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Interior view of the showroom and office of Aldine House. True and her secretary worked in the alcove part-way up the steps leading from the showroom. Courtesy Reeta Wright
They worked the standard office hours of the time, 9-5, six days a week. Mrs. Wright remembered True’s hours as being “pretty regular. She was there when I got in in the morning. We didn’t waste too much time. We’d get right down to work and of course I was taking dictation and then I’d be typing it out and she’d be on the phone. She was on the phone a lot of the time...talking to other publishers...I didn’t pay any attention to what she was saying, I was too busy.”
Mrs. Wright and her husband remembered True as being “fairly mannish in her ways, and sharp with her tongue, but she never lambasted anybody—she would just catch you up if she thought you were wrong.” She was “so kind of plain...anything but beautiful,” dressed in “suits, plain, mannish. To me she always looked the same... slim and tall [with] short hair, just like a brush cut.” If True got upset “she really didn’t spare her language. If she felt like swearing, she’d swear. Unusual then, but she was slightly mannish in some of her ways...but she was a born developer and promoter, so yes, so she wasn’t shy in her mannerisms, but we got along great.”6
I suspect that True felt it desirable to seem “mannish” while serving as Canada’s first female publishers representative, just as at other times in her career, she would use her feminity where it seemed appropriate or useful. Also, she was still trying to assess herself and her future. Among the clippings in her files are several from this time period with headings like, “How to Get On with the Crowd,” “Break the Ice of Loneliness,” “Your Emotions Can Make You Sick,” and “Twelve Things to Avoid if You Want to Be a Success.”7
Certainly she impressed her male colleagues. Among her papers was a little card from the President of the MacMillan Company of Canada in which “HSE” has written:
We have a young lady in view,
To whom an apology’s due,
We admit—thought with pain
That we rifled the brain
That is almost too good to be True.8
This rare casual photograph of a relaxed and laughing True (in centre) was taken in the overgrown rose trellis area behind the J.M. Dent offices at Aldine House. Also shown is her secretary, Reeta Wright (front). The third woman was the secretary to the firm’s Managing Director, Mr. Henry Button. Courtesy Reeta Wright
In those years True had to learn many hard lessons about the business world; lessons she didn’t feel she had been taught at home or at school. In 1930 she condensed some of these lessons into a paragraph in a book review published in The Business Woman.
‘My face is my fortune, sir,’ she said, and it was all very well for the little girl in the nursery rhyme to say so; but most of us are less fortunate. We must carve out the fortunes for ourselves, if fortunes there are to be; and many of us have about as much idea of how to go at the matter as we would have of how to attack an actual block of marble with hammer and chisel. Men seem to have some sort of instinct in these things—I am sure no lad ever approached an employment officer in a bank with the statement that he would love to work in a bank because he was so fond of money...Yet scores of...girls...have come to me during the years of my connection with the Dent Publishing Company, pleading for a place on our staff because they were so fond of books...9
True may not have started out wanting to work in publishing, but she came to believe that she was doing worthwhile work, especially when it encouraged the development of Canadian literature. During a talk she gave in 1928 she said, “that Canadian publishers were fostering Canadian literature at a financial sacrifice...[and that] anyone who did anything to promote Canadian literature was doing a service to his country...Canadian literature could do a lot for the Dominion. It would help to unify the vast areas that are now more or less separated...Everyone could not travel and the next best method of familiarizing oneself with conditions and people in other parts of a vast country was to read about them.”10 True already had a skillful speaking presence; the newspaper report of her talk noted that she “spoke in a humorous vein.”
One of the more demanding parts of her job seems to have been the rejection of manuscripts. Some were easier to reject than others. She told the Kiwanians that “it was unnecessary to read a whole manuscript in order to determine whether it was publishable or not. Very often one page was enough to settle that point. Sometimes, she said, she saved up half a dozen offerings and dealt with them over the weekend.” She also found that many would-be authors had unrealistic expectations of possible financial returns, telling them “of a young girl who brought in a novel and without waiting to ascertain whether or not it would be published demanded a 50-50 split with the firm. That meant, if the book retailed for two dollars that the authoress would get a dollar while the publishers would have to give a discount to the bookseller, pay the expenses of writing and marketing and accept what was left as profit.” The book wasn’t accepted so “there was no need to haggle over financial details.”11
Other times it was harder. Reeta Wright remembered that “she hated to disappoint them, especially the younger people that would expect some reaction she couldn’t give.” One of True’s short stories, written around this time, included a character, Maridell, the daughter of a minister, who had to assess a book submitted by a minister who reminds her very much of her father.
This photograph was taken around 1930 when True travelled to England where she represented the Canadian Managing Director, Henry Button, at the English head office of J.M. Dent and Sons. Her secretary, Reeta Wright, remembered her as looking “very mannish” with her short hair. Courtesy David Cobden
...Maridell left the “Pilgrims of Peace” as long as she dared. Finally, one day, “I daren’t read this manuscript,” she said to her chief, “I wish you’d take a look at it.”
He glanced through a few pages. What Maridell brought him was usually well worth serious consideration. Thus it took him a few minutes to realize the nature of the work. Then he threw it down, amazed, infuriated. “Putrid!” he roared. “Hopeless! What do you mean by asking me to read such tripe? Shoot it back.” Then as she hesitated, “What’s the matter? Don’t stand there looking like a sick cat! “
“I felt sorry for him,” she murmured lamely. “He was a minister— from the country.”
Her employer exploded, “If we were to weep over every fool that thought he could write, the world would be flooded...Pah! Take it away. It makes me sick just to look at it.”
What could Maridell do? Sometimes one grew very weary of working in a publishing house, but she supposed there were unpleasant features about any job. She shrugged her shoulders and dictated a letter.12
During her years at Dents, True worked on several books and is sometimes credited as the author [more accurately the editor] of a childrens’ book, Canada in Story and Song. She also wrote poetry and short stories, several of which were later published.
While working at Dents that she had her first real contact with the left-wing intellectuals who later inspired her to join the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.). J.M. Dent & Sons published the Canadian
