Hundreds and Thousands (10 page)

I ought to descend to the basement and do out a tub of washing but I am so woefully tired I shan’t. It’s been very hot for two days; now the wind is up doling out bangs and smacks with a lavish hand. The roses are protesting — only the young strong ones can stand it, the old tired ones flop to the earth in soft, tired twinklings.

A nice elderly couple called on me today to show me their griffon and to see mine. Theirs was O.K. but my four somehow were finer. They obeyed and there was a wise sweetness to them the other fellow lacked. During tea in the garden with the beasts the old lady said, “Are you a sister of Emily Carr, the artist?” “I am her.” They said they
loved
pictures and would like to go up to the studio. Their tastes were conservative. I knew that because they told me of a lovely painting of flowers by
me
in the Vancouver Gallery. It was not mine. I knew whose it was and so what they liked. So we clambered up the stairs. They edged in past the litter and fell to talking of the studio to gain time. They spoke of their lovely old watercolours and beautiful photographs. Then I produced some canvases. They were a sweet, honest old pair and they said what they could with cautious sincerity. They are coming to fetch me to see theirs. So be it.
I
shall be in the same box wondering what to say.

Bess and Lawren think over-highly of my work. Of course I’m glad they think there is something in it other than smearing on of paint, but I feel a little hypocritish too because sometimes one
lets the mundane sweep across their work, the earthy predominate, and the spiritual sleep. Bess’s letter was fine. I don’t follow all the theosophy formula but the substance is the same as my less complicated beliefs: God in all. Always looking for the face of God, always listening for the voice of God in Nature. Nature is God revealing himself, expressing his wonders and his love, Nature clothed in God’s beauty of holiness.

Tomorrow there is to be a fool fuss presenting my picture “Kispiax” to the government. I’m not going to the affair in the buildings but have to appear at a pink tea at the Empress. Why can’t those who collected and got the thing say, “Here!” and the Government say, “Thanks!” and the janitor hang it on the wall? And why must one drink tea at the Empress on the occasion? But then poor little Edythe has had a job collecting for the thing and I guess she will enjoy being tea-ed. I wonder why being confronted with my work in the face of the public always embarrasses and reproaches me so terribly. Is it because there is dishonesty or lack of sincerity in the work, something that doesn’t ring true, a lack of integrity in my presentation of the subject, or is it a sort of reaction arising from the perpetual snubbing of my work in my younger days, the days after I went away and had broken loose from the old photographic, pretty-picture work? Gee whiz, how those snubs and titters hurt in those days! I don’t care half so much now, and yet those old scars are still tender after all these years.

They did it and the Government took it and it all went off quite well, they say. I went to the tea party and felt a fool when I was
congratulated by some fifteen or twenty tabbies. Edythe was so sweet and pretty and cool. I loved her. And Professor Fred did his part nobly. Edythe and Fred came to supper with me later, a splendacious curry in the studio. I received $166 for my “Kispiax Village” and felt very wealthy. So that’s that.

Dreams do come true sometimes. Caravans ran round inside of my head from the time I was no-high and read children’s stories in which gypsies figured. Periodically I had caravan fever, drew plans like covered express carts drawn by a fat white horse. After horses went out and motors came in I quit caravan dreaming, engines in no way appealing to me and my purse too slim to consider one anyhow. So I contented myself with shanties for sketching outings, cabins, tents, log huts, houseboats, tool sheds, lighthouses — many strange quarters. Then one day, plop! into my very mouth, like a great sugar-plum for sweetness, dropped the caravan.

There it sat, grey and lumbering like an elephant, by the roadside — “For sale.” I looked her over, made an offer, and she is mine. Greater even than the surprise of finding her was the fact that
nobody
opposed the idea but rather backed it up. We towed her home in the dark and I sneaked out of bed at 5 o’clock the next morning to make sure she was really true and not just a grey dream. Sure enough, there she sat, her square ugliness bathed in the summer sunshine, and I sang in my heart.

Now she’s just about fixed up. She has no innards, that is works, so I’ll have to be hauled. I’ve chosen the spot. Goldstream Flats, a lovely place. I’m aching to be off but not yet as nobody wants to go with me. I’ve asked one or two. I thought it would be
nice to have someone to enthuse to, just for the first trip. With one accord they all made excuses except Henry. Poor Henry, who has lived twenty years and only developed nine when sleeping-sickness overwhelmed him and arrested his progress, like a clock whose hands have stuck though it goes on ticking — Henry
wants
to go along.

I wonder who went with me in the dream caravan. I do not remember but I was not alone. Maybe it was Drummie. No, Drummie was before that. We were only pals when I was a wee girl and I do not remember that he ever was anywhere except in our big garden. He was a dream pal and I used to ride all round the garden with him on a dream horse. There was one overgrown corner. Rocket ran riot there, all shades of it from mauve to purple, and white butterflies hovered amongst it in thousands and the perfume and the sunshine made things woosey. Drummie seemed to come most to that corner. I used to trot like a pony up and down the gravel walk; the rocket was as high as my head. The dream horse and the dream boy and I all talked and had a splendid time that nobody ever knew about except ourselves. I do not remember ever seeing Drummie’s face. That was an unimportant detail. Where the name “Drummie” came from I have no idea. Sometimes since, I have wondered if it was some small boy’s spirit that really did come to play with me in the old garden. It was a wonderful enough old garden to produce anything, with its flowers and fruit trees and berry bushes and the round tadpole pond where you dipped them into the old iron dipper that the chicken food was measured with. There was a stone paved walk to it with hurdles across to prevent the cows getting mixed when they went to drink. You stood on the hurdles and saw the upside-downness of the daffodils and primroses,
the trees, our faces and our white pinafores, and the ducks swam serenely over their double, perhaps finding them as companionable as I did my Drummie dream boy.

I have been to a wedding — my sister’s little maid — such a pure, high, sweet little soul, an adopted daughter of a chimney sweep. The sweep and his lady shone by soap suds. His skin was so clean and so red it looked as if it had been burned. His lady was in blue with an immense sweet pea bouquet, pink, upon her ample bosom. The little church was filled. A man, middle-aged and “middle” in every other way, muddled in an inharmonious way over the harmonium. Another middling person sang a solo, bellowing the words, “love” and “dear,” with suitable volume.

Nearly everyone in the audience had a child. The small ones howled and the big giggled. The parson was a stick as he squeezed from behind two small panels serving as a vestry followed by two shy boys, the groom and his man. Then the old boy at the harmonium fell upon the stops, pranced his big hands over the keys, out squeaked the wedding march and in came the bedecked little flower girls and the bride, white and pure and lovely. How such a lily could have grown to womanhood in that sooty family is a marvel. So all-good, standing there, taking her marriage vows before God, high in her ideals of womanhood and matrimony, giving the whole of her sweet self to the man she really loved, prepared to face life with him on $30.00 per month and love. Bless the child. He is a lucky boy to have won that pearl.

I was looking at a picture, a weak watercolour, a present from a friend to a friend, and trying to sum up why the thing, which was a fairly good surface reproduction of the scene, was so unconvincing
and awful. The painter just had not experienced the thing he represented. The objects, water, sky, rocks, were there but he hadn’t felt that they were big or strong or high or wet.

I want my things to rock and sway with the breath and fluids of life, but there they sit, weak and still, just paint without vitality, without reality, showing that I myself have not swayed and rocked with experiencing when I confronted them. It was but their outer shell; I did not bore into them, reach for their vitals, commune with their God in them. Eye and ear were dull and unreceptive to anything beneath the skin. This great mountain might be a cardboard stage set, not an honest dirt-and-rock solidity of immovableness. What were those infinitesimal trees and grass and shrubs? Pouf, the wind sways them, the fire burns them and they are gone! But the mountain bulk! Ages it has stood thrusting its great peak into the sky, its top in a different world, changed in that high air to a mystic wonder. It is praying to God. God throws a white mantle over it and it is more unearthy than ever in its remote purity, yet its foundation sprawls with solid magnificence on the earth.

Oh, these mountains! They won’t bulk up. They are thin and papery. They won’t brood like great sitting hens, squatting immovable, unperturbed, staring, guarding their precious secrets till something happens. At ’em again, old girl, they’re worth the big struggle.

A long spiel in the paper tonight, my name figuring in the headline — quite unnecessary. I am mentioned in connection with
two watercolour exhibits now travelling abroad. Why then do I go to bed heavy and heartachy? Write-ups depress me horribly. I feel as if somebody was making a mistake, especially after a day of wrestling with that mountain. The dismal failure I have made of it makes my spirit sick and bedraggled. I must get that lifting strength, but how?

The women’s clubs are sending “Vanquished” to Amsterdam for the Convention of the Confederation of Women Something-or-Other. Three women selected it today. Goodness, when I brought it out I felt maybe I’d gone back since I painted that three or four years ago. I believe it
is
stronger, and my heart is sick. Perhaps I’m approaching my dotage and my best is done. Oh, I must look up and pray!

I have wiped out the village at the foot of the mountain. Now I shall paint the little cowed hollow that the village sits in and maybe toss the huts in last of all. It is the mountain I
must
express, all else subservient to that great dominating strength and spirit brooding there.

Oh, my mountain! I am like a tiny rowboat trying to tow it into port and the sea is rough.

I have contraried my usual custom and ignored my painting this whole Sabbath. The day was perfect and the garden delicious; so the dogs, monk and I sat there and
lived.
Lizzie came to supper, and Henry who was alone tonight. I read Fred Housser’s
Whitman to America.
It’s wonderful, a splendid book to nourish the soul. Fred knows his Whitman and Whitman knew life from the
soul’s standpoint. What glorious excursions he made into the unknown! He wrote, “Darest thou now, O soul, Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region, Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow”; and he
dared.
We, Henry and I, went to the beach after and lit a fire and watched the moon rise across the water. There was absolute peace down there.

OH, TODAY I AM
akin to the worm, the caterpillar and the grub! Where are the high places? I can’t reach anything, even the low middle.

The sketch should make the mouth water, but the finished picture should fill and satisfy with a sense of completeness. My sketches move people, not my pictures. I’m a
frost!

Two visitors today, one male, inflated and bloated with conceit like a drowned pup, one female, a writer, rather interesting, the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy yet ogling the “bloated pup” as if his sex made him
wonderful.
I toted out canvases and took the opportunity to scan them closely for any sign of falling below par. They do; they are indefinite and weak. I have wrestled again with my mountain. It is much like a great corsetless woman or a sitting pillow. I wish I could sit before it again and realize it fiercely, vitally.

I AM HAPPY
. At last I have found a use for those fool newspaper write-ups I detest so. I found it in the Lunatic Asylum. I went out to Wilkinson Road Mental Home to see Harold. He was unusually clear-headed and happy. He gets the keepers and patients to cut out any notes about my painting and hoards them and rejoices
over them. “I just danced round the ward for joy when I read they’d sent your picture to Amsterdam,” he said. “Oh, I was so glad.” Poor lad, he begged me to do him a sketch of Kispiax Village where he lived with the missionaries. It is amongst his poor bits of treasures. He has ceased fighting against the bars now and is happy and contented. They let him come with me into the grounds today, first time he’d been outside in months. We sat on a bench in the shade and I unpacked my bag — such things as one would take to a child, and he near forty, apples and lavender from my garden; chocolate and a cake of sweet soap and a pencil for his child’s side, cigarettes because he is bodily an adult. We fed the bear chocolate. It was very hot, with a lovely little breeze. No wonder the man-boy was so happy outside the bars for a brief spell, his poor clouded mind fluttering back and forth over memories of when he was free. It is worth a whole lot to see his face light when the keeper brings him in and he ambles forward on his misshapen feet with both hands outstretched to me in welcome.

Fred Housser’s
Whitman to America
is absorbingly interesting and wonderful to me. It clarifies so many things. Integrity has a new meaning for me, living the creative life seems more grandly desirous (opening up marvellous vistas) when one is searching for higher, more uplifting inspiration, when one is listening intently for what a thing is saying and for the urge of life pouring through all things. I find that raising my eyes slightly above what I am regarding so that the thing is a little out of focus seems to bring the spiritual into clearer vision, as though there were something lifting the material up to the spiritual, bathing it in the above glory.