Peruse her biography:

Taking Up the Mantle

Part I
Part II

Taking Up the Mantle
(1893-1903)

Harriet Anne Boomer, a well-known and proper "lady" of Victorian London, denounced Chesley's work.

The unexpected notoriety of The Brain Beasts of Blenheim Township ushered in a new era for Emily Chesley.

London Free Press lithograph of the infamous "Carling Street Hair-Pull".

In earlier days, the criticism of these well-bred society ladies would have sent Emily in tears back to her room at the rambling house on Princess Ave (until the 7th Regiment returned of course). But Emily's character had changed. She formed her own ladies society, the Celtic Union of Non-Testosterone Sybarites. The "CU" as it was known to the other members (composed mostly of Scots charwomen and Irish prostitutes.) was dedicated to the promotion of the emancipation of women from the unending grind and reproductive treadmill that was a woman's lot in the British Empire. It was her first attempt at activism.

Members of the CU at their annual "free git's haircut" event.

It was an explosive situation, not made any easier by the men-folk of London, who would gather at a safe distance and yell "cat fight" whenever the CU and LCW met to "debate". The situation came to a head at the infamous "Carling Street Hair-Pull", when Emily managed to get close enough to Boomer and not only knock off the dowager's silly hat, but to rip out most of her hair too.

This was not very good timing for Chesley or indeed, her uncle Michael Flannigan, who was in the process of defending himself against a charge of "grossly inappropriate and lewd behaviour" that was celebrated in the Daily Free Press as the Library Bosom Affair. (See, Mammary Sympathizer.)

Relief came when Michael was invited by the British Society of Insane Inventors to do a lecture tour in Britain. Emily decided to go along. While in Britain she met two figures who would have quite an impact on her life -- Charles Ludwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carrol) and Quentin Nigel Havisham Farkmee, with whom she would have a long-standing professional feud. This excerpt from her diary explains her feelings:

June 12, 1894
Bigone-on-Tyne, UK

Perhaps it is merely the after-effects of Charles' most delicious smoking apparatus (not unlike Uncle's PBA), but I met the most horrid individual today. A native of York (Ontario), he introduced himself to Charles and Uncle as they played croquet in the hotel yard. When he said that he was a speculationist like Charles, Uncle insisted that he meet me. (I was resting the salon with a cup of tea and a nip of brandy.)

Quentin Farkmee, youngest scion of the famous taffy family, is the most corpulent, odious, and indeed, odiferous man I've ever met. Of course, I'd read some of his travel books, but his speculative writings were a mystery to me. When I told him so, he took an instant dislike to me.

To underscore his disdain, he removed the syphilitic member from his trousers to wag at me while we talked. When I finally noticed this, I said to him: "oh put that silly little thing away." True to character, he walked away in a huff, without buttoning up.

The taffy-addicted Quentin Farkmee was to become a lifelong enemy of Chesley.

If her scorn of his manly apparatus was not enough, the release of The Bungywash Fables a year later was to make a lifelong enemy of Quentin Farkmee. Though reviled and derided for its "portmanteau language and neoteric aesthetic" (The Arva Bugle), her description of Farkmee as Quebee Fudgeater, an elephantine creature with "a brawny belly and trunk of teeny totality" sent Farkmee into a rage that took a crate of sweetmeats to quell.

Undaunted by the rejection of the press and poor sales, Chesley continued to write prolifically. In 1895, she published The Locationist and in 1896, War Drums on the Maitland. The latter continued to build on Chesley's two central literary themes: the evils of the class system and the need for women to be sexually liberated. Poor sales continued to dog her, though she and her uncle were flush again after the success of Flannigan's Systematic Anti-Autointoxication Device in 1895.

She followed up War Drums with 1897's The Lambeth Leviathan, and Fork That! a hilarious parody of a fictional travel-writer in London Ontario. (Which again, did not please Quentin Farkmee, who had recently penned an unsuccessful restaurant column in the London Advertiser called "Farkmee with a Fork.")

Taking up the mantle (continues)......>