by Shelley Wood
I thanked them for waiting for me as they surely must have finished delivering their second load of Quint-stones shortly after the public viewing ended at 3:30, but Mr. Cartwright senior merely shook his head, all but scolding me for intimating that I might have walked the distance into town.
“You can’t be braving all this commotion on foot, Miss Trimpany,” he chided. “It wouldn’t be safe for a lady on her own, battling the crowds of Quintland.”
The public viewing time had ended more than ninety minutes earlier, but the parking lot beside the farmhouse was still teeming with cars of every model and shade. Visitors were milling around the troughs newly refilled with Dionne souvenir pebbles, swatting at the blackflies, and snapping pictures of the farmhouse, the nursery, and everything else in between.
Our truck attracted no small amount of attention when the guard opened the second gate to let us pull out. Mr. Cartwright senior waved gamely at the tourists, but I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead, my birthmark—I hoped—in shadow. For as far as I could see, a line of cars inched in the direction of Callander, the tired faces of children pressed against the rear windows.
I had heard the other staff talking about an Algonquin chief who had pitched his tepee across from the makeshift carpentry that passed for a tourist information hut on a corner of the Dionne property. Sure enough, a regal Indian sat cross-legged on a red blanket set back from the roadside, poker-faced in full regalia, the breeze stirring his headdress. A large sign on the ground beside him read: PROFESSIONAL PHOTOS: 50 CENTS. OWN CAMERA: 25 CENTS. A group of older boys, their shirttails untucked, appeared to be heckling the man, trying to get a smile out of him, while others inspected his tent and queued to get their pictures taken. Next to the man was a long line of wheeled carts, tables, and makeshift stands: local folk selling homemade preserves, candy bars, cigarettes, hard-boiled eggs, folding fans, buttermilk biscuits, harmonicas, postcards, Cracker Jack, ashtrays, sunhats, tea cozies, soda pop, embroidery, candy apples, whirligigs, and lemon meringue pie by the slice. A jowly man in full tails and a top hat was pacing back and forth through the traffic, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Ladies and gentlemen, just fifteen more minutes until feeding time, fifteen minutes! Step up and see Rupert the Bear tuck into his supper!” On a wooden platform wobbling over a patch of scrub brush was the sorriest-looking brown bear I’ve ever seen, scrawny and bedraggled, his coat dull, lumbering listlessly at the limit of his short chain. A youngster in a sailor suit dangling a blue balloon on a string stood transfixed, his eyes glued to the bear while his mother tugged vainly at his sleeve. The air smelled of dust and automobiles mixed with fairground smells—hay and horse, popcorn, hot dogs, and cotton candy. Despite the warmth of the evening, I cranked my window closed.
As we pulled past the veranda surrounding one of Oliva Dionne’s souvenir shops, I spied Nurse Dubois—Sylvie—leaning out over the railing with a slim man, smartly dressed, his hat pulled low. She was sipping from a pop bottle through a long red straw, and, as we crept closer, she pointed at something on the street and the two of them started laughing, Sylvie letting her head fall back, her bosom rising and falling. The man turned away before I could get a proper look at him, ducking into the shadow of the porch, but it seemed I could hear her booming laugh from inside the cab of the truck, despite the distance and the noise all around us, our windows closed tight. I waited for her companion to step forward again into the light, but he didn’t. I’ve come to like Sylvie, but we don’t have the kind of friendship where I could imagine asking her about the man on the porch, the way I might have done with Ivy. Although I’m curious, I admit. I twisted my head to look through the rear window at the busy rooftop refreshment stand at the Midwives’ Pavilion, a line of tourists curling limply away from the stairway. They were waiting, I presumed, for a table to open up. Lewis, seated in the back of the truck, was watching them, too, one hand grasping the rail, the other holding his weathered hat to his head, half an inch from my own on the other side of the glass.
“It really is something,” I murmured.
“That it is, miss,” Mr. Cartwright agreed cheerfully. “That it is.”
June 15, 1937
A TELEGRAM FROM Ivy today saying she’s canceling her trip home in order to accept an offer to speak at a nursing school in California! She says she will travel by both train and airplane to get there. I can’t imagine being so brave. I’m desperately disappointed not to see her, but perhaps she’ll have time later in the summer.
June 16, 1937
PUBLIC OBSERVATION HOURS were officially extended, so the quintuplets now play in the observation area for a full hour, twice a day, at 9:30 and 2:30. No one sees me—they only have eyes for the girls. The crowds are astonishing. The lineup for the morning viewing now starts before seven-thirty.
M. and Mme. Dionne came today during the viewing hours and insisted on sitting in the play area with all of us. It’s the first time M. Dionne has done this, although Mme. Dionne has been coming off and on for several weeks. My guess is she likes the public to see her with her famous babies, although she never joins the girls in their play. Instead she sits heavily in her chair, fanning herself in the shade, calling out to the girls and trying to get them to come and sit with her, when it’s clear they are happy with their various games and projects.
M. Dionne, meanwhile, spent every minute tugging at his ridiculous ears and frowning at the shadows moving behind the screens in the observation corridor. He bristled with anger when one of the girls ignored her mother and continued with whatever she was playing at. He seems to go out of his way to glare at me and snapped angrily at Miss Beaulieu, although whatever set him off, I’d missed. Nurse Dubois stood up from the sandbox, where she’d been watching Marie and Annette, and walked over to him and spoke with him quietly. The next minute, wouldn’t you know it—she actually had him smiling.
July 3, 1937
MISS EARHART’S PLANE is missing in the Pacific and with it that strange woman who so recently left such an impression on me. I can’t imagine how that would feel, to be adrift in the vast ocean, sharks circling, my radio batteries growing fainter and fainter. Battleships, destroyers, and airplanes have been sent out to search for her, but they can find no trace of the plane. She was here so very recently, perhaps the most alive woman I’ve ever met, so sure of her own mind and her own intentions. How can she no longer be of this world?
Sylvie wouldn’t stop nattering about the missing plane in her ringing voice, layering one awful speculation on top of another until I told her I had a booming headache and needed some peace and quiet.
July 15, 1937
ANOTHER HEAT WAVE and tempers are flaring. The girls bicker with one another at all hours of the day. Yesterday Annette tipped a full bucket of water over Émilie’s head in the pool, then all of the girls joined in on the water fight. We could hear the people behind the screens in the viewing corridor laughing and clapping. The girls, of course, could hear it, too, and this made them monkey around even more. Dr. Dafoe keeps insisting in the papers that the girls are unaware of the public in the viewing area. Baloney. That’s what Ivy would say.
More than fifteen thousand visitors came during the weekend showings—that’s what Dr. Dafoe told us today. I can’t get my mind around this number, but Sylvie prattled on about it as if she herself is part of the draw. Perhaps she is. I’ve never asked her who she was with when I saw her that day at the souvenir stand. She likely has a number of friends in the area if she grew up nearby, and no shortage of suitors. Nurse Noël has muttered disapprovingly that Simon, one of our policemen, is “too familiar” with Sylvie, but I honestly can’t imagine how she’s reached this conclusion. Tonight Sylvie was wearing a necklace I’ve not seen before, something sparkly. I saw it catch the light when she stooped to tuck Marie into bed after supper.
August 6, 1937
EM HAS BEEN sick all week with a sore throat and a fever, so we haven’t permitted her to play with her sisters in the “big” playgr
ound as they call it. The newspapers are blaring about infantile paralysis, but how could Émilie have come in contact with the polio virus? The girls meet no other children. Even their own siblings have not been over the street to play since the winter—they are too busy on the farm. Maman and Papa, too, I presume, since they’ve been scarce this last month.
Meanwhile Mr. Sinclair has been snowed under with letters and telegrams wishing Émilie a speedy recovery, including one from a woman in England. “I would have thought people on the other side of the Atlantic would have more important things on their minds these days than these five children,” he said, shaking his head. He has quite a bit to learn, I’d say, about our little girls.
August 7, 1937 (Toronto Star)
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ÉMILIE’S PLEADING FACE WINS RELEASE, AND WHOOPS FILL YARD
CALLANDER, Ontario—The most noted sore throat in many a day was adjudged better today and Émilie Dionne whooped for joy as she joined in the fun of Quintuplet play hour. Kept apart from her sisters for five days, Émilie pressed her nose against the glass door of her room when Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe called this morning.
“I couldn’t resist that pleading look in that little face,” Dr. Dafoe smiled. “I opened the door and sent her out to play with the others. She wasn’t scheduled to join the forces till Monday.”
Joy was unconfined in the yard of the Dafoe nursery when Émilie scampered out and was greeted by Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, and Marie who threw their arms around the middleweight Quint. The babies had never been separated for more than a few hours until Émilie took sick.
A crowd of more than 1,000 tourists watched the reunion and then saw Émilie conducted around the yard by her sisters who helped her locate her playthings.
Used with permission.
August 10, 1937
All of the girls are down with Émilie’s flu, complaining of sore throats and kicking their blankets from their hot limbs as they sleep. Not a one of them is ill enough that she wants to rest all day, so we’ve had lots of subdued playtime indoors. Today, at least, Dr. Dafoe canceled the public showing, which is as much a relief for the staff as it is for the girls. Something is eating at the doctor. When the girls take ill, even with the sniffles, he treats it as both a personal failure and a national calamity.
Today he asked to speak with me in private. I assumed he might have news about my painting of the girls that the candy company purchased—the Baby Ruth ad should be out any day, I’m told, and I’ve received a very generous payment. Instead the doctor seemed reluctant to meet my eye, asking me a stream of questions. How well was I getting on with Nurse Dubois? And with the other staff? What do we do in our free time? Do we spend it together or alone? Do the nurses tend to stay on the property or leave it, after hours? Did I keep in touch at all with any former staff? His questions went on and on.
I answered as best I could, but I was mystified by the whole exchange. If anything, he should be asking our observer in chief, Miss Beaulieu, and I said as much. He ducked his round head up and down like a ball bobbing in the pool and said yes, yes, he would be speaking with all of us. But he sent me back to the nursery shortly thereafter, and, minutes later, I spied his car leaving through the front gates.
August 18, 1937 (Toronto Star)
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QUINTS CONTINUE DAILY “SHOWINGS”: EVERY SAFEGUARD TAKEN AGAINST PARALYSIS INFECTION
CALLANDER, Ontario—All traces of the “mild upper respiratory infections”—sore throats—which bothered the Dionne quintuplets, individually and collectively, have vanished, word from the Dafoe nursery advised today.
Precautions to guard them against the possibility of infantile paralysis, now prevalent in southern Ontario, have been ordered by Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe.
All visitors have been barred from the nursery, even tradesmen and others who have habitually entered.
Dr. Dafoe said he could not permit even the parents or the six other Dionne children to visit their sisters.
The quintuplets will, however, continue their twice-daily “personal appearances” for the benefit of tourists who’ve come from far and wide to glimpse the famous five and always leave with a lucky pebble in their pockets.
Used with permission.
August 23, 1937
A nasty altercation with M. Dionne, who came by yesterday with Maman in tow. I hightailed it upstairs to watch from the window. M. Dionne marched right up to the front door and insisted to Miss Beaulieu that plenty of time had passed for the girls to recover from their illness and it was time they saw their family. Dr. Dafoe had already left for the day, but Dr. Blatz is here visiting from Toronto, and he very officiously told the Dionnes that the girls are still ill and susceptible to further illness.
This can’t be true, can it? The girls seem fit as fiddles.
But Dr. Blatz stood his ground and sent Miss Beaulieu to summon one of the guards to escort the parents from the property. M. Dionne let fly then with a string of words that I won’t record here—indeed, I hardly know how to spell them—blaring that Dr. Dafoe would be hearing from his solicitor. His wrath seems to roll over Mme. Dionne as if she doesn’t hear it, or has heard it all before. She’d been hunched behind him on the stoop, her stout frame taking up most of the step and swathed in a pretty flower-print dress, swaying slowly with her head bowed. As the quarrel grew more heated, she drifted back down the steps and over to the tall fence, hooking her fingers through the chain-link and pressing her face close, even though there was no one in the yard and nothing there to see.
August 25, 1937
LEWIS WAS WAITING in the truck by the back door by the time I’d finished breakfast and brought me home to spend a day with Mother, Father, and little Edith. Quintland is swarming with visitors from sunup to sundown, but weekends are especially bad.
The worst is the scrutiny we face passing through the outer gates, people snapping photos and craning to see who is being ferried out of the inner sanctum of the nursery. Lewis typically keeps calm and collected, neither frowning nor smiling, and not distracted in any way by the people who wave or, worse, tap on the sides of the truck. Today before we pulled out, he said, “If I can make a suggestion, miss,” then gestured toward my hat, reaching as if to touch it. Then he hesitated, blushed deeply, and retracted his hand.
“It’s Miss Beaulieu who put me in mind of it,” he managed to say, his eyes dipping. “I’ve never taken her to or from the station without her pulling her hat down and sideways, just so.” He mimed a motion in the air, and I reached up to touch the wide brim of my hat.
“It may not be the fashion, Miss Trimpany, but Miss Beaulieu, she pulls her hat so far to the side and down over her face, I don’t think she can see anything until she knows we are out of the traffic again.”
I laughed then, because he was plainly amused to be giving me advice as to how I should be wearing my hat, but I rewarded him by unpinning it and angling it so that it was almost completely covering my birthmark, leaving my entire right face exposed to the passenger-side window.
“Like this?” I said.
He cleared his throat. “I meant the other side, miss.” I knew what he had intended, of course, and when his face reddened even further, I regretted my little joke.
“I’m sorry, Lewis, I’m teasing and I shouldn’t,” I said and, surprising myself, gave his arm a light tap where it rested on the wheel. I reached up and swiveled everything around again so that my hat was tilted rakishly toward the side window, my whole horribly blotchy left side perfectly exposed for Lewis and in shadow for anyone else.
Poor Lewis, he didn’t say another word for most of the rest of the journey, even after I repositioned my brim when the cars and pedestrians thinned out again. I may be mistaken, but I think I saw a flicker of a smile when I did so. Perhaps I didn’t hurt his feelings after all.
It’s nice not to be so miserably self-conscious around someone. Afterward I kept thinking: I tapped his arm. I teased him. Some days I don’t recognize myself.
> August 29, 1937 (New York Times)
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THE QUINTUPLET PROBLEM
(Editorial) If human mothers were in the habit of giving birth to sets of five babies at once, the lives of the Dionne sisters would doubtless have been uneventful. They are distinctive, and indeed unique, not because of any peculiarities they possess but because of the mere accident of their birth.
We may assume that the little Dionnes take it for granted that one is visited from one’s earliest infancy by thousands of pilgrims, who gaze at one through the protective glass and are spellbound by one’s most casual antic. That, for the Dionnes, is as much a part of life as eating, sleeping and playing. Some years hence they will learn and understand the reason. But by that time what will a quintuplet’s eye-view of the world be like? Will they be disposed to lament the day that made them five instead of one or two? Will they be harassed, as royalty must be, by having to live up to a fame they have not earned? Will they be shocked and appalled when they realize that as long as they live they cannot escape notice—that, indeed, the longer they all live, the more remarkable they will seem?
What the Dionne girls would want is normalcy. Normal risks, normal adventures, games with other children, going to school like other children, flirtations in the moonlight, wifehood, motherhood, perhaps, if their imaginations ran that far, some kind of career. But they will not have these things, unless, in time, the great scientific experiment of rearing them under cover is dropped and they are allowed to go their separate ways.
