Do you ever read simply for entertainment, for solace, to gain fascinating information (and good gossip), or to be swept away with stories of eccentric people or adventurers, as opposed to reading six pages of a classic describing the way a lady’s eyelid trembles or how her top lip quivers whenever a letter is delivered, or a gentleman comes to call?
I love the classics, I absolutely do, but it takes effort to digest all those nuances and astute observations of human wretchedness and repressed desire. Sometimes, I just love to read and relax, especially in these darkening raw and blustery autumn days.
I recently had a minor horse accident — my face is a mixture of burgundy hues and murky shades of mustard (you should see the horse!), which made me a little weary. I just couldn’t read another page of Madam Bovary’s raging heartaches or anguished, frenzied escapades to Paris to meet her lover (the story is exhausting!) while nursing my swollen brow with frozen lima beans.
I consequently chose to read two absorbing, engaging local books. I sat in my big stuffed chair with the fire on, and a nice glass of wine, and a dog (on the couch) with these books on a chilly overcast day, as the winds outside whipped the little yellow leaves off the hawthorns along the boulevard.
Vancouver Island Scoundrels, Eccentrics and Originals, Tales from the Library Vault by Stephen Ruttan (Touchwood editions 2014) is an entertaining and fully engrossing meaty, historical collection of Victoria and Vancouver Island characters, and each chapter is brief enough to finish with your cup of tea or beverage of choice.
You will learn about the ghost of Doris Gravlin, who has frequently been seen at the Victoria Golf Club green (both by golfers and fishermen) at the hole closest to the water, walking with arms outstretched and wearing a white gown, often in late March, at two specific times of day.
There’s the sad and tragic story of the Lepers of D’Arcy Island, the manipulative Brother XII and his mistress Madame Z (really, how could one fall for cultish tactics with self-given titles such as these two?), and the lucky parrot Louis, who was left a fortune in the will of his owner, a sad and lonely old spinster whose overbearing, protective father left her a magnificent home where the Chateau Victoria Hotel now stands.
And of course, there is the gruesome murder of Frances Rattenbury, our great architect (but not so great a husband).
This little book also contains many photographs and enchanting illustrations. You will love this compilation of local tales to pass the time over a rainy autumn day, during a refreshment break, or in your cosy bed.
Another little book full of interesting and often provocative stories is On Their Own Terms, The Stories of Trailblazing Women of Vancouver Island by Haley Healey (Heritage House, 2020).
The book (part of the Amazing Stories collection, with its glossy turquoise covers) is a collection of the daring and bold ventures and exploits of women who did absolutely what they set out to do, the kind of women that wouldn’t be halted by any obstacle, including men. (I can relate.)
There’s Hannah Maynard, the “weird but wonderful” photographer — her career included being the first official photographer for the Victoria Police Department in 1887.
Present day Photoshop fans might want to take a look at Maynard’s experimental and inventive, albeit bizarre, images, illusions and techniques — the idea of Photoshopped images is not new, just computerized.
There’s the story of 23-year-old Dorothy Blackmore, Canada’s first female sea captain, or pioneer Ellen Gibbs, who lived in wild and windswept remote Cape Scott and knew how to pull teeth with a pair of pliers. She pulled a lot of rotten teeth — people piloted their boats through ocean gales, risking their lives for hundreds of miles, to have Gibbs pull a painful rotten tooth (of course with no sedation).
Emily Carr is also there, and is perhaps the most well-known of women trailblazers in these parts, venturing out into the forest with her little trailer and numerous animals to paint her towering trees, which reached up to heaven in great energetic swirls, or night skies in deep blue lonely melancholy.
The Greater Victoria Art Gallery has a vast collection of her art and is well worth the visit.
Her lovely elegant Victorian childhood home on Government Street is a museum that is open by appointment (go to Carr House on the web).
So as the winter rains, thick sea mists and storms bluster upon us, sit back and relax and reflect with these two deliciously entertaining little reads – the comfort food of books. It’s bliss!
