The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
Some of the older households in the Elora area own a copy of the novel Day Before Yesterday, published in the fall of 1925.
The author, Fred Jacob, was born in October 1882, and grew up in Elora. While in his mid-teens the family moved to Toronto, where Edward Frederick Fulford Jacob, to use his full name, completed his education.
The young man much preferred the more informal handle of Fred Jacob. That was his byline when he joined the staff of the old Mail and Empire newspaper in 1903.
Though his first published works were several poems, Fred initially covered the sports beat, a curious assignment for a man who had been sickly as a child (probably suffering from rheumatic fever) and never participated in any sports. As a sports writer, he took a special interest in lacrosse, and served as president of one of the Toronto clubs for 16 years.
After settling in at the sports desk, Fred began to get assignments to cover theatres and concerts. His editors were impressed with his copy, and in 1910 he became the paper’s drama critic. As well, he wrote book reviews and covered what there was of the art scene in Edwardian Toronto.
A confirmed bachelor, Fred enjoyed socializing with actors and musicians. He developed a special fondness for live theatre, and authored several plays. His two novels tackled social change and the decline of class distinctions in the small-town Ontario of his boyhood. The better of the two, Day Before Yesterday, was published in November 1925 by Macmillan.
Fred was the son of John Jacob, who practiced law in Elora for 35 years. For most of that time John was in partnership with his brother-in-law, George Drew, an MP, later a judge, and grandfather of the premier and federal Conservative leader of the same name.
Both the Jacob and Drew families considered themselves at the top of the social ladder in Elora. In the 1880s that Fred remembered, such social distinctions were on the decline in Ontario small towns, just as many of the towns themselves, such as Elora, were in a period of economic stagnation and population decline.
The novel begins with a group of friends driving through the home town of one of them in 1927. They decide to stop for supper at a hotel dining room, run by a cranky and unaccommodating couple. After their meal the narrator, Timothy, decides to wander around the town while the four others in the party play a rubber of bridge.
The bulk of the novel is a flashback to 1887, describing the town Timothy knew as a boy. The main characters are members of the Loftus family: Harper Loftus, the father who runs the local private bank, his wife, an older stepson, and a second son, who is the narrator of the story-within-the-story.
The novel is more notable for the characters it develops than for the plot, which revolves around the misunderstandings among Harper Loftus, his wife and his stepson, representing the conflict between the old order in small-town Ontario as championed by the father and especially the mother, confronting the changing times and the breakdown of rigid distinctions and customs, exemplified by the behaviour and beliefs of the stepson.
Jacob used many local scenes and buildings that were recognizable to Elora residents of 1925, and many of which still remain today. He was not faithful to geography, however. Jacob’s village is much more compact than Elora, and there is only one bridge, and one river, in the village.
Readers of 1925 were further teased by the use of old local names. The judge in the story, who they presumed was based on Jacob’s uncle, is called Judge Newman. Newman was the actual name of the Elora private banker. Other surnames appearing in the book include Reynolds, Fischer, Wilson, Kormann, Palframan and Gilkinson. In 1925 members of all those families were still living, and most resided in the Elora area.
When the book came out, Elora old-timers made a game of identifying characters in the book with real Elora people. Many believed they had figured out all the associations. The game enlivened the spare moments of Elora locals as they passed copies of the book around, and it certainly helped sales of the book.
Interestingly, the Elora Express virtually ignored the novel. In Fergus, editor Hugh Templin of the News Record took a much different view. He publicized the book, and assigned “an Elora friend” to review it. Though not identified, that friend was Elora historian John Connon.
Templin was in the process of convincing Connon to finish his history of Elora, begun 20 years earlier. Connon was meticulous in his historical work, but he was a man with no imagination. In his review of the book, he played the same game as many others had, trying to associate the characters of the book with real people, and identifying the houses by who had lived in them, and who lived in them in 1925. Through his historical work, Connon was better at the game than anyone.
In places where Jacob had deviated from the real Elora, Connon’s frustration is still palpable after 80 years. He could not grasp that Elora was used as a model for Ontario small towns in general. And for a historian, he lapsed badly, missing the fact that some of the people he thought he identified in the book were dead in 1887, the date at which the story is set, and were likely unknown to Fred Jacob.
Despite his abilities and indefatigable energies evident in his own historical work, Connon developed a fault common among amateurs of his era: ancestor worship. He placed the pioneers of Elora and vicinity on altar, without faults and possessing every virtue.
Connon especially venerated the family of his mother and others of the Bon Accord settlement near Elora. Those he did not see in the same light he downplayed or simply ignored in his writings. Fred Jacob’s book, therefore, was an affront to Connon’s picture of Elora and the people who built it. The novel is full of characters spending their time gossiping, planning entertainments and plotting against their lesser neighbours. They quarrel and scheme.
In his own work, Connon tried to portray the village’s history as one of harmony among fine, upstanding people, none of whom assumed airs. He concluded his assessment of Jacob’s book by writing, “the men and women of the early days of Elora … were of a much finer stock than is described in Mr. Jacob’s book, but we must excuse him, for he was only a boy when he left home. He does not know how much he missed by not really knowing the sterling worth of those who called Elora their home.”
Hugh Templin sent Fred Jacob a copy of his own comments on the novel and the review by his “Elora friend.” Jacob replied at length, and Templin printed the response in full in the News Record of Dec. 10, 1925. He began by saying that Templin had “grasped the idea in writing the book better than your Elora friend did.” Jacob stressed that the village he created in his book was intended to be a typical small Ontario town. The book was not, he asserted, a thinly veiled portrait of Elora. He had used particular locations and buildings for local colour, but the plot and all his characters, except for a couple of minor ones, were fictitious.
Despite Jacob’s comments, Elora old-timers insisted that they could identify the characters. Most agreed with Connon’s assessment and thereby missed the whole point of the novel in exploring the changing social relationships in late 19th century small-town Ontario.
John Connon subsequently corresponded with Isabella Gilkison, the aging granddaughter of the founder of the village, who lived in Brantford. Both agreed that the publisher had done a disservice by publishing the novel, and that the book dishonoured those who built the Elora community.
Those who did not know Elora took a much different view. Several people remarked on “the kindly observation,” “the warm and authentic picture of Ontario life,” and “the finer qualities of human aspiration.”
Day Before Yesterday sold moderately well, but Fred Jacob never had any illusions that he could become a full-time fiction writer.
Through the 1920s Jacob’s reputation as a reviewer and theatre critic grew. Readers looked for the “F.J.” signature at the end of stories. His criticism was rarely cutting. Instead, he did his best to help build the nascent Toronto theatre scene, and to encourage the best in writing and art. His comments were always knowledgeable: Jacob spent a lot of time reading and studying a subject before writing a review, often putting in 12- and 14-hour days. He came to be respected as the most influential arts critic in Toronto.
Fred Jacob’s cheerful face was last seen at the Mail and Empire office on June 1, 1928. Two days later he entertained a group of friends and theatre people at his home at 139 Blythwood Rd. in Toronto. In the middle of a conversation, he stiffened and fell over, dead of a heart attack. He was four months shy of his 46th birthday.
Jacob’s friends and colleagues lamented his premature passing. He had seemed destined to be a major figure in artistic and theatrical circles for another two or three decades. They had believed that his best work lay ahead.
Fred Jacob was survived by his 79-year-old mother, Augusta, two brothers, and two sisters.
*This column was originally published in the Advertiser on Dec. 9, 2005.
