Hundreds and Thousands (37 page)

The top attic and the studio are the places filled with tender things. I wonder what the house will feel like to the new people, if any flavour of
me
will be in it after my things are out, if my spirit will immediately abdicate. When the chairs I keep hung from the ceiling to economize space in the studio are down, when all the daubs of paint are covered up with clean kalsomine, when the floors the pups and I have worn and scratched and spattered as we painted, when the wood box I’ve cursed as I filled, and the woodwork that Woo has chewed and the nails
I loved to drive in everywhere to hang things on have been extracted and the holes puttied up and the walls and ceilings have ceased to resound to dog barks, typewriter clicks, singing and talking to the pup and monkey, when the door latches are all mended and hinges oiled, the taps have stopped dripping and the mended gutters don’t require that you dash under to avoid the splash — when all these things are fixed and decent for the new occupiers, then all the me will be gone and the personality of the new folk planted. The tenants will like my new people; they will do better by them, be more even and steady. Temperamentals should not “run” places to house other people. I was not cut out for a landlady; I’m not a nice one. But I guess I had to learn things through that particular way and the tenants had to learn painfully through me. I was honest enough with them, but peppery. They were just a necessary evil. Oh, I’m glad my apartment days are nearly over. Always wondering what was going wrong next for complaints, if rents were coming, if No. 1 was disturbing No. 2, how long No. 3 would be empty, if the pipes were going to freeze, if the sinks were going to stop up, what made the chimney smoke, if the next-door man was going to get drunk or his dog was going to bite his butcher, which my tenants would complain to
me
about. All these things will be grand to miss. But it’s going to be
awful lonesome.
I wonder how the others feel about it — glad or sorry?

Days race! The work of destruction goes on, tearing down what has taken years to build, tearing up a home, my real, permanent, mature womanhood home. I am glad I have had a real experience in home-making, in fitting up an atom of the universe to fit
myself, imposing my taste and queerness and individuality and me-ness on a place. It has doubtless taught me a lot, some bitter lessons through tenants, some happy experiences through studio, garden and creatures. The weather has done its beastliest, so that the agony of waterpipe anxiety, fuel bills, etc., have been grand weaning. Both shoulders must go to the wheel the next two weeks. Most of the tender things are finished up, the old letters and sketches with their hoards of memories. The thing that has amazed me is the love that has been given to me from odd folk here and there, friends I had about forgotten, those who knew me when I was ill for so long in England, those who knew me when a student in San Francisco and London and Paris, Indians, dog breeders whom I have corresponded with, our introductions exchanged solely by dog business, each rubbing against the other solely through our “doggie” sides. (One calls me, “my dear unseen friend”; we corresponded for years and knew each other intimately from that side.) Lovers’ letters I destroyed years back; no other eye should see those. But there was a note, written forty years and more after the man had been my sweetheart and he loved me still. He married as he told me he should. He demanded more than I could have given; he demanded
worship.
He thought I made a great mistake in not marrying him. He ought to be glad I did not; he’d have found me a bitter mouthful and very indigestible, and he would have bored me till my spirit died.

There were such lots of dog photos, dear, faithful bobtails and griffons, twenty-two years’ rotation of dog adoration looking back from the pictured eyes, forgiving all the meanness, irritability, selfishness I ever had; just loving and worshipping me as their god. I have not touched pictures yet. This week I attack
material things — chairs, tables, pots and pans and shall be
very
practical — no memories.

THE JUNK HAS GONE
. The auction discards have gone. One big bonfire has blazed a thousand memories into oblivion and another waits for the match. Whenever I come into the great light studio, spacious and half dismantled, a pang darts through my innards. When the agent of my new house said, “May I ask why you gave up such a splendid studio?” I wanted to bite. Irony — you give up the
working place
because there is not time or strength enough to paint in it and you go to a poor place to gain time and strength and lack the
working place.
Which is going to prove the greater, work or environment? Willie Newcombe’s help and courage help enormously. My spirit periodically flits down and flaps round my new abode, fixing. I think it’s willing. It’s like a bird that has selected the crotch to build in and flies round and round, getting used to the environment.

Well, the studio looks like a junk shop rampant. But the bantams are laying fine, twenty-seven eggs, and all through this bitter weather. I love giving away new-laid eggs for people’s teas. Weather continues bitter, keeping householders in spasms of apprehension about north wall pipes.

THINGS ARE GETTING
down to their bare bones. The essentials of life only are left intact, all the etceteras are packed.

WHEN I LOOK
over things I see that I have been careless over my receipts. I have had lots of recognition. Way over West it has
come to me and I have not properly appreciated it. Why? It did not seem to mean much to me. I was wasteful of it, did not follow it up. I might have, and perhaps would have, become well off and financially successful. Things were suggested but I let them slip, was saucy over them. Now bad times have come; I cannot reach the public and the public soon forget. Some tire and look for a new person of interest. I would not kowtow. I did not push. Praise embarrassed me so that I wanted to hide. You’ve got to meet success half-way. I wanted it to come all the way, so we never shook hands. Life’s queer.

YOU CAN BE TOO
tired to say so, too tired for the exertion of going to bed. There is a gnawing in your innards that resembles hunger, but is exhaustion. When you sit you have to stand again because you are too tired to sit and in bed you’re too tired to sleep and your darn brain goes whizzing on, thinking of how tired you are. The only comfort is that your tiredness is legitimate, because you really have put enormous exertion into great activity. If life was not so overcomplicated and cluttered up you’d not need to sort out your possessions, you’d own a coat and a cup, you’d sleep anywhere like the beasts, and when you fell sick you’d die without physic or operation.

The world is wide and white today, with sky low and frowning blackly over it. Live things are humped up. The big studio is all of a mess with packages and cases everywhere. The reflection of the snow through the uncurtained windows gives off a cold white light. The trees have shaken off their snow and stand out-side
in naked black. The cottage will have to wait for me till the snow has cleared. Often I find myself down in it, going from room to room experiencing it. It is always full of sunshine when I am there. The rooms are all fixed and I am happy there. There is just one room I don’t
know
yet, which my spirit is not at home in, and that is the studio. It is not a studio yet. I have written, sewed, cooked, slept, eaten, gardened, but so far my spirit has not
painted
there, nor have my pictures hung on the walls, nor have I seen myself at an easel painting. Nobody has ever painted in that room nor thought about painting in it. It was probably the eating place of the household. Rooms take on habits. I will have to teach that environment. It may repulse me and I shall have to woo it. I wonder how the old studio will react on the Finlays, whether a little of me will stay behind. I would like to leave a picture behind to hang there always. The pictures in the Finlay house are awful. They are waterfalls, mostly of a blackish-brown cromotype, and dry, unlit water. One dreadful one was a row of three waterfall panels in one frame. Mrs. Finlay likes paper flowers. I just can’t see the old studio decorated with waterfalls and paper roses, and I expect my pictures are equally repugnant to her. And I wonder how the studio will stand up under two men. It’s a woman’s room, was built by a woman for a woman. The bedroom too, with the frogs and big spread eagles gallivanting over the low ceiling above my bed. I expect they will kalsomine them down. And the garden where the trees and shrubs knew me! I feel rather like a deserter. The animals will be just as happy or better; just the flowers I have fussed with may miss me as I them. But that is silly — growth is just growth; it takes what is necessary from whatever source it can reach.

WHITE, HARD, DEFIANT
winter holds my cottage. It has burst the pipes and broken the porch and hidden the burning rubbish in the yard so that we can’t clean up, so there’s nothing to do but smile and sit back in the dismantled studio with all the inanimates laughing at you. Glorious to be a bear or chipmunk and hibernate over winter. Plumbers earn every cent, freezing there under houses, coaxing toilets and ungreasing sinks.

Nothing is left in my flat but a bed and a pup and me.

The studio clock has gone. Twenty times I have looked up where its face used to be. There is a clean spot in the kalsomine where she hung and a horrible stillness which bursts at any knock or sound. This sleeping in the emptiness is like sitting up all night with a corpse.

The King, Edward viii, spoke for the first time to his empire as sovereign this morning. I went to a flat below to listen; it was very impressive, very, very solemn. Big Ben struck and they sang “God Save the King” magnificently. I pooh-poohed Lizzie at dinner when she said all in their house sniffed and wiped eyes surreptitiously, but it was only the presence of strangers that prevented me.

I have moved! I have slipped out of the chemise of worry that 646 Simcoe dressed me in. I have dropped the chemise and the Finlays have put it on. The cottage is shaping nicely and beginning to live. I liked its sun-shininess from the beginning but it was cold and empty then. I brought the central stove and put it up, and gradually warmth spread from the centre of the house. Presently the studio clock was throbbing on the wall beside the stove, its tick-tock penetrating every room, and then the creatures
came pattering in and out of all the rooms, delighting in investigation, and the place became a living thing, warmed, responding. The workmen have been abominable, undependable, impertinent, lazy. Ugh, I loathe them, all but the truckers who were kind and obliging. But the engineer who set the whole works going was Willie. Those kind, keen eyes penetrate into every corner, sum up needs, set things to rights. In the avalanche of dirt and cold stone I’d have been snowed under but for his help a million times. Willie’s a wonderful individual. I do not know what his beliefs are but the motivation of his whole life seems to help, always doing something for somebody, giving generously of time and strength and knowledge.

Things are getting straightened out. Each corner suggests objects. Sometimes the objects object, but mostly, if the corner calls, the object responds. Furniture is very alive. It knows who it wants to hobnob with. Sunshine has poured into the cottage all day and has gladdened everything. I am beginning to love the cottage. It’s homey. Woo is very rambunctious, screeching and barging. She has torn every wire clip and snib off her cage and wrecked the wire front already. She has removed every cork out of every bottle in the kitchen, overturned, scattered, tasted, and finally hid in the oven which fortunately was not too hot. If this weather continues she can go outdoors soon. That will calm her burstings-out.

At last a letter from Yvonne about my paper sketches in the East. She was very enthusiastic. She said that many people were
thrilled.
Said they
made her want to work.
She said that they were alive and stimulating, that they talked and meant more to her the
more she saw of them, and that she was glad to see so many of mine together. She got the conviction that the artist was used to open space and distances, and not only to closed, dense woods such as they had always associated me with. Well, that’s that. I believe Yvonne to be genuine. I’m glad, not conceited glad, but earnestly glad.

The bantams have sampled the surrounding yards but come back to me. Breast to breast, with a board fence between, my rooster has defied the neighbour’s rooster. The dogs love the new place — it is sunny and I most always in their sight. I too like it. It is “homing” up, all but the studio, that has not caught on. How can it? It does not know what is required of it, nobody having thought art there.

THE COTTAGE IS
dominated by the cook stove and the cook stove has the sulks. The wood is wet; and the wetness disheartens the coal. The air is keen today too. Seems there are too many rooms. Not for my possessions — they are all overfull — but too many for my spirit. It has not formed its “rest spot.” Big community Indian houses must have been very jolly, each family with its own fire — public privacy. One apple on a tree is lonesome, a crop is jolly; they must encourage each other no end.

Living solo in a place built for a whole chorus is … nice and not nice. There is a strong sense of isolation. The new little studio is as unfamiliar with me as I with it. There is a cosy, popping fire with a rug full of dogs and monkey. There is the rack Willie made me, so handy and right for its piled shelves of sketches. The lighting problem has been satisfactorily solved, but the little
room is big with lonesomeness. Similarly time, unpunctuated with “janitarian” jobs, is long. There is something about both time and place that feels selfish. The newspaper is very disquieting with its wars and rumours of war.

What am I going to do with this life of mine now that I am free? “No man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself.” I wish I could make my paintings help the world. Somehow all this stuff hoarded up is a great encumbrance. I do give away some when I find an odd person to whom they mean anything, but those persons are few and far between. My heart tells me that there is something in my work that appeals to some people, I mean that explains in a wordless way something that they know. Yvonne said they “spoke” to many in the East. But you cannot go round handing out pictures like free samples of breakfast food. Also one has to live. Why buy a picture if you can get it for nothing? It is hard to think straight, and to nail thoughts into words or paint is like crucifying them.