John Howell 's Genealogue

The Sacrifice of the Shannon by W. Albert Hickman

Hickman -> Davison -> Howell
Click above to see our family relationship

The Sacrifice of the Shannon
By W. Albert Hickman
2nd Edition, 1903
Frederick A. Stokes Company
New York, Publishers

On our latest tour of the Maritimes of Canada, my reading list included William Albert Hickman's The Sacrifice of the Shannon published 1903. The Hickman Family reunion in Dorchester, New Brunswick was drawing near, and I wanted to read the book to get a feel for the man, and the the places we were to see. My curiosity further piqued since William Albert Hickman and Nellie Davison were first cousins - two years apart in age - so they most surely knew each other.

Rarely am I so positively surprised! The book is a little gem and I recommend it to you without reservation.

This review by Cecily Devereux sums it up beautifully:

"W. Albert Hickman’s only novel, The Sacrifice of the Shannon, first appeared in 1903, identified in the author’s preface as a story based on his own experiences on the Minto, an icebreaker in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Most of the story’s action—and there is a lot, and it is exciting—occurs on the icefields between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, as the ship of the title, the Shannon, races to rescue a trapped steamer. This novel is a great read; it is also an interesting work in terms of its relation to early twentieth-century constructions of gender and place in popular and genre fiction: the icebreaker’s race, like the yacht race that begins the story and sets up the later contest, is embedded in a love story that repeatedly draws attention to shifting ideals of masculinity and femininity and their performance. Ian Johnston’s introduction is brief and useful, providing information about the little-known Hickman and about the context for the story."

Hickman's characters are passionate in their love for the Canadian Maritimes. He divulges in his introduction that the fictional town of "Caribou" where much of the story takes place, is located where Pictou, Nova Scotia exists - on the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Northumberland Strait.

This photo, which appears in the book represents the fictional icebreader"Liffey". Liffey is based on the real-life icebreaker Minto. I've compared this photo to a photo of the real Minto - and there is no doubt that this is a photo of Minto - leading me to think that Hickman himself took the pictures that appear in his book - including this one while he served aboard Minto.

The year is around 1898 - "Captain Ashburn" describes on p. 82-83:

"When the ice came down from the north the Scoter was docked for the season, and we took to the pack itself, sometimes with ice-boats and sometimes without. Then I learned things that no book and no man can teach. So it would be perfectly useless for me to tell you and expect you to know. I learned of the feeling, of the new grasp of all things, that comes to the man who has been out for days and weeks on the shifting ice-pack, when the grey seals come up in the lanes beside the murres and the burgomasters; when, at night, with glinting light from crystal down below and nothing else, there is a great shining silence like the silence between the worlds; when the Northern Light reels and flashes green and red and sends a faint silky rustle that makes the silence deeper all around; and then, more wonderful than all, when, whithout even a movement of air, the great silence breaks. In from the east sounds the weird harmonic cry of the cockawee, and down from the north come deep booms and low muffled roars as the pack stirs, as though the hand of God had beckoned and the Great White Silence had moved to do its appointed work."

"These are the things which touch a man more deeply than anything else in nature. You may or may not agree with me; but the man who has seen and heard these things knows that what I say is true, and he who has not can never understand. If you take the trouble to learn, you will find that every Arctic explorer, no matter what manner of man he may have been before he went to the North, under the influence of the infinite vastness of things will have recovered all his sentiment and will have preserved in all its simplicity, like that of a little child."

This photo of the fictional Miss MacMichael "the girl" appears just inside the front cover - If Hickman took the photos appearing in the book - who is this really?

The two main male characters are Captain Ashburn, who tells much of the story in first person, and his good friend the mysterious Mr. Wilson who seems to be master of everything from biology to seamanship to bravery. Both men are madly in love with Ms. Gertrude MacMichael, and it is in her description in the words of Ashburn (who calls her "the girl") that I think we hear Hickman's own thoughts on the ideal woman - from p2.:

"Another reason I want to tell you the story is that the girl is a wonder, a living wonder, and I know you'll be interested in her, though some women have expressed their interest in queer ways which were not always intended to be complementary. If you analyzed them you usually found that they were complementary if they were anything, no matter what they were intended to be. I've called the girl a wonder, because though if you take the average girl as your criterion she is far away from it, still, from a cool, unbiased, critical point of view, she is normal, - thoroughly normal. Kindly remember that "normal" is not "average." She's got a circulation that swings a crimson flush in under her sun-tanned cheeks. She walks like a tiger, and looks at a thing or a person, not for the effect of her eyes, but to see. Incidentally she gets the effect a thousand times better than if she tried for it."

And from p. 120

"The girl was ready when we arrived. She was dressed in a gray blanket snow-shoe suit faced with crimson, and her sweet, clear-cut features and sunbrowned brilliant colouring made her as lovely a picture as any man may see in this life. I have often sat in the old St. James, and in later years in the Carlton and the Savoy, and looked around at the crowd, especially the women. Heavens! what an exhibition it is for a man that loves sincerity and simplicity. If you had stripped the majority of those women - some who have been known as beauties for many seasons - of their dress, their jewels and their powder and paint, ripped their nets off, loosened their hair up a bit, dressed them as this girl was dressed, and compared them with her, how many would have stood the comparison. It makes me laugh now to think of the row of beauties as they'd show up in those blanket suits. And this girl was not only more beautiful than they, but she could talk better, perhaps sing better, and certainly do everything else in the wide world much better. She could beat the majority of them - perhaps all - at tennis, and some other things; if she had them in a boat race with her she'd frighten them into hysterics - most of them; her greatest pleasure was giving, theirs receiving; they were always blasé, she never; and, though I had never seen her at it, I had a deep-rooted idea that when she loved she would love better than they. Withal she was but mortal. I don't believe in paragons. She wasn't one. She was impetuous - too impetuous - and she had a bit of a temper which was not always under perfect control. Remember too that I am far from underrating the others, those of the Savoy and the Crlton - though some of them you couldn't underrate - for I have spent many splendid times with them, but this girl leads them all. Why? Not because of anything more than the fact that with the natural brilliancy of the best of women she combined a moral sanity that led her to love things for their own sakes - not because they were loved by others - and, well, she never posed."

I'm sure he got his inspiration from our Davison and Hickman girls!

Posted by jhowell at August 6, 2005 10:23 AM