The More Things Change..

Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services.

Today, I saw that Montreal’s Police Force was coming under fire for being soft on organized crime.  It came up on my Google News as it is set for “Quebec” (automatically I guess) but it’s a Vancouver Sun article reprint of a Postmedia article by Henry Aubin. According to Aubin Montreal has a huge police force that is very ineffective, against all crime.

Hmm. That’s what they said in 1927 with the Coderre Report. It’s all in my play MIlk and Water  -about Montreal in the Jazz Age, where I have my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services have a talk with my husband’s grandfather, Thomas Wells, Westmount Businessman.

Anyway, another article in the same box is from the Montreal Gazette: Best Treated Minority? Think Again. Apparently, an economic think tank has come out with figures showing that Angl0-Quebeckers are underfunded. Surprise! I have written before how virtually all projects focusing on Anglo Arts are funded by ONE government agency, Heritage Canada that also funds French outside of Quebec and since we’re ‘a minority within a minority’ we get short shrift. I’ve given up on ever getting any funding for my projects, which don’t fit the bill anyway. They are big into funding projects to do with the Military these days.  It’s all a scam, let’s face it. It’s all about Control.

But this article, by Don MacPherson discusses a report that compared Provincial funding across Canada for minorities and apparently, Quebec came out dead last for funding for minority language by far.

How is this a surprise, tho?

It’s sad that Anglo schools are poorly funded though. As I have written elsewhere, in the 1960′s the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal was the best performing in North America.

And so many of these students went on to brilliant careers, mostly in Ontario.

I was thinking of this last night. Sometimes I play this game, where I try to invoke a ‘new’ childhood memory… It seldom works.. But last night I remembered my grade six play. I won the lead, the Princess.  I recalled going to the audition, wearing this old purple sweater I had.  We wore tunics in those days, uniforms, but there were still opportunities to show off nice clothes. I had none. (My mother had grown up rich as my play Milk and Water shows, and didn’t know how  to manage a family on a middle class budget.

Anyway, I went to the audition after school and the director was not a school teacher, but some ‘older’ woman who looked like Agnes Moorehead – who we knew as Samatha’s mother on Bewitched. Everyone made fun of that, and then they made fun of my sweater (can’t recall the context, I think because it was “royal” purple and our play as about Royalty. It had a Prince Charming. A spinning wheel. I guess it was Cinderella/Rapunzel.

So, as I said, I won the lead, perhaps because of my sad sweater (maybe Agnes Moorehead was sorry for me)… Then again, at the performance, (I recall being scared to death and HATING being on stage), my Dad said I was the only one who articulated properly.

Anyway, Prince Charming was a guy called Lorne Abugov and he refused to kiss me, (as 11 years olds tend to do) which was traumatizing enough. I think (although not 100 percent sure) that Lorne’s brother is Jeff, a man who went on to write for Hollywood, and on top shows. Cheers the Golden Girls, producer Roseanne and now he’s producer of Two and a Half Men.

Well,  maybe not a typical career of a former ango-Montrealer, but an example.

 

As it happens, I’m getting to work on Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, about two teachers in 1910, (Edith and Marion Nicholson) the follow up to Threshold Girl and I am contemplating that angle, wondering exactly how classrooms ran in those days. Probably not unlike the way they ran in my day. Marion left behind a diary during her first year of teaching, but it’s all about her boyfriends and her activities at the skating rink. No shop talk. (Well, I guess diaries for teachers are considered an invasion of privacy. Tell that to What’s his name, Gervais Gervase Phinn, the guy who writes his experiences about North Yorkshire schools.) Or maybe they don’t have time to keep work diaries. Marion didn’t have time with her 50 ‘very bad’ students. Or maybe teachers, as a rule, are ‘action=oriented’ not introspective. Marion was totally action-oriented. That’s why she became a union leader during the War.)

I know a diary exists at Harvard, of a more serious girl who did no dating….

Apparently teachers who were interested in getting boyfriends (the majority) didn’t mention that they were teachers. A teacher was not a profession that attracted the boys. So it goes. Marion was an exception and this makes Edith jealous (in my story).

Where 1927 and 1910 Meet in Montreal… with Motion Pictures and Morality

Mack Sennett bathing beauty. Late teens or twenties. The card and the model, I imagine. In 1910 Mack Sennett was a player in D.W. Griffith’s Biograph silent shorts.

In 1900 Mack Sennett was Michael Sinnott of somewhere near Richmond, perhaps Danville. He was the same age as Edith, but their paths didn’t cross I imagine, as she was Presbyterian and he Catholic. In his memoirs, Sennett says he hung around with the Irish Catholics – and mostly went to funerals.

My Edwardian and Pre-World War I story about my husband’s great aunts,

< Threshold Girl

and The Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, Militant Suffragette Sympathizer and Inadvertent Opium Addict…and Milk and Water, by 1927 Prohibition era story about my grandfather Jules Crepeau, come together in many places, the hygienist movement and with motion pictures. My grandfather was the first to give testimony at an inquiry into the 1927 Laurier Theatre Fire. He also dealt with social reformers a lot, especially with respect to the City Improvement League. In 1921, some mostly anglo social reformer groups got together for force any inquiry into Police Corruption. My grandfather, Director of City Services was named outright, as someone who allowed underage kids into theatres, or, more to the point, forced the cops to cast a blind eye upon such infractions.

Here’s a bit I wrote a while back, on The Morality Ladies of the Montreal Council of Women

Blame it on the movies. Most people’s idea of these Canadian Council of Women Reformer types at the turn of the century, is of some ridiculous looking old woman (in a HUGE hat) going from book store to book store trying to get some fabulous work of literature banned. (I just saw this in the Life of Emile Zola, with respect to his Nana.)

But as I show on this blog and in my book Flo in the City, these Women’s Groups were responsible for improving the lives of many a disenfranchized city dweller – and for getting women the vote.

Not that some of them didn’t waste their time going from book store to book store trying to see if the establishments carried ‘immoral’ material -although they would have been better served just checking out their husband’s secretaries, I imagine. (The desk, I mean.)

It seems in 1912, postcards were wicked, (we can all imagine the type, probably available for purchase on eBay today, for a big price).

And there was a list of censored books. The Canadian Council of Women had to get special dispensation from Canada Post to be able to get these immoral books in the mail so these ladies could judge for themselves.

Yes, this is reform at its silliest. (Sort of like protesting over Katy Perry’s Sesame Street cleavage. I mean, when I was four I was given this Rosemary Clooney children’s album. Now, that was world class cleavage- and singing talent for that matter.)

In 1912, just like today, many people blamed the ‘bad behavior’ of adolescents on the motion pictures. The Montreal Council report quoted an expert who claimed to know of such incidents, where kids imitated the robbers in movies.

To be fair, I visited the Bibliotheque Nationale a few years ago to check on what they had in their fonds about the Montreal Council of Women. They have very little, but one item was of special interest. The Social and Moral Reform League of Canada, or some such organization, was lobbying to make it a criminal offence for unmarried people to co-habitate, but Julia Parker Drummond, after consulting experts, replied that ‘you can’t make people moral by law.’ She saw this initiative as unfairly targeting the poor, for it was the poor and new immigrants who lived together outside of wedlock. In those days, it wasn’t youths who lived together, it was older people with families and such who moved in common law. (The Canada yearbook shows only a few divorces in Canada for these years, but in those days, people ‘just broke up housekeeping’ and moved somewhere else.) In order to get a divorce you had to apply to Parliament. (I assume some rich people just walked away from their marriages. My husband’s grandmother did. Twice.)

Here’s a snippet from the Montreal Council of Women’s Committee Report on Immoral Material.

“Your convenor reports an average increase in the number of moving picture shows, there being 69, more than in all Canada 5 years ago. Many of these have been visited more than once by members of the Committee. The Chief of Police has been most courteous in interviews regarding important matters. The Pictures are somewhat improved, but the vaudeville is still of a very ordinary tone (sic.)Some managers interviewed would like to exclude vaudeville, as it is expensive, but the public demands it.

Objections are expressed resulting from darkened halls where the pictures are shown. There is a menace to morals in this and it should be prohibited.

Posters and postcards are undersupervision but the latter are found, especially in smaller shops.”

Gigi, Irma and Good Girls Like Flo

An act at the Moulin Rouge. These women were essentially under age prostitutes.

As I research Flo in the City, my story about a girl coming of age in 1910 Canada, I am led to rethink my ideas about prostitution. It is clear that that our ideas about prostitution haven’t evolved at all in 100 years, and that despite the fact that women have made huge gains in education, and freedom of sexuality, the so-called social evil (as they called it) still exists. And I assume from watching shows like Big Bang and How I Met your Mother, where the nice desirable woman is a bit tarty, that there’s little stigma remaining with respect to sexually active women and that the Goddess and the Whore polarities no longer exist. (I may be wrong.) I’ve also just watched Irma La Douce and Gigi, movie satires based on more biting plays (or books) about the subject of women and their sexuality, where marriage is the happy ending. My head is spinning a bit, trying to figure out where this all fits into Flo in the City.

And as I think about all the articles from 1910 that I have read, I am coming to realize that the existence of prostitution was used to restrict the freedom of ALL women.

Now, I’ve long believed that all women are prostitutes of some sort, or that it is hard not to sell your sexuality as a young woman. Coco Chanel, who had no connections, was some rich man’s consort before she became famous: she used his money to start her business. In fact, this is a theme of Flo in the City, my book in progress about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/. And today, as I see that a Toronto Judge, a female Judge named Susan Himel has struck down 3 provisions of Canada’s prositution laws, essentially decriminalizing the profession, I wonder, maybe it is about time.

Here’s the opening to the National Council of Women’s Report on Equal Moral Standard and Prevention of Traffic in Women. The report states that girls are lured away from uncomfortable homes or boring lives in villages by promises of marriage, then drugged and forced into a life of prostitution in the city. If only women had something to do at night, something safe and wholesome, the problem would improve. (See my earlier blog, Marion Nicholson, feisty and broken down) (There’s only oblique mention of the fact that most women in cities aren’t paid enough to live in the city.) The report goes on to say the clients should be prosecuted to a greater extent than the prostitutes for prostitution is as much a man’s problem as a women’s.

“One of the gravest problems which confronts the people of Canada today is the social evil. When every thoughtful citizen has some general idea as to its nature and magnitude, yet few understand, even approximately, the real facts.

In this one vice, 15,000 is spent annually in Chicago alone and no less an authority as Dr. Kelly of Johns Hopkins University has startled the Christian World by stating that white slavery , directly or indirectly, costs the people of American 3 billions of dollars each year!

And regarding Canada, careful investigation has proved that the condition of our Dominion is scarcely less appalling. All of our cities and many of our towns and villages have within their borders palpable evidence of this evil.

It is estimated that on this continent there are over 300,000 girls of the night. And the Vice Commissioners who have investigated say there are ten men for every one of these women. As the life of the girl is so short it provides 60,000 victims to supply the demand. And many of these victims come from Canadian homes.

The great question is this, what shall we do under the existing conditions to lessen the existence of this vice. And how should we convince the general public as to the extent of this traffic and its diabolical methods of working and of the unspeakable inheritance of suffering and degradation it is laying up for future generations.

Moral purity is the foundation of a nation: Canada is building this splendid structure of her Dominion, let us see that she checks this dry rot that is even now eating into her foundations. “

Ah, that PURITY business again. It was the buzzward of 1910, that’s for sure. Everyone was seeking purity: in water, in milk, in food, in soaps (Ivory) and in women (just another consumer product). Oh, and also in race… the eugenics movement.

Odd, the Montreal Council did not submit a report on this and it was Montreal, that according to some, had a real problem in this area.

The Story of Flo?

Flo and Friend, waiting for the bus in Richmond circa 1910

Well, I got up at 5 am, which is a good sign. In the good old days, when I was writing a lot, I always did my best work upon rising at 5.

I think I now have all I need, with respect to my novel to get on with writing it.

I had a sense I was missing something, and what I was missing was the Montreal Angle.

Years and years ago, when I tried to access the files of the Montreal Council of Women, unsuccessfully for the most part, I was looking for this angle.

Now, with the Gazette archives online, I have got the info I need to make the Story of Flo (actually Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.)

What do I have?

1) I have the life, in letter form, of an over- protected, educated middle class girl from Richmond, Quebec.

2)I have her portfolio from Macdonald and all the background with respect to the Royal Commission on Technical Training and Industrial Education. In 1913, Flora would go to teach in Griffintown. Prim and proper Flo would come face to face with the realities of Montreal style poverty which would dwarf her family’s financial problems.. She would in a 1914 letter write saying she feels sorry for these children, they have such tough lives.

She also writes, in the same letter, how popular Parent’s Day is at school. How the parents are so very interested in their children’s progress… an observation that goes against the grain.. but there it is on the page in blue and white. Marion taught in the inner city since 1909 and her experiences will figure largely in Flo in the City. (Of course, parental involvement has long been a tradition in the Anglo Education Sector but not so much among French Canadians.)

3)I have all the background, from Canadian and US sources, of the era

4)I have other UK background, Edwardian Era

5)And I have the Gazette archived articles which prove 1) that Montreal’s child labour, prostitution problem were the worse in NA perhaps. De Bullion Street! And the two things were tied together, as these prostitutes were often workers, trying to make more money.

6) and I have the French Canadian angle, with my grandparents, who were wealthy. Indeed, today, looking up Carrie Derick (which is spelled Derrick back then) and the Montreal Council of Women (often referred to as the “local council of women” I discovered that the Royal Commission met in the Mayor’s Chambers in Montreal in 1911. Mederic Martin was mayor. (I didn’t know he started that early.)My grandfather was likely in the Greffier’s office by then (have to double check, I have all his papers.) I can stick him in the story there, as I have Edith working for his family as a tutor in 1909.

Looking up Montreal Council of Women I pulled an article about Mrs. Snowden (famous for her dazzling wit, as they called it) giving a speech in Montreal in 1909. She also came in 1913, and Edith sees her and is upset that she is not militant. She is being hosted by the Montreal Council of Women and Carrie Derrick (Derick) says that the council has not yet decided whether to support suffrage, as an entity, although many members are suffragists. (No doubt she is too.) She says it is just not in the upbringing of some women to be suffragists, although they want to do good work in the world and maybe suffrage is the only answer. In 1912, Derrick (Derick) would found the Montreal Suffrage Organization, which would be militant…

I also found a good article describing Mrs. Wylie’s visit to Montreal in 1912. She is militant and unapologetic about it.

Mrs. Warren’s Profession

Drawing from Flora Nicholson’s Teaching School Portfolio. This is from her ‘nature diary.’ Nature study was deemed important in the new curriculum as too many city kids knew nothing about nature. Flora liked to draw and painted in her later life. I have two of her paintings.

Now, as I watched Pygmalion the other day on Turner Classic Movies, I couldn’t resist listening to the play on BBC Radio 7 (produced a few years ago) Mrs. Warren’s Profession.

Then, before I even finished, I paused the play to scope the web for information on this play. I mean, it’s pretty conventional today, but gee and it has such relevance to Flo in the City, my novel in progress based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

Well, it was written in the 1890′s and a London Premiere was closed down in 1902 (I think I read) and I managed to find articles on line about a 1905 premiere in Connecticut, closed first night (the article said everyone, theatre patrons, police, thought it indecent) and then I read the man who put it on went bankrupt, what with legal fees, then it was played again in New York in 1907 and ‘had a successful tour.’ I found a bit about the 1907 premiere that said there was no expectation that the show would be closed by police. But I found nothing about a tour. (In 1905, the production was deemed immoral, although the play was deemed a sociological tract and therefore not immoral. )

The Canadian premiere was in Ottawa in 1950. Margaret and Marion had died by then. It played in Britain only in 1950.

How can I stick this into my story then. It is very unlikely Mrs. Warren’s Profession played in Boston in 1908 when Flo was there, but since the play was on tour, I might be able to stick something about it in that scene in Boston. Maybe I can fake it and have Flora see a protest in front of a theatre… Maybe the theatre can be one in a chain, and the people will be protesting that another theatre in the chain is mounting a production of the play. Say in Chicago. Chicago was a very progressive city from what I have read in 1910.

Anyway, got to go listen to the rest of the play. In my first year of university, before I transferred into Communications, I was in Drama and Theatre so I read most of Shaw’s plays, and likely read this one. Certainly, no ideas in the play are foreign to me.

I know in the blog about Pygmalion, two blogs ago, I said the Nicholsons liked George Bernard Shaw. But they would not have liked this play. They were very prudish. I know for a fact that they never talked about pregnancy, to unmarried women, let alone about sex. I know, because when Marion is pregnant in 1914, Flora writes in a letter about being ‘left out’ of all the woman talk. They wouldn`t discuss this matter with her, even though she was 22. And my mother in law, Marion’s second daughter, also Marion, always claimed that no one in those days mentioned pregnancy, until the woman was ready to burst. A delicate matter, it was. Now people post ultrasounds of their fetuses on social networks. Times have changed.

Deja Vu All Over Again – Who to Blame for Social Problems

Pots and Pans: The tools of social salvation, along with soap, the purer the better.

I found a letter to the editor in the Gazette of 1909, which provides me with a key, of sorts, as I write Flo in the City, my novel in progress based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/

The Nicholsons are middle class, and the middle class isn’t interesting except in relation to the poor or the rich; in fact, the class doesn’t exist except in relation to the poor and the rich.

The middle class also lives isolated and insulated from the rich and the poor, and the Nicholsons are no exception. There are few lower class characters in the letters, and no rich characters except E.W. Tobin, a self made man. Indeed, the Nicholsons don’t even have maids.

I have done my homework and I understand the Nicholson’s 1910 social context. I have studied the issues that led the Federal government to launch the Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education (a part of history that has been ‘censored’ because it is embarrassing.)

But now with this letter to the editor, I have a key. And in my next chapter, Flora will gain a social conscience (picked up from her sister, Edith) and Herb will lose his.

This letter is from a man who represents a Christian Aid Society in the Parish where de Bullion Street and Marion’s room are situated.

He outlines the five main reasons for poverty and social problems: Oddly, they are pretty much the same ones we use today, with tweaks. We are going through a similar time of incredible change and we are reacting in the same way. Society changes, but human nature doesn’t.

1)irregular or uncertain employment

2) intemperance (Well, today we say ‘drugs’ are the problem, as alcohol is a huge and respectable industry. In those days, little old ladies guzzled opiates in their tonics, and soft drinks contained cocaine and pot was legal.)

3) Domestic Ignorance and Incapacity on the part of wives. Oooh. This is a good one! I could write ten books on this line alone. Today, we blame the working mom, but back then all the social problems caused by rampant industrialization could be cured if women and mothers knew how to better keep house. So they created ‘the profession of housekeeping’ to train middle class women to be better wives and lower class women to be better domestics for the rich. (See, embarrassing. This proved a boon for companies like Procter and Gamble, that, thoroughout the century, exploited this belief that a woman’s worth is reflected in the cleanliness of her home…hence those soap operas. The fact that women in the middle of the century had time to watch soap operas said something else, that housework wasn’t as essential to survival as it once had been.)

4) To indirectly give rise to illness, most especially consumption. Bad housing, bad sanitation. (So bad housekeeping was being blamed for the plagues around at the time, not backward medical practices and poor city services.) Of course, this idea actually propelled the suffrage movement…an unintended consequence of blaming women for social problems: Women said, “OK then, give us the vote so we can have the power to fix these problems you’ve laid at our feet.”

In the first part of Flo in the City, if you go back and read my 38 installments, you will see that people got sick and died quickly back then (the flu scares of today are nothing compared to the reality of life in 1910, when you could get a cold one week and die the next. )

5) The unhappy prevalenced of what has been called ‘the social evil’, where some children are brought into the world blighted in body and mind and prey to the saddest and most hopeless of all physical ills. Predestined to the prison or asylum. One of the medical witnesses at the commission said most of the children born into the slums are predestined to this evil….. Usually, the social evil meant prostitution and other sex related issues. (Today, of course, we have our own sex related social evils constantly brought up in the press.) Funny, but the arguments for and against legalizing prostitution haven’t changed an iota in 100 years. It’s a stagnant issue…In the old days, they didn’t have ‘child abuse’ or, more precisely, it wasn’t mentioned, but it was understood that many or most prostitutes were children. After all, girls left school at 12. So it amounts to the same thing. There was a great deal of child labour in those days, another kind of child abuse. Today, kids work, but in the middle class it’s usually for pocket money which ends up fueling the entertainment and junk food industries. Plenty of young people do work to help support their families, though. And the Third World child labour fills our closets and drawers with cheap clothing.

PONDERING THE FUTURE 39th installment

Talking machines. Eaton’s 1909.

June 1, 1909. Victoria Day Monday. A holiday.

A sweet, breezy Monday afternoon, and Flora is once again on the porch of Tighsolas, with a notebook on her knee, studying a scene from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, for a classroom event she was putting on. Sometimes school could be fun. End of year exams were approaching, but this year she had managed to keep her head above water, with respect to results and, if she didn’t freeze at exam time, she would likely pass, most subjects anyway. The new teacher, Mr. Cross, continued to be more lenient than Mr. Jackson. He had even suggested she have her eyes tested – and yes, she needed glasses,for long distance viewing. She had worn the new pair, purchased in Sherbrooke, last week, all day at school.

Margaret had never asked about the Easter exam results. After her close call with tonsillitis, and a harsh winter spent shut in except for the occasional whist or bridge party, she was seldom at home. The carpets in Tighsolas had yet to be aired out. Father had come home for a week in late May, after the thaw, and had rolled and seeded the garden for Margaret, considering her still too weak after her illness. He had joined Margaret in a chorus of Why doesn’t Herb write?

Flora’s hat was still on her dresser in the bedroom. That appointed day, she had indeed got up the courage to visit Hudon’s, Poppy hat on head, only to be met by another woman, taking Eugenie’s place. Mademoiselle Hudon is in New York. “‘Ave you not read da social notes in da Richmond Times? I am here to serve you, instead.” Crestfallen, or was it relieved? Flora had beat a quick retreat.

Marion, is at her dressing table in her tiny room on Bleury. She slipped a ten dollar bill from her Friday pay into an envelope to send to her mother, but she didn’t feel like writing a long letter. What could she write about? Not last night. Yesterday, Victoria Day eve, a Sunday night of all things, she had finally made it to Dominion Park.

The crowd had been simply enormous, many many thousands of visitors. Her beau for the evening, a soft-spoken young man in his father’s tanning business, a friend of Dr. Cleveland’s, had persuaded her to ride on the train, first thing, right up front, up and down and around, and afterwards her head had been swirling.

No sooner had she found her equilibrium, he bought her a ticket to see Mini Ha Ha, a miniature female acrobat who twirled around and danced about and walked a tightrope in workaday dress. The billboard described her as ‘charming’ but Marion could have thought of better adjectives to describe the odd little female.Then there had been the fun house, the wild animal show,the infant incubator exhibit, the Southern Plantation Nightingales, with their sad, spiritual songs, the re-enactment of the San Francisco earthquake of 1905 and finally the evening’s novelty act, a swarthy Mediterrean beast of a man who battled with snakes.His oiled muscles and slate black eyes bulged huge as he fought off a nefarious nest of writhing serpents (as the cryer put it) up to his naked waist in water and Marion had been so taken by surprise by the sight of him, she had flushed ruby red, her timid escort actually had asked her if she were going to faint. But no, it was just the crush of the crowd, she pretended; 24 hours later, the feverish feeling inspired by the sight of the strongman still lingered. Or was it simmering indignation towards her new landlady, who had publicly scolded her for coming home after 11.00. For breaking house rules. How she despised being told what to do. At 25 years of age. Her brother could do just about anything he wanted and she had to be home before midnight, like a character in a silly fairy tale.

And, speak of the devil, in a flat just a few streets away,on de Bullion, Herbert Nicholson was drinking a scotch amid a rowdy group of young men, of the clerkish kind, and some ageless women of the uninhibited kind and waving a card in the air.

“This is the temperance pledge,” he said slurring. A redhead grabbed it from his hand. “I therefore promise, with the help of god to abstain from the use of all intoxicating liquids.”

Another young man walks up and asks, “Nicholson, how bout some gaming down in Chinatown.”

“No, Smithie. I’d better not. I’m supposed to be in Cowansville. My sister lives around there now. And she has all kinds of spies, chums who want to get into her good graces.”

“That didn’t stop us from going out last night to see that W.C Fields guy at the Bennett Theatre.”

“Well, I’m not going to press my luck.” The truth was, Herb had run out of money. His entire paycheque gone in two days! Lucky he had pre-purchased a ticket back to Cowansville. He’d have to put off his landlady, this month.

“Is your sister a working girl? Like us?” asks his female friend

“No, certainly not. She’s a teacher. She has a diploma. She lives in a respectable boarding house.”

The woman raises her eyebrows, menacingly, and she turned away.

She says to another woman, “Our friend ‘erb is a Christian socialist at heart. Lucky it is not his heart we want.”

“You should be nice to eem, Marie-Claude. Or e won’t get you dat job in motion pictures, with is friend Sinnott.”

“Well, don’t hold your breath, Ginette,” says Smithie, blinking hard a few times as if there is something bothering his eyes.

And in yet another downtown Montreal area home, an solid respectable four storey greystone at 72 Sherbrooke Street West, in a well-furnished but noisy third story bedroom situated above the street, Edith Nicholson sits reading Vanity Fair,by the late afternoon sun, half listening to the sharp clip clop of horse hooves on the street and the duller sound of muffled arguing below.

Mr. Crepeau, a small, dapper dignified looking man, has come home, a day late, as it were, and had a row with his fat, overbearing wife.

Somehow, crockery was broken. Her student Alice, was in her bedroom, trying on a new dress from Henry Morgan, purchased today, by the father. Baby Cecile was in the nursery, being tended by Claudille, a new girl, sent by the nuns. This was the third charity case in five months delivered to Mme. Crepeau, for rehabilition, and a little honest housework.

It wasn’t that Mrs. Crepeau was lazy. No, as a housekeeper, this stout woman with the enormous chest was as capable as Margaret Nicholson in every respect. She did all her own cooking and cleaning, despite the fact the family earned 5,000 a year.

Edith had been instructed not to talk to the new girl. Education, apparently, was the scourge of the fallen woman. Anyway, this was a girl destined to work as a domestic, once her ‘apprenticeship’ at the Crepeaus had run its course, if she could be kept away from the other. “Claudille is only 17, the same age as Flora,” she mused. But any resemblance ended there. The girl was hard and coarse, and, paradoxically, much more fragile than Flora, somehow, despite being a tall, heavy girl, and a stranger to the corset, it seemed.

Edith pulled away from Becky Sharp for a moment to ponder her immediate future. She could not wait for June 15, when she would return to Richmond, with sister Marion and spend the summer relaxing at ice cream socials and card parties and maybe attending a dance or two, if a consort could be found. If not, Aunt Bella’s Victrola and the Merry Widow Waltz would have to suffice. Edith had purchased some music cylinders to give to her niece and nephew. (She hoped they were not already bored by the device.) But after that, what would she do with herself? What could she do? If Charlie G. didn’t come to his senses.