Alternatives

“Ladies approaching seventy must not expect to work like girls of seventeen—it is unreasonable.”

The doctor’s voice was reproving but kindly.

“Overdoing has enraged your heart. To begin with we will see what a good long rest in hospital will do.”

“How long?”

The doctor resorted to a professional shrug and the spreading of his palms.

“Another thing . . .” he paused . . . His eyes roved round my studio, finally resting contemplatively on a small monkey and a mother dog and her four pups on the hearth rug. “I notice you have an aviary of birds on the veranda,” he mused. “Livestock entails work. You must limit yourself now to a minimum of exertion, throw everything not imperatively necessary overboard. Goodness, you have done a lot of work!”

His eyes roved from my menagerie to my full canvas racks.

My breath caught, “Not half what I want to, Doctor. You don’t mean—you are not telling me my painting days are done! Oh, lovely, all-alone caravan-days in the quiet, woodsey camps with my creatures! Seventy isn’t so frightfully old!”

“We will talk of that after we see what rest does for that heart; meantime, take things very, very easy. I will engage a room in the hospital for you. One thing certain! Trips alone must be given up.”

“Ugh, my stupid heart needs a chaperon! No thank you, I will stay at home. I never could work with danglers hanging round.”

The weeks in hospital sauntered slowly by till Eric Newton, noted Art Critic for the Manchester Guardian, paid a visit to the West. Eric Brown, Director of the Ottawa National Gallery, had asked Mr. Newton while out west to select some fifteen pictures of mine and ship east. He had prospective buyers. Mr. Newton wired me from Vancouver. Finding I was in hospital he came there to see me.

He said, “As I drove over the Island Highway I saw Emily Carr pictures in the woods no matter in which direction I looked. You have caught the Western spirit.” Folding his hand over my two sick ones he added, “Get better, these hands are too clever to lie idle.”

I turned my face away. What good getting better if I was never to roam the woods again, paint-sack on shoulder, dog at heel?

“Wa! Wa! Wa!”

The maternity ward was across the court from my room. New-borns were taking the unknown life before them hard. Ah! The price of being was this adjusting ourselves to life at different angles.

I blinked hard a time or two and turned back to Mr. Newton.

“All right, I’ll try to get well.”

When Lawren Harris advised me, “Put aside the Indian motifs, strike out for yourself, Emily, inventing, creating, clothing ideas born of this West, ideas that you feel deep rooted in your heart”, I sat before the woods and stared, lost, frustrated. I had let myself be bound. It was not handling of paint but handling of thoughts which overwhelmed me. Trying to get around this problem, I took always in my sketch-sack a little note book. When I had discovered my subject, I sat before it for some while before I touched a brush, feeling my way into it, asking myself these questions, “What attracted you to this particular subject? Why do you want to paint it? What is its core, the thing you are trying to express?”

Clearly, and in as few words as possible, I had answered these questions from myself to myself, wording them in my little note book, presenting essentials only, discarding everything of minor importance. I had found this method very helpful. This saying in words as well as in colour and form gave me double approach. I knew nothing about the rules of writing.

The only author I had ever met was Fred Housser, who wrote A Canadian Art Movement. When I stayed with the Houssers in the East, Fred had let me read two of his manuscripts. He talked with me about them afterwards. When I went home I wrote an Indian story and sent it to Fred, asking criticism. He liked my story and wrote me a wonderful letter, finding much fault in my construction, taking infinite pains to explain a story’s build-up.

“You do not want ‘eye-wash’,” he wrote and struck hard. The letter made a great impression on me.

When I grinned back at Mr. Newton and said, “I’ll try to get better”, I had this idea in the back of my mind—“One approach is apparently cut off, I’ll try the other. I’ll ‘word’ those things which during my painting life have touched me deeply.”

“Doctor, may I write?”

“Write? Write what?”

“Describe places I’ve seen on my sketching trips, woods, Indians and things—nice Canadian things of the West, things that will heal, not rile my heart.”

“You can try, but don’t get excited, don’t overtire.”

The nurse was told to watch. She kept bouncing in and grabbing my wrist—she did not approve of the doctor’s permission, but had to admit that, instead of doing me harm, it soothed and calmed me.

I did not know book rules. I made two for myself. They were about the same as the principles I used in painting—Get to the point as directly as you can; never use a big word if a little one will do.

So I wrote the stories that were later to be known as Klee Wyck, reliving those beautiful, calm places among the dear Indians. Their quiet strength healed my heart. Of course it could not heal old age, but it healed me enough that I could go home and take up that easy, easy life the doctor prescribed. No more was I to go off in my old van alone—that was too strenuous. About that he was firm.

While I was still in hospital, Eric Brown wrote me. For a good many years he had taken interest in and been most helpful about my work. He said my isolation out West was making me think for myself and it showed in my canvases. (I was sending each year to Eastern Exhibitions.) He now wrote, “Will you collaborate with a biographer? We want the ‘struggle story’ of your work out West written. Better still, will you write it yourself?”

“I don’t know how to write,” I answered Mr. Brown. “My Indian stories (I had told him about writing them) are just fun and they’re medicine. I go back so vividly on those sketching trips, that I forget being sick.”

I was fond of Eric Brown; he had dug me out of that dreadful slough of despair at the time when I was too disheartened to paint. I wanted to please him.

I said, “Nobody could write my hodge-podge life but me. Biographers can only write up big, important people who have done great deeds to which the public can attach dates. I could not be bothered with collaborators, nor would they be bothered with the drab little nothings that have made up my life. However, to please you, Mr. Brown, I will have a try.”

I had only a few chapters written, and was still in hospital, when I got word that Eric Brown was dead. Following close on the news of his death came the death of my Indian friend Sophie around whom many of my Indian stories were written. Writing as well as painting paused a little inside of me, but soon the “easy” life began to bore me and I continued the biography.

I had two faithful women friends who were very patient in listening to my script—Ruth Humphrey and Flora Burns. It is a tremendous help to hear words with the ears as well as to see them with me eyes; so I read aloud to these friends and received helpful criticism from them.

When I had about three chapters of the biography written I read them to my only surviving relative—a sister. She was very, very angry. She accused me of being disloyal to my family and altogether abominable.

It had been absolutely necessary for truth’s sake to include a short few pages on our home life which for me had not been happy after the death of our parents. I had to show what drove me to the woods and to the creatures for comfort, what caused the real starting point of my turn to Art. My family had never been in sympathy with my painting, nor entered into my life as an artist. My home life was always a thing entirely apart from my art life.

My Indian sketches lay in my bureau drawer. My two friends thought I should endeavour to seek a publisher for them. They suggested I send them to a publishing firm in Toronto. I did so. For months I received no word, good or bad. At last I wrote the publishers and was coolly informed that they had been unable to use the stories but unfortunately they had lost them. They regretted the fact, but there it was—they were lost!

I was furious at their indifference and their carelessness. I wrote and wrote, giving them no peace. I wrote to the head, and the tail, and all the other members of the firm that I could attach a name to. I said, “I have no other copy of the manuscript. It is up to you—it must be found.”

The manuscript remained lost for one whole year. Then it was returned to me. They claimed it had slipped off a desk and fallen among a box of books being packed for Queen’s College. If that was the case, why had not Queen’s College returned it to the publishers when they unpacked their books, not held it for a year? I am convinced it never would have turned up but for the unpleasant nagging I gave the entire lot of them. They told me they never were so glad to return anything to anybody, I had tormented them so. I too was weary of the nuisance by then. I did not try another publisher. I stuck the manuscript away in a drawer and forgot it.

One of the faithful “listening ladies” who had sat patiently while I read my stories aloud borrowed them, took them to Vancouver and showed them to Ira Dilworth, one-time principal of Victoria High School, later Professor of English at the University of British Columbia and now attached to the CBC at Vancouver. He was interested and said he would like to have some of the stories read over the radio. He came to see me about it.

The first series of six readings was done by Dr. G. G. Sedgewick of the University of British Columbia, who had seen some of the work earlier. The second series was read by Mr. Dilworth himself. They pleased the air audience. Shortly after reading the second series, Mr. Dilworth went east, taking with him the manuscript which he showed to his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Clarke. On his return from the East he came to see me. He said, “Mr. Clarke wants to publish two volumes of your writings,—one of the Indian stories, the other stories of your childhood.”

“Is it possible!” I gasped.

My one publishing try had been so disastrous. I supposed my stories not up to much as they were so indifferent when they were lost.

“What about my punctuation and spelling, Mr. Dilworth? They are awful, you know.”

“We can get around that. If it is all right with you, I shall act as your honorary editor.”

I can well imagine the relieved “Oh!” I gave then. Spelling and punctuation always were such a horrible trial to me, and now here was a genuine professor offering to stand behind me, ready to be appealed to! His kindness lifted a tremendous load from me, just as if he had kicked all the commas, full stops, quotes and capitals right to another planet.

Mr. and Mrs. Clarke came west that Autumn. Mr. Dilworth brought them to see me. We were to proceed with the work at once. They conferred as to which book should be published first. At first it seemed in order that it should be the childhood stories. On the other hand, my Indian pictures had been exhibited quite a bit in the East. That would, to some extent, lay a foundation for the Indian stories. It was, therefore, decided that these should have first place.

I cannot describe the terror-shakings that overtook me as the stories and I awaited our Editor. I felt so shamed, so terrifically ignorant. I wished I had been a better student, that I had not scuttled off to San Francisco Art School, skipping my last year of “High”. I had heard of Mr. Dilworth as a scholar and a very fine teacher. I should die of shame.

We sat down at a table in my studio and alternately read to each other from the script. In two seconds I was not afraid any more.

“Two ‘l’s’ there, one ‘s’ only,” he corrected as we read, or, “New sentence here, new paragraph there,” but he made me feel such things were subservient and of secondary importance to the spirit of the text. At once I knew he loved Indians and the West just as I did. My Editor never altered my wording arbitrarily. Occasionally he suggested re-phrasing a sentence, always explaining why. He never added or omitted anything without consulting me. Sometimes he made suggestions, but he made me re-word the thought myself. He was a million times younger, a million times cleverer than I but he never made me feel “an old fool”, or finished, or stupid, or ignorant. Long before the work on the manuscript was finished he was just plain “Eye” to me.

I shall never forget the editing of Klee Wyck—the joy of those hours—nor all it taught me. I was almost sorry to see her finished and shipped off to the publisher. After a while she came back—a book!