Goodbye

Patients drifted into the San, paused, and drifted out again. Some went coffined, some rode triumphant in the horseshoe bus, many to return later for further treatment. Always secrecy regarding goings. Were they coffined or horseshoe bus goings? Sometimes the San left us uncertain. A patient just disappeared; tight-lipped and evasive were the staff over the word “death”.

“Gone home,” they said vaguely, and left us to wonder. The San walled death about, hid it from us as if it were an indecency.

All my contemporaries were gone from the San, some one way, some the other.

Scrap was back home with her baby. Kate Cranleigh had recovered and was home with ‘Beautiful Cabbage’, who now that she had her daughter home and no son to visit dined with us no more. The Cranleigh boy’s going was one of the mysterious departures, like John Withers, Miss Scrobie, Evelyn Ecton, little Jenny, and the rest. What big fools the Staff took us for!

Miss Dobbin’s patient chewing triumphed. Mrs. Viney, who never did accept the San code, had anticipated pleasurably a recital of her symptoms when she got home only to find that then she had no symptoms left to tell.

I had been in the San eighteen months, was back in bed, losing ground. A new treatment was suggested. Dr. Bottle promised to write my people in Canada. Month after month she forgot.

Each week Dr. Mack asked, “Mammy’s letter, Dr. Bottle?” and Dr. Bottle would run past my door, too confused to face me. I despised her. Had my check from home not come regularly she would have remembered. Had I been titled or important she would have remembered. I was only a student. Hokey, Matron, Doctor Mack humoured me like a pup which is about to be bucketed. They were gentle, did some spoiling of me.

Lying helpless, I worried about my birds, calling, calling. All the old stand-by patients were gone. They were at the mercy of this one and that. The new outfit were strangers to me and to the birds. At last it was decided to try the special treatment.

“Doctor McNair, may I get up?”

“You are not able, Mammy.”

“Something I must do.”

“Your nurse is here.”

Frogs and Cats

“No one can do this but me.”

The birds came to my hand; one by one I put them into a box. Their round trusting eyes pierced me. I took the box to my room.

“Hokey, ask Doctor to come.”

She came to me hurrying.

“The birds, Doctor. There in the box. Chloroform them.”

“Mammy!”

“Quick, they are waiting.”

“Free them, Mammy!”

“They do not know freedom. Villagers would trap them—tiny cages—slow starvation. Suppose they stole a berry from Miss Brown’s garden! Broken necks, fertilizer for cabbages! Please, Doctor. I love them too much.” The big overruling woman obeyed.

It seemed the San code enveloped even bird-death. No allusion was ever made to my birds’ sudden disappearance. If possible, the staff were extra kind to me. I had been in the San more than a year. I, too, had learned San silence. I did not mention birds for Canada again. I could not.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Some illustrations were moved to facilitate page layout.

[The end of Pause–A Sketch Book by Emily C

Klee Wyck

Emily Carr wrote these twenty-one sketches after visiting and living with Native people, painting their totem poles and villages, many of them in wild and remote areas. She tells her stories with beauty, pathos and a vivid awareness of the comedy of people and situations.

The Book of Small

Emily Carr wrote these thirty-six sketches that relate anecdotes about her life as a young girl in the frontier town of Victoria. She notes: “There were a great many things that I only half understood, such as saloons and the Royal Family and the Chain Gang.”

The House of All Sorts

Emilly Carr wrote these forty-one stories of those hard-working days as landlord and the parade of tenants — young couples, widows, sad bachelors and rent evaders. In an additional twenty-five stories, she describes the mutual bonds of affection between her and her dogs.

Growing Pains

Completed just before Emily Carr died in 1945, Growing Pains tells the story of her life, beginning with her girlhood in pioneer Victoria and going on to her training as an artist in San Francisco, England and France. She writes about the frustration she felt at the rejection of her art by Canadians, of the years of despair when she stopped painting and of the unexpected vindication and triumph she felt when the Group of Seven accepted her as one of them.

Heart of a Peacock

A collection of 51 short stories by the legendary writer and painter Emily Carr, arranged in themes such as her experiences with Native people, her adventures with various beloved creatures and her love of nature. Together, they underline Carr’s place as a writer with the sharp yet tender eye of an artist, with a deep feeling for the tragedies of life and with a rich sense of the comic.

Pause

While studying art in London, Emily Carr seriously undermined her health and was sent to a sanatorium for a complete rest cure. Bridling at the hospital’s rules, which prohibited excitement of any kind, the always rebellious Carr proceeded to make friends, raise birds, and cause trouble. In words and enchanting sketches, in Pause: A Sketchbook, Carr presents a funny, poignant account of her 18-month convalescence,

Hundreds and Thousands

Hundreds and Thousands consists of her journals from 1927 to 1941. She began keeping a journal in 1927, when, after years of her work being derided and ignored, came unexpected vindication and triumph when the Group of Seven accepted her as one of them and encouraged her to overcome the years of despair when she stopped painting.

Opposite Contraries

Collected from Emily Carr’s private and public writings and edited by Susan Crean, these previously unpublished pieces reveal the outspoken artist at her most forthright. Expurgated sections from Carr’s journals detail her anguished meditations on her spiritual mission, musings about Native culture and the white community’s reaction to it, and thoughts about her family. Her groundbreaking 1913 "Lecture on Totems”, her first recorded writing on Native art and people, is also included, as are some of her most fascinating letters to friends and colleagues.

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