Hundreds and Thousands (18 page)

I loved to be blessed by good ones. Now there is one more added to the remembrance garden deep in my heart — Uncle Raja. Down in my garden is neither creed, nor sex, nor nationality, nor age — no language even — there is just love. Only those who have touched my inner life, my soul, do I plant down there. No matter how intimate I have been with them they cannot get into that place unless that mysterious something has happened between our souls.

I have written to Lawren and told him about things. I think he will be very disappointed in me and feel I have retrograded way back, fallen to earth level, dormant, stodgy as a sitting hen. I think he will hardly understand my attitude for I have been trying these three years to see a way through theosophy. Now I turn my back on it all and go back sixty years to where I started, but it is good to feel a real God, not the distant, mechanical, theosophical one. I am wonderfully happy and peaceful.

Last night I learned that dreadful, horrible thing about poor Lizzie. I am glad she has told us and asked us to help. She is such a good soul! I just can’t bear it. Those are the places Christ helps. He did last night.

God, God, God! Oh, to realize so completely that you could utterly let go and passionately throw your soul upon the canvas.

Fred’s crit is fine, and kind too. He was honest with me and, oh goodness, how few people are! It’s a compliment when people don’t think you want “eye wash,” as Fred calls it. He says there’s too much
me,
too much
originality
(I suppose he means
striving for effect,
I did not know I had done that). I’ll at them again and try and unify and concentrate and build to a pyramid and unhitch my horse and put him before the cart and cast out
me
and seek to find expression for the wordless subtlety of the beasts. He says I must live and experience my stuff. Heavens! I thought I did. They swamp me at times but I haven’t got connection between the thing and its equivalent in words.

The snapping of this theosophy bond will make a difference to my beloved friends in the East. They all do so believe in its teachings. I wonder if it will cut me completely adrift from them. But I am glad to be back again and have peace in my heart. Alice is much interested in the Raja’s message also. That and this dread thing hanging over Lizzie is bringing us closer together.

I woke with this idea. Try using positive and negative colours in juxtaposition. Complementary are negative to positive. Try working in complementaries; run some reds into your greens, some yellow into your purples. Red-green, blue-orange, yellow-purple.

I HAVE DECIDED
to do what I can to give practical enjoyment with my painting, when anyone who can’t afford to buy but
really
enjoys one, to give it freely. I have given one to the Houssers, to Harry Adaskin, to Harold in the asylum and also one to his friend, to make Harold happy, and one to Lee Nan as a New
Year’s gift and one to Gerhardt Ziegler in Germany and am sending two off to Mr. Hatch. He wrote he never thought women’s work (painting or writing) serious or strong but he excepts me and a few others. Edythe, Jack, John and Fred all say my work is better than the American work in New York. I do not agree. I don’t want to be mean and snippy but I don’t think they know. I must get a hustle on and make time. Not a brush stroke today — painted stairs, cut down a pear tree, went to town to see Lee Nan for his New Year, fixed my sketch-keeper under the table — a million little chores. But I am
hedging,
not facing the problem before me — how to express the forest — pretending I must do this and that first, and indeed things must be done some time, somehow, but the other should come
first;
it’s my job. It’s much easier to dig the garden, clean the basement, paint stairs, than paint to express subtle interior things. I let myself follow the path of least resistance and shirk delving down to the bottom of my soul. I wish someone would spank me and set me down hard so I’d cry and be good after. The woods begin to tease me these fine early spring days but I can’t go yet and the winds are bitter cold.

DR. WELLS OF EDMONTON
came and was apparently interested. He stayed an hour and a half. He said, among other things, that Eric Brown does like my work and considers me one of Canada’s serious workers. That being so, why does he sniff so at what I send over? He treats me very queerly, ignores my stuff, looks the other way and doesn’t hang it. It’s funny that my work doesn’t speak out of its own dirty old studio. Dr. W. declared the things I sent to Edmonton were not the same he saw here. They
were
those very same. Lawren said his always looked so much better
in his studio. Seems to me his look pretty fine out too but my own out among others make me
sick.
They look awful. It’s pretty rotten painting like that for you can’t send your studio forth with the pictures, to background them. Good work should tell out anywhere.

I worked well today, carrying out what came to me the day before as I woke, about painting in primaries, using positive colours with a few negatives for rests between. I felt my canvas pretty stirring. It did not seem like “guidance” because it seemed too giddy and violent a method to come from God. All the same I did not dare to refuse and went ahead. Something is needed to wake me; I’ve got pretty stodgy and negative in colour.

I wonder if I should open the studio to the public for two days. There are many who are kind to the work. I think somehow perhaps I should. It
might
help someone. I don’t like it but it’s my job, perhaps. Gee! I want those woods to go whiz-bang and live and whoop it up with a vim.
Not
vulgar, blatant see-me-do-it, but joyous, irrepressible, holy, glorying uplift to God.

I have had a long, fine letter from Lawren. How could I ever have doubted his friendship and thought that when I told him about having gone back to Christianity our ways would more or less part? He is glad I have found inner light and blesses me harder than ever. I am so glad! I want to struggle ahead like thunder now and, after all, the struggle is being still — not slack, but
still
and
alert
for any leads that may come through, and, like poor Mary, ponder them in my heart. I like the Virgin Mary; she was not a blabber.

Went to early communion at the Cathedral this morning (8 a.m.). I couldn’t help noting how melancholy all the people looked. They clasped their hands and looked straight down their noses as if something awful had happened instead of being grateful and glad in their hearts. I can’t think that holiness means unhappiness. Seems to me real holiness should mean lasting happiness. That’s the kind I want to get hold of. That’s the kind of holiness I want to come into my painting too — praise, every bit of nature praising God. In
The Sadhu,
lent me by Raja Singh, he is describing Heaven as seen by him in an ecstasy. He says, “Everything, even inanimate things, are so made that they continually give praise and all quite spontaneously.” That is a wonderful thought, and here in a minor way they may be doing the same thing if we were sufficiently spiritual to see it. That seems to me to be the real meaning of art. If we could see and express that one thing only. But that could only be attained by living a pure spiritual life and by constant prayer and communion with God as one works. This is difficult. So many evil, selfish or vain thoughts come into the mind even in the midst of painting — grouches and grudges. One cannot always sing in his heart while he works but a singing heart, I am convinced, and the mixing of joy and praise with the very paints, as well as the ideals and inspirations one receives, and the forgetting of oneself is the only way. Those old religious painters lived in their religion, not themselves. Our B.C. Indians lived in their totems and not in themselves, becoming the creature that was their ideal and guiding spirit. They loved it and were in awe of it and they experienced something. We must have awe and reverence but above all
love
of God, if we want to express his creation.

I have been reading the life of Vincent Van Gogh — poor chap, so strong and so weak!

JUST CAME FROM
a lecture on the history of art. Went sound asleep in the middle. Met the lecturer at dinner first. Conscientious stuff but not thrilling and too long-winded. Slides were good. What those men got into their work was astounding — knowledge of power and the something underneath. Makes us poor, puny present-dayers look pretty small, and cheap as toothpicks. Look at their thoughts and their draughtsmanship!

MY CANVASES CAME
from Toronto yesterday. Took $7.40 to pay express, which leaves me $1.40 to live on for one week and buy dog meat as well. What’s the good of sending to exhibitions? First I sent to get the crits of the men in the East, which were helpful. Now they don’t give me any. Why? I got
nothing
this time. Two people, neither of them artists, caught the meaning. One of the mountain and one of the tree. Just two people. Is that all I gave? It’s rather disheartening, this painting. Is it useless and selfish? Or is it my job, with a hidden meaning for myself and others? I don’t know. The pictures look so much better in their own studio! Now, at home, they seem to mean a little; in Toronto they looked poor, mean and awful. I am digging into housecleaning and gardening. Spring is bursting but the wind cuts like ice.

I have finished the “Cow Yard.” I think it’s better than the rest. I’ve put all I know into it, lived the whole thing over, been a kid again in the old cow yard, fished for tadpoles in the pond, felt the cow’s slobber on my hand, roasted potatoes in the bonfire, scuttled past
the “killing tree.” I get so worked up over my funny creature stories, then once they’re finished, I’m done with them completely, don’t make any use of them nor have the courage to
try
a market. I’ve never tried one yet. I’m sure no one would take them. Still it’s feeble not to try. I like the “Cow Yard.” It’s honest and every incident is true.

I read the “Cow Yard” to my two sisters. What a much worse ordeal it is to read or show your own work and your own self to your own people than to the rest of the world! Why, I wonder. They smiled a few anaemic smiles as old episodes brought memories of the old cow yard and both said, “Very good” in a wishy-washy way when I had finished, then went on with their work and did not allude to the story again.
Could
that mean interest? They simply did not see anything in it. Lizzie said, “I wonder if you couldn’t get it into a child’s magazine.” Alice said, “I’d like to see it in print.” Neither of them understand the sweat and thought and heartaches that go into painting a picture or writing a story. They want just some surface, sentimental representation. I did sweat over the “Cow Yard,” trying to show the cow yard’s internals and the big lessons of life to be learned there but I guess I failed entirely. It was never intended for a children’s story. I was trying to show life. Well, chuck she goes into the failure drawer, done with. What a houseful of failures I have, to be sure! That’s that! What next?

Life, life, life, why are you such a huge, big Why? Why can’t we all talk one language and understand each other? I really
do
feel a deep interest in both my sisters’ work and what goes on in their lives, as far as they let me. Mine does not seem to interest them in the least. The dogs are much more interested in my
doings, even Susie is. Now, this is despairing and it won’t do and it is busting the “contract.” I’ve got to keep my courage up and remember the Sadhu’s prayer. “Graciously accept me and, where-soever and whensoever Thou wilt,
use me
for Thy service.” That’s all that matters.

I don’t want that fluffy stuff. Better that they should be indifferent than that. I suppose it’s sympathetic understanding one craves. When I read the “Cow Yard” to Flora she discussed every bit and chuckled away over the incidents and I felt like ginger ale just opened. Now, after reading it to Lizzie and Alice, I feel like the dregs left in the glasses next morning.

I’ve been thinking. The girls did not care for the “Cow Yard” because they never really cared about the real cow yard. It didn’t mean anything to them in itself. It was just a place where creatures were kept. They weren’t cow-yard children. How could they get the feeling of it? All the same,
I
was the one that failed; I did not make the meaning plain.

Lizzie came in. “I’ve brought you a book so you can get the address to send the ‘Cow Yard’ to. It’s
Short Stories by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
” It was by Mary E. Wilkins and published twenty-two years ago in Edinburgh. She said, “I wish you’d change the name. ‘The Barn Yard’ or something else would be better I think.” “But,” I said, “the whole point would be gone. It’s the
cow
yard. The cow is the centre of the whole story; it’s built round her.” “Well,” she insisted, “ ‘The Barn Yard’ would do as well and sounds better.” Oh, didn’t I make my story clear even on that one point?

It’s a help to sing to your picture while you work. Sing that canticle, “O, all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. Praise Him and magnify Him forever.” I am trying to get that joyous worshipping into the woods and mountains, the work of the Lord. I’m glad I have a lonesome studio with no one to hear but the dogs and Susie — and God.

I have begun the crow story. It is to be done mostly by conversation — people discussing his merits and demerits — little direct description.

There now! It doesn’t pay to try to be nice. Mortimer Lamb asked to come to the studio and I said, “I will try and be decent and amiable and helpful to him.” So I tried and I rattled out millions of canvases and sketches, which is hard, tiring work. Result — “I
have
enjoyed myself so much. May I look in
again
before I leave,” says Mortimer. He’s all keen on having an exhibition of my stuff in London. (They’d never accept it.) “It’s a shame to think of you stuck out here in this corner of the world unnoticed and unknown,” says he. “It’s exactly where I want to be,” says I. And it is, too. This is my country. What I want to express is
here
and I love it. Amen!