centered around the cops turning a blind eye to dance halls and taverns  breaking by-laws by staying open after 1 am, thereby allowing prostitution and gambling to flourish. (Because after midnight is when all the bad stuff begins.)

Quebec didn’t give women the vote until the 40′s and that seems backwards. We have always been told it is the Catholic Church’s fault. But, frankly, maybe Quebec was wary of this link between the Presybterian Social Reformers and Women’s Suffrage. Maybe the didn’t want their fun curtailed. (Winston Churchill hated the suffragettes for that reason: he thought it appalling that anyone might keep him from drinking.)

(My grandfather’s relation, Therese Forget Casgrain, fought for suffrage for women in Quebec. Indeed, my grandfather always told my mother women could do anything they wanted.)

Anyway, I just happen to have a blow- by -blow account of a Town Hall in 1921, during the election campaign, in Richmond Quebec, where the Nicholson’s neighbor asked an indiscreet question about that very question: Why doesn’t the Province of Quebec give women the vote.

It embarrasses the politicians. And the crowd.

Wednesday, November 23, 1921 Dear Edith and Flora and Marion, I thought I must jot a few things down while they are fresh in my mind. We had the Tobin meeting last night and Tobin was first speaker. . He made a very fine speech and said he wanted to thank his friend Mr. Crombie who opposed him in 1917 that he did it convincingly and after the war returned to his party. “The Applause hearty and long.” Then the Honorable Mitchell. His speech was grand. He was speaking about the conservatives claiming they gave women the franchise. He said how Dougherty in the House argued that women were not persons. Said he had always been in favour of it. Just then Mrs. Montgomery who was in the center of the hall said the Quebec government thought they were not persons. Mitchell stopped and asked her what she meant. As she repeated he said, I will explain that Madam. Mr Ginn and myself were in favour of it but we did not want a minority to force anything in a majority that did not want it. Said Roman Catholic church did not want it. We were all disgusted at hearing her voice; I’m sure he did not like it. It was the only interruption at the meetings. I asked Mrs. Fraser to go. We were on the elevated. Father went with Mr. Ginn. I do hope the Liberals will win out. Mrs. Farquharson takes no interest, but I will make sure she gets to the polls and votes for Tobin. Take care of the little ones. I am anxious to see them but must stay here until after the election. I may be so sorry I will need a change. Mother

Mice and Spiders and Suffrage, Oh MY.

Ad for Mrs. Snowden. In same column as ads for Royal Theatre and other motion picture shows and vaudeville shows. I’ve written about her speech here on this blog and Edith heard her speak in May 1913 and commented on it in a letter. She did not approve of Mrs. Snowden for Mrs. Snowden was not militant. “She is not militant, and for this I am very sad,”Edith wrote in a letter to her mom.

In the same 1909 Gazette that this ad appeared, there was a Anti Suffrage Letter to the Editor, signed anonymously, Just a Woman. If this wasn’t written by a bunch of frat boys, I’ll be darned. It is quite amusing. But you can see why Pro Suffrage articles often had to emphasize the grace and physical beauty of the female speaker. Mrs. Snowden was so described. It still is thus: the easiest way to put down a woman’s ideas is to criticize her looks. And women are often their worst enemies in this regard. (PS. and I doubt working class women were that afraid of mice and spiders, considering their filthy workplaces.)

Sir, Might I suggest to that new development of creature “the Suffragette” through the columns of your paper, that as they have no home duties, and are not a race producing species, and being apparently quite neuter gender, there is a large work waiting for such unencumbered people in the tending of the poor of this world, a work that ennobles women and raises her in the opinion of men and in the sight of God, and benefits those she is working for, when, as following the present bent of her mind, she is degrading her sex in the eyes of the world at large.

I am a self-dependent woman, and have strong sympathies with the working people, but I find it quite deteriorating enough for a woman to have to be a bread winner without wanting to stand by man’s side in the mud of the political battles of the country. I have found men courteous and deferential, and ready to aid me, also ready to promote the cause suggested by any woman they respect, and who is a woman. But if women are to behave as the rabble, and hustle with the men on a common footing, how degraded will the men become. There will be no polish necessary and as they are on equal terms, men will be allowed to use foul language in woman’s presence, and why should he not treat her so? That is what a suffragette is crying for. But this woman at least is pleased to be just a woman, and leave the battles of the political world to those with more reliable natures, stronger physiques and larger intellects; woman can still obtain laws for the betterment of mankind by training up her sons with the ideas she wishes to promote, and by gaining the respect of her husband, making his home his abiding place, and interesting herself in his pursuits. I have never met a man yet that could not be moulded by a woman that he loved and respected.

Would it not be rather a good plan for the men mated to suffragettes to arm themselves with mice and spiders and a war on the women of their homes, shouting, “Comfort for men!”

JUST A WOMAN

Connecting Fashion, Politics, Suffrage.. Again

Emmeline Pankhurst beings whisked away at a suffrage demonstration in the UK.

In 1909, Miss. Hurlbatt addressed a women’s club in Montreal. Edith Nicholson may have attended. She certainly will in my book Flo in the City. Miss Hurlbatt was warden of Victoria College, Toronto. Edith would eventually become Assistant Warden, or Warden at Royal Victoria College, McGill. Can’t recall. Hurlbatt says she is against the militants, yet she certainly appears sympathetic. Edith, as I have written, was for the militants. And once again, the Cotton Mills are mentioned, British Cotton Mills, as a reason why women wanted the vote. This is definitely going to be a theme in my book. It’s a perfect way to connect fashion with politics…This is from the Montreal Gazette, 1909

“If I might make a suggestion as to the work in Montreal, I would advise a revival of interest in the Canadian organization, but I would also work by other means than these. I would recommend the formation of women’s suffrage discussion circles in various societies throughout the city, let us say in connection with various churches and clubs. By this means we should be educating women to an understanding of the whole question in a way and upon a scale which could not be achieved by the action of the Women’s suffragette society, because you would be reaching those who have not already expressed themselves in favour of the movement. What we need today is to educate opinion. Those who act noisily in Great Britain are doing so because the work upon women’s suffrage lines has not been wide enough. The lesson for Canada is to awake in time and work for your needs. Do this before here is put upon Canada a condition of change in which women suffer in the labour market the intolerable grievance of the need of dependence upon themselves. Let us on this side of the Atlantic be forewarned and forearmed; begin our education early, and pursue it constantly, so that we may win by constitutional methods which need no turbulent influence behind them.

This expression of opinion was uttered by Miss Hurlbatt, warden of Victoria College at the close of an address she delivered yesterday on Women’s Suffrage before the Social Department of the Montreal Women’s Club, which was very largely attended, those present including ladies representing all lines of thought in the city. Mrs. S. C. Marsan, President of the Department, was in the chair.

Miss Hurlbatt commenced by motioning the fact that the press gave full reports of matters connected with woman’s suffrage, and that the magazines also printed articles on the same subject. It seemed, therefore, that the women of Montreal should be in possession of a very fair knowledge of the general lines of the subject. Nevertheless, there was no very widespread or organized movement in Montreal, but there was a national society, the Dominion Women’s Society, headquartered at Toronto. It could not be said, however, that much active work was carried on in Montreal or in Canada as a whole. But some of the women in Montreal were turning their attention to the subject, for the reason that it had become a matter of practical politics in the Dominion, and that it was believed that it would inevitably advance, because it was a result of better education and greater liberty of action which had been accorded women in the nineteenth and twenties centuries, and it could not be logically opposed, in view of the changed conditions under which women lived. “

Speaking of the militant suffragette movement in England, Miss Hurlbatt expressed the hope that there was no one in her audience who did not lament the noisy and violent proceedings of the last two years, but who did not likewise more truly lament the circumstances which had driven women to adopt these violent measures. It could not be thought Mrs. Pankhurst any of her followers really rejoiced in any of these noisy methods; they must feel it to be a waste of energy and a marring of women’s development. The lesson to be learned from the militant movement was not to condemn or despise the women who, at great sacrifice of feeling and inclination, took part in these demonstrations, but so to labour that these things might not be forced on other countries. Miss Hurlbatt then briefly referred to what had led to this form of propaganda, and said that within the last four years women had been the victims of violence. It was not until deputation after deputation had been refused a hearing and hundreds of women had been sent to prison on trumped up charges; not until they were excluded even from the street by the erections of barricades and not until every other way was barred that women in the early stages of this campaign had to resort to stone-throwing and the means use by men on the slightest pretext. It must be remembered that these women had not the means of commanding a hearing which men had and they looked upon the struggle as vital..

Touching on some of the grounds which women’s suffrage had been defended, Miss Hurlbatt contended that women had for all time been workers, creating and supporting the home by their domestic industry. These industries had been removed into the factory and the workshop and women followed their labour. Women had always been essentially concerned in politics as consumers, as well as producers. When a woman entered a factory she became more conscious of the influence of politics as it affected her labour. And she was affected by changed conditions of the state. The cotton spinning and weaving industries were now mainly in the hands of women, and they thought they would suffer if tariff reform were introduced in England.They desired to express themselves in this matter and protect their industry, and they believed that no action on their part without the vote would protect their action.”