"Love, Aunt M.": Marshall Saunders & Blanche Hume
Marshall Saunders gave this copy of Jimmy Gold-Coast to her friend Blanche Beatrice Hume (1880–1968), who for twenty years worked as Lorne Pierce’s private secretary at the Ryerson Press. When not assisting Pierce in editing other authors’ books, Hume wrote her own poetry and literary criticism. She is the author of the Ryerson History Readers Laura Secord (1928), The Strickland Sisters: Catherine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie (1928), and Barbara Heck (1930). Hume remained close friends with the Pierce family even after her retirement in 1943. One year before her death in 1968, she donated this book to Queen’s University. An envelope containing years of correspondence from Saunders to Hume is affixed to the book’s back cover.
1. Saunders, Marshall. Jimmy Gold-Coast or, The Story of a Monkey and His Friends. Hodder & Stoughton, 1924. [PS8537 .A86 J5]
Jimmy Gold-Coast or, The Story of a Monkey and His Friends (1924) is the “autobiography” of a seafaring monkey who travels to Saunders’s birthplace, Nova Scotia, with his young master. Saunders dedicated the book to her “boy and girl friends in England, Ireland and Scotland,” who she hoped would be inspired “to come and see for themselves how highly we Nova Scotians appreciate the proud privilege of being at the front door of Canada to welcome our overseas kinsfolk.” Her 1924 inscription to Hume—a lifelong Ontarian—reads, “I hope you may find something to please you in this story of my native province.” As these expressions indicate, Saunders’s Atlantic Canadian roots were tremendously important to her. Indeed, following the publication of Beautiful Joe, she and L. M. Montgomery founded the Nova Scotia branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club. Saunders later became the National Vice-President of the club’s Maritime branches. Jimmy Gold-Coast represents Saunders’s attempt to maintain her identity as a Canadian author within the American-dominated publishing industry.
Opposite the inscription to Hume, Saunders pasted a photo of herself in Florida in 1922. Beneath the half-title is another photo of Saunders—accompanied, as usual, by a dog.
2. ---. Postcard to Blanche Hume. 14 Oct. 1926.
Saunders and Hume often discuss their health in correspondence, detailing ailments and expressing concern for each other’s well-being. In this postcard dated 14 October 1926, Saunders references a previous conversation, telling Hume she is “better but not quite as well as [she] would like to be.” She “can’t go out much” because her “head [is] weak” but assures Hume she is “not going crazy!”
3. ---. Postcard to Blanche Hume. Undated.
This postcard begins with a promise: “Aunt Marshall encloses something that she thinks dear Blanche may like.” The “something” is Grace’s photo of Saunders with their sister-in-law Louise (item 5). According to the card, Louise was close with her husband’s sisters and moved to Toronto after his death. Saunders is holding Grace’s dog Fiji, so-named after fraternity house residents in Maine who, she writes, “were nice about entertaining Grace and me when I was spending a few months at the University.” Running out of space, Saunders merely signs the postcard “much love—Aunt M.”
4. ---. Letter to Blanche Hume. 6 Aug. 1931.
This letter from Saunders is dated 6 August 1931 and forebodingly addressed to “Miss Blanche Hume, Rm. 520, Private Pavilion, Toronto General Hospital.” Saunders writes that she is “terribly worried” for her “dear, dear Blanche,” whom she has just learned is seriously ill. The author expresses concern for her friend in pitying, saccharine terms: “You poor child—You are too sweet and gentle to be so afflicted—Oh! how I wish I could have kept you out of that hospital.” Saunders’s tone is distinctly maternal; she calls Hume “my dear child” and “dear one,” reminding her she has “legions of friends sending good thoughts toward [her] and praying for [her] speedy and sure recovery.” Despite these assurances, the author seems deeply affected by her friend’s illness: “I just feel lonely to know you are not in your office ... Won’t we have a good time in [the] hereafter where we shan’t be so worried.”
5. Saunders, Grace Hart. “Mrs. J. C. Saunders, 197 Poplar Plains Rd. Toronto, and Margaret Marshall Saunders, 1934.” Photo.
In 1934, Grace “snapped” this photo of Saunders, their sister-in-law Louise Moore, and Grace’s dog Fiji. Saunders sent the photo to Lorne Pierce and Blanche Hume—fans of Beautiful Joe and therefore also Louise, whose father had rescued the real dog years previously. Written in Saunders’s hand on the back of the photo are the words, “Mrs. J. C. Saunders, 197 Poplar Plains Rd. Toronto, and Margaret Marshall Saunders, 1934.” John Saunders was Canada’s Deputy Minister of Finance and had been in the Department for forty-three years when he died suddenly in 1930.
6. ---. Letter to Blanche Hume. 1 Oct. 1934.
Grace sent this letter to Hume in 1934, thanking her for a sample of featherweight paper she had sent on behalf of Lorne Pierce. Pierce wanted to use the paper in a new edition of My Pets, and Saunders and her sister were “both much pleased with it.” The message’s professional formatting and formal tone mark it as a business letter. It begins and ends not as a note between friends but as a communication between representatives for Saunders and Pierce. The second paragraph, however, reveals the true nature of Hume’s relationship with the Saunders sisters and their pets, as Grace writes, “Marshall sends you her love and says to thank you for your kindest regards to the birds and our beloved Boston bull—Fiji.”
7. Saunders, Marshall. Postcard to Blanche Hume. Undated.
Most of Saunders’s correspondence to Hume is in the form of undated postcards sent from her Toronto home or while on one of her many speaking tours. The front of this card depicts an inn in Ontario where a “little woman said she thought [Saunders] was dead long ago.” Indeed, the author jokes with her friend that she may be “not long for this world” because she “fell part way downstairs and in a motor accident had the top of [her] head banged and made black and blue!”’
8. ---. Postcard to Blanche Hume. Undated.
Hume was an aspiring poet and critic outside her work for Lorne Pierce, and Saunders’s letters often praise and encourage her friend’s writing. She begins this postcard by calling Hume “perfectly charming” for writing “such an eloquent letter” describing a party given in Pierce’s honour: “Your pen picture of it is fascinating—I just thought it would be like that—and so much impressed am I by the lovely picture of my dear Lorne Pierce[,] his family and friends that I am going to put your letter in the big book the Press Club gave me on my 70th birthday. ... Your description is so vivid that I can see everyone.” Saunders probably missed the party because, as she tells Hume, she is “too nervous” to “go to anyone’s house.” Indeed, she is so “overworked” that she “go[es] out only once a week” and has “not been in [her] brother’s [house] for 2 years.” So, she concludes, “no more parties for a while.”
9. ---. Postcard to Blanche Hume. Undated.
Grace distributed these postcards as publicity for her sister, although Saunders also used them for private correspondence. Each postcard features a photo of the author with a bird on her finger or feeding pigeons from a chair in her yard. Saunders begins this card by thanking “dear, dear Blanche” for sending “such a pretty present” to “poor afflicted” Grace, who has broken her arm yet persists in lecturing on her sister’s behalf. The age and class discrepancies between Saunders and Hume are apparent as the author describes her friend as “my child” and playfully advises her to be less generous: “If you persist you will land in a poor-house. Such lovely generous souls I used to visit for years when I played the organ in one in Halifax.” Finally, Saunders assures Hume that “Grace is marvellous” despite her injury and signs the card, “Yours affectionately, Aunt Marshall.”
10. ---. Postcard to Blanche Hume. Undated.
This card from Saunders to a sick Hume is almost motherly in its expressions of concern: “I was very troubled to hear of your illness—why should you be afflicted—you dear, good girl.” The postcard, distributed by editor and columnist Anne Merrill, has a photo of the real Beautiful Joe on the front and a miniature portrait of the author on the back, captioned “Marshall Saunders, author of the world famous book ‘Beautiful Joe.’” Saunders has circled “world famous” and written, “naughty Anne herself put that!” She also briefly mentions “a tremendously clever paper” by Hume’s employer and friend, Lorne Pierce.
11. Marshall Saunders: Lecturer and Author. Pamphlet.
Saunders was as prolific a lecturer as an author, giving numerous talks on such topics as “How I Came to Write ‘Beautiful Joe,’” and “Intimate Studies of My Pet Birds and Animals.” Having studied in Nova Scotia, Scotland, and France, she also spoke about subjects unrelated to animal advocacy, including “Picturesque Religion in Victorian Times.” This pamphlet contains a short biography of Saunders and reviews of lectures in Quebec, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. She has written on the cover, “I’m getting on well with my talks—We need a lecture bureau here.” The back advertises her novel Esther De Warren (1927) and explains how to purchase copies of Beautiful Joe. Despite Saunders’s international success, she appears to have spent much of her career without a professional publicist. Instead, the pamphlet directs those interested in “lecture engagements and terms” to contact her sister, Grace Hart Saunders, at the home the two shared in Toronto. Grace’s substantial involvement in her sister’s career and activism reflects the prominence of women in early animal rights movements.
12. “Marshall Saunders and Her Pets”: Illustrated Lecture by Grace Hart Saunders. Pamphlet.
Grace eventually began speaking on her sister's behalf, touring the lecture “Marshall Saunders and Her Pets” and sharing photos of the author with her many animals. In this picture taken by A. Robinson, Grace strongly resembles her sister; she is posed outside, looking rather stern yet holding a small dog wearing a sweater.
13. “Honored by King.” 1934. Newspaper clipping.
This photo of Saunders was clipped from a newspaper celebrating the author’s appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1934 at the age of seventy-three. Saunders received the honour not for her contributions to Canadian literature but for her charity work with the Canadian Humane Society.
14. Saunders, Marshall. Letter to Blanche Hume. 11 Sept. 1929.
Saunders appears to have written this letter to Hume while on the speaking tour advertised in the Marshall Saunders: Lecturer and Author pamphlet (item 11). She tells her friend she has “had a glorious time travelling” to the Muskoka Chautauqua and Georgian Bay; next, she will visit branches of the Association of Canadian Clubs in Owen Sound, Meaford, Ottawa, Belleville, “and I don’t know how many places.” Hume would have been around 50 in 1929, yet Saunders refers to her with diminutive epithets, such as “my dear” and “little one,” and urges her to “take the best of care of [her] precious self.” Saunders also emphasizes her older age and declining health. She recalls a recent trip to Nova Scotia—the first in sixteen years—during which she “was as bewildered as a poor old sheep” and “[broke] down” at a tea held in her honour. Having “written for about a hundred years of time with [her] head on one side like a parrot,” she is “demoralized” from arthritis (as well as “travelling and flattery”) and cannot finish the story on which she has been working. Nevertheless, she is as cheerful and affectionate as in all her correspondence with Hume; the letter is signed, “Your own, Aunt Marshall,” despite the women’s difference in age of just nineteen years.