Emily's Dream (10 page)

It was dark by the time Emily got to bed. She took a candle to light her way up the stairs and set it on the chest of drawers in her bedroom. Alice hadn't come up yet, and Emily stood in front of the chest looking into the mirror that hung above it. Beyond the reflected candlelight, dark eyes stared back at her. It was as if Emily was seeing herself for the first time. A young woman stared back at her, not a child–a young woman with a firm set to her round face and a spark in her dark eyes.

Today she had stood up to Dede. She had surprised herself with her own courage and determination. Now it seemed anything might
be possible. But what did Dede mean when she said she expected Emily not to behave like a child? Emily knew all her sisters thought her art was child's play. Did Dede want Emily to give up art? Had Emily gained one thing only to lose another?

Emily stepped to the easel that stood in shadow by the window. She fingered the paper propped at the front of the easel, then picked up a paintbrush off the ledge. She turned the brush over in her hand, savoring the familiar weight and feel of the slim wood. No. She could not give up art.

The next day, the mood in the house was heavy. Mr. Piddington and Emily glared at each other, and Dede's eyes followed Emily with a dark critical look. Only late in the afternoon was Emily finally able to saddle Johnny and escape.

As she and Johnny left the yard, Emily could still feel the weight of everyone's expectations and criticisms on her shoulders, as well as a lingering pain in the back of her legs. But as Johnny carried her farther away from the house, the weight fell away.
In its place was a rising sense of marvel and pride at what she had done yesterday–she had stood up to both Mr. Piddington and Dede. Johnny's step, too, seemed to lighten the farther away they rode.

Finally, the houses and fields gave way to bushes and trees, and Johnny slowed, dropping his head now and again to nose the underbrush at the edge of the road. When he found a spot that seemed to satisfy him he parted the bushes with his head and took Emily through to a new trail. Emily felt a thrill of excitement as they left the road and the trees closed in behind them. The trees welcomed her into their midst. The branches brushed away all the lingering dust of what other people expected her to be. The forest embraced the pure Emily.

“Whoa, boy.” Emily called Johnny to a halt as sudden inspiration filled her. She dropped off the horse and stood beside him in the tight space of the narrow trail. Then, she bent and undid the saddle girth strap. She lifted off the cumbersome sidesaddle and placed it carefully out of sight
in the bushes beside the trail, marking the spot in her mind. Then stepping up onto a handy tree stump to gain some height, she pulled herself up to Johnny's bare back and sprawled across him on her stomach.

“Just a minute, Johnny,” she crooned softly as she swung her right leg over his back and shifted up to a sitting position. She hadn't managed it as smoothly as the butcher and the baker boys did, but she was up and riding cross-saddle. If Dede could see her like this, with her skirts hiked up and her stockings showing, she would be appalled.

“Come on, Johnny!” Emily called.

Johnny picked his way along the trail, which began to climb, and Emily adjusted herself to the new way of sitting. Suddenly the trees opened up. Johnny trotted out into a clearing at the top of a hill. Emily bounced on his back, her whole body facing forward. A new sense of freedom filled her.

At the crest of the hill, a twisted wind-blown arbutus tree gestured at the wide sky and the ocean beyond. Emily swung her leg
off Johnny's back and slid to the ground. She loosened his bridle so he could nibble on the grass. Then she stood by the tree and drank in the view of sky and sea. It filled her up. She felt as if she were expanding– growing as huge as the sky. She loved this place–this whole wild West Coast. It was her home, perhaps even more than the Carr house was. But she knew now that she had the courage to leave it–not forever, just for a while. She, Emily, could do it. She could go and study art. She could learn what she needed to know to become a real artist and to paint the places that she loved.

 19 
Looking Ahead

In the weeks that followed, the Piddingtons left, summer arrived and Dick began to prepare to head to school back East. Again and again Emily tried to talk to Dede about art school, but Dede would not listen.

“What should I do?” Emily asked Dick one night.

“You could talk to Mr. Lawson,” Dick suggested. “He is our legal guardian. He could give permission and make arrangements.”

Emily thought about Dick's suggestion. The next week she walked into town to the lawyer's office. Mr. Lawson looked up at her from behind a huge dark wood desk. He had a wide loose face with bushy gray eyebrows above round wire-rimmed eyeglasses and wild gray whiskers sprouting from his cheeks. He pushed down his glasses to look at her. His small eyes were shrewd but not unkind.

“What can I do for you, Emily?” he asked.

Emily had given the question of art school some thought. The best schools were in England and France, but these places were far away. There was a school in California, which was just two days to the south by boat.

“I would like to go away to study art,” Emily told Mr. Lawson. “There is an art school in San Francisco. Could I go there, please?”

Mr. Lawson looked surprised.

“Have you talked to your sister about this?” he asked.

“She won't talk about it,” Emily said.

Mr. Lawson frowned.

“Is this something you are serious about, Emily? You're sure it isn't just a passing whim?”

“Yes, very sure,” Emily said, meeting his eyes. He seemed to sense her determination, and he nodded.

“Very well. I'll see what I can do,” he said. Then, he returned his glasses to their perch on his nose and looked down at the stack of papers on his desk. She was dismissed.

A few days later, Dede stopped Emily as she came in the front door. Her hands were on her hips, and her look was dark.

“So, you went behind my back, did you?” she said. She must have spoken with Mr. Lawson.

For a moment, Emily felt a twinge of guilt. Dede looked angry but also something else. Could Emily have hurt her feelings?

“I tried to talk to you about it,” Emily explained, but her voice sounded defensive, angry, and she didn't want it to. She hadn't gone to Mr. Lawson to go behind Dede's back or to spite Dede; she'd done it because she loved art, and she wanted to go to art school.

Emily took a deep breath. She did not want to fight with Dede. She wanted Dede to understand.

“I want to be an artist,” she said.

Dede sighed. Her eyes seemed to soften slightly.

“Very well,” she said. “If you want to go to San Francisco to study art, you shall go.”

Dede's mouth formed into a small thin smile. “And you shall stay with the Piddingtons, under their supervision,” she added.

The Piddingtons! Emily had been so glad to be rid of them, she hadn't paid any attention to where she'd been told they were going. She'd completely forgotten they were staying in San Francisco.

Oh, well. It didn't matter. Once she was away from Dede's rule, she could do what she wanted. Not even the Piddingtons could dampen her joy. She was going to study art.

“I'm going to San Francisco!” Emily told Dick and Alice that night. She sprawled on her back on top of her bed, her arms spread wide.

“Oh Emily!” Alice was horrified. “That's such a big, wicked city.”

“I'll be safe with the Piddingtons,” Emily
said with a wry smile. She explained what Dede was arranging, and Dick couldn't help laughing. Alice shook her head, relieved.

“You and Dede are so much alike,” she said.

Emily sat up. “No, we're not!” she said. Alice laughed.

“For one thing, you're both stubborn,” she said.

“And you both want to have the last word,” Dick added as he plunked down on the foot of the bed

“You're both talented,” Alice added.

Emily opened her mouth to object further, then closed it. It was true that their older sister was a talented artist in her own way–in the womanly arts of needlework and painting on china. But she had not chosen art as Emily had–or maybe it was more accurate to say art had not chosen her the way it had chosen Emily.

“And you love each other,” Alice said, looking at Emily.

“Huh!” Emily scoffed. “She has a fine way of showing it.”

“She's just trying to take care of us the best way she knows how,” Alice said softly. “She worries about you … We all do.”

Emily rolled her eyes, but inside she was quiet. She was glad to be going away, but she was also a bit worried. And she would miss everyone. Dick too was silent– perhaps thinking about how he would feel when he was gone.

“Enough melodrama!” Emily announced suddenly, springing to her feet. She stepped over to the canary's cage and whistled. The canary cocked his head, and Emily whistled again. Then Emily cocked her head to one side to show she was waiting for his answer. Alice made an impatient sound.

“Shh,” Emily whispered. “Listen …”

A moment later, the little bird's song filled the room.

“See?” Emily said. “He agrees.”

“About what?” Alice asked.

“About coming with me to California and about his name,” Emily told them.

“What name?” Dick asked.

“I've decided to call him Dick, and whenever I hear him sing, I'll think of home.”

Alice smiled and Dick grinned broadly.

Emily smiled with them. She'd have her bird to remind her of family, and she'd have the memory of rides with Johnny to keep the wild places close. And she'd be back.

Emily Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1871, the same year British Columbia stopped being a colony of the British Empire and joined the Canadian Federation. In later years Emily wrote about her life as an artist, giving us glimpses of her Victoria childhood in
The Book of Small
(Irwin, 1942) and
Growing Pains: an Autobiography
(Irwin, 1946). From these small glimpses, I developed my fictional story to try to fill in the gaps and imagine what kind of girl Emily was and what it was like for her to struggle to follow her dream.

In
Growing Pains
, Emily says she was almost sixteen when she approached the
family lawyer to ask if she could go away to art school. Records show that she was actually closer to nineteen when she left for San Francisco in 1890. In this book, I have stayed true to Emily's own memory of how old she was, even though it is not accurate, strictly speaking.

She studied art at the California School of Design in San Francisco for three years before returning to Victoria. Once at home again, Emily had the old cow barn loft converted into a studio where she taught art to local children. She also made her first visit to a First Nations village near Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where she was deeply moved by the people and their carvings.