Hundreds and Thousands (4 page)

They are grateful for the interest evinced by friends of Emily Carr who have checked names and supplied useful information. They are particularly indebted to Miss Flora Burns in this respect, but Mr. Willard Ireland, Miss Ruth Humphrey, Mrs. Nan Cheney, Mrs. Doris Shadbolt, Miss Margaret Clay and Dr. Dorothy Dallas were also helpful, as were many others who knew the artist and her work.

HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS

MEETING WITH THE GROUP OF SEVEN 1927

I left home Tuesday night, November 8th. Called at the Vancouver Art School and met Mr. Varley. He was very pleasant, and took me home with him. His sketches most delightful, appealingly Canadian, a new delineation of a great country. Mrs. Varley, a dear little woman, gave me warm welcome.

12 o’clock noon. We have passed through a vast mileage of fireswept mountain country — snow, and ground with dark stubs standing and lying till they form a black and white check pattern across the snow-covered hills, and the green-grey river at their base. It is mysterious, weird. Now we are in heavier pine-wooded country and it is snowing hard. The trees are heavy with it. There is a cold, mysterious wonder amid the trees. They are not so densely packed but that you can pass in imagination among them, wonder what mysteries lie in their quiet fastness, what creeping living things, what God-filled spaces totally untrod, what voices in an unknown tongue.

2:15 p.m. Ten minutes at Blue River. Had a good walk in the snow. Entered quite a little settlement. The higher mountains are wrapped in snow mists. Oblivious, though, the sun shines coldly, touching the snow here and there with patches of pale gold. What a lot of different varieties of pines there are! Why? How does the seed of different species get here? There are lots of slim straight cedars too. We have left the green river now and are running beside a brown one. The patches of snow and half-frozen ice look like water-lilies. Since we left the ranges with the brown cattle with white faces, we have seen no living creature. There are many little lonely roofless cabins of rough logs proudly used when the road was in construction. How desolate they look!

I should like, when I am through with this body and my spirit released, to float up those wonderful mountain passes and ravines and feed on the silence and wonder — no fear, no bodily discomfort, just space and silence. A logging camp, grey shacks hung thick with icicles, and ruddy-faced men pausing with big hooks in their hands to watch us pass. We’re on a down grade. Daylight is drawing in and it is only 3 o’clock.

8:00 a.m. We have stopped at Edmonton and are on our way again. As we were late we did not stay long. Edmonton was awake; tram cars running and lights everywhere at 6:30. The night was a slow aflair. We were going over muskeg beds and the travel was rough and jerky with frequent stops. We were late. We have left the mountains now. It is flat, brown and white; snow and dry grass and low, scrubby, bare trees. Grain elevators everywhere.

11:00 a.m. Wainwright. Had a nice brisk walk for ten minutes and made friends with a big kind dog. Bright sunshine, snow, but not so cold. Large stuffed buffalo in glass case at station to advertise the buffalo preserve at Wainwright.

Saskatoon. Held up here one and a half hours already. I took a half-hour’s brisk walk, then we were bustled on to the train, but though the doors were shut we are still here. Saskatoon is a big town. The station was crowded and bustling. It was cold and clear, but not so cold as Edmonton as there was no wind.

1:30 pm. Arrived Winnipeg. The fatherly porter set me on the way. Winnipeg cold and sunshiny. Streets glibbed with ice. Had lunch in the station and then set out for a walk, but everyone I asked the way of was foreign. The Westerners are gentler, more refined, than the prairie folk, who look much foreigner and less British. They are all running hither and thither huddled in fur coats. Guess they’d have to or they’d freeze in their tracks. It was 5° below this morning in Winnipeg.

It’s snow everywhere. The pine trees are different to ours. They are much smaller and straight from top to bottom, not pyramidal like the Western ones. I saw one little bird flutter up, the only living thing in all these miles.

7:40 a.m. Arrived in Toronto. Went straight to Mrs. Mather’s. When they saw it was me the welcome was warm. I spent the day there till late afternoon. Then we found a hotel, the Tuxedo, 504 Sherbourne Street.

Slept till nearly noon. Went with Miss Buell and Mrs. Housser to tea at Mr. A.Y. Jackson’s Studio Building. I loved his things, particularly some snow things of Quebec and three canvases up Skeena River. I felt a little as if beaten at my own game. His Indian pictures have something mine lack — rhythm, poetry. Mine are so downright. But perhaps his haven’t quite the love in them of the people and the country that mine have. How could they? He is not a Westerner and I took no liberties. I worked for history and cold fact. Next time I paint Indians I’m going off on a tangent tear. There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness, the Western breath of go-to-the-devil-if-you-don’t-like-it, the eternal big spaceness of it. Oh the West! I’m of it and I love it.

Today I am going to Mr. Arthur Lismer’s studio and see his things. These men are very interesting and big and inspiring, so different from the foolish little artists filled with conceit that one usually meets. They have arrested the art world. They are not afraid of adverse criticisms. They are big and courageous. I know they are building an art worthy of our great country, and I want to have my share, to put in a little spoke for the West, one woman holding up my end. I feel the group will be dissatisfied when they see my work and I think I could do better now I know they’re there. I
must
get back to it and let other things go. If not, my chance is gone. I’ve not so much time left now. Every year after sixty one is going downhill in vitality. Soon I’ll reach that mark. Perhaps it will be easier after this trip and the girls may not feel it quite such a waste of time, a useless quest.

I have met the third of the “Group of Seven,” Arthur Lismer. I don’t feel as if these men are strangers. Somehow they wake an instant response in me. Lismer’s two last pictures gave me a feeling of exhilaration and joy. All his works are fine, but he is going on to higher and bigger things, sweep and rhythm of the lines, stronger colours, simpler forms. He was extremely nice. I wonder if these men feel, as I do, that there is a common chord struck between us. No, I don’t believe they feel so toward a woman. I’m way behind them in drawing and in composition and rhythm and planes, but I know inside me what they’re after and I feel that perhaps, given a chance, I could get it too. Ah, how I have wasted the years! But there are still a few left.

Lismer’s studio is apart from his house, warm and light and quiet — ideal. He has only recently quit teaching at the Toronto School of Art. The “other element” made things impossible for him. He is lecturing now, spreading the gladness of the newer way, revealing the big, grand things of our country to its sons and daughters without the fret and carping of his students or the scorn of his adversaries. He is spreading his wings and soaring up, up! He is more poetical than Mr. Jackson, but Mr. Jackson is steady and strong. His feet are planted firmly and he has the grit to push and struggle and square his shoulders and stand by the others and by his convictions. He is still young in years but old. Probably the war did that. Oh, they’re very fine! I’m glad, glad I have seen them and their work. Tomorrow I shall meet Lawren Harris, another of them.

Oh, God, what have I seen? Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me, wonderful, mighty, not of this
world. Chords way down in my being have been touched. Dumb notes have struck chords of wonderful tone. Something has called out of somewhere. Something in me is trying to answer.

It is surging through my whole being, the wonder of it all, like a great river rushing on, dark and turbulent, and rushing and irresistible, carrying me away on its wild swirl like a helpless little bundle of wreckage. Where, where? Oh, these men, this Group of Seven, what have they created? — a world stripped of earthiness, shorn of fretting details, purged, purified; a naked soul, pure and unashamed; lovely spaces filled with wonderful serenity. What language do they speak, those silent, awe-filled spaces? I do not know. Wait and listen; you shall hear by and by. I long to hear and yet I’m half afraid. I think perhaps I shall find God here, the God I’ve longed and hunted for and failed to find. Always he’s seemed nearer out in the big spaces, sometimes almost within reach but never quite. Perhaps in this newer, wider, space-filled vision I shall find him.

Jackson, Johnson, Varley, Lismer, Harris — up-up-up-up-up! Lismer and Harris stir me most. Lismer is swirling, sweeping on, but Harris is rising into serene, uplifted planes, above the swirl into holy places.

I wrote and read late into the night. Around 3 o’clock I slept heavily and always I was away in that new world of planes and spaces. Never have they been absent a minute from my consciousness. I must talk with Mr. Harris again. He told me to go back. I’m going and I want to go alone. I want to see again “Above Lake Superior” and that stern mountain cradling the cloud. I want to see them all, but those two I
must
see before I go West
again. I am tired today. Yesterday I was so deeply stirred, moved beyond what I can express. It has exhausted me.

Miss Buell and I went to MacDonald’s studio today. His son, Thoreau, a boy all spirit, almost too fine to stay down on this earth, showed us his father’s things, Mr. MacDonald himself being at his school teaching. The boy is clever and will do great things one day (if he lives). They all speak of him as something apart. They say his mother is a lovely woman. In this atmosphere of intimacy with the Group, how could such a sensitive soul fail to rise to wonderful heights?

Mr. MacDonald’s canvases were big and fine — lovely design and sometimes good colour. At other times I found them a little hot and heavy and earthy. I enjoyed them greatly but without thrill. They waked few emotions in me. “The Tangled Garden” I liked about the best. Possibly I may see more in Ottawa and understand his things more.

I left my glasses in MacDonald’s studio. Tomorrow I shall go for them and, if I can bear it, I will go and see if Lawren Harris is in and ask to see his things again. He meant it when he said, “Come back again.” They have been good to me, these men. Harris said to me as he brought out his things, “If you see anything you can suggest, just mention it, will you?”

Me?) “I know nothing,” I said.

“You are one of us,” was his reply.

Oh, how wonderful to think they feel that! Their works call to my very soul. Will they know what’s in me by those old Indian pictures, or will they feel disappointment and find me small and weak and fretful? Have the carps and frets and worries that have eaten into my soul, since I returned from Paris full of ambitions and then had to struggle out there alone, made me small and
mean, poor and petty — bitter? They too have had to struggle and buffet and battle, but they’ve stood together and the fire in them has burned steadily. They’re rising above it with sincerity and bigness and courage. They’ve forged ahead, helping each other, sympathizing, strengthening each other and straightening out the way, working vitally and serenely. Surely a movement that has such men for its foundation must prevail and live and become an honoured glory to our land. If I could pray, if I knew where to find a god to pray to, I would pray, “God bless the Group of Seven.”

Rhythm and space, space and rhythm, how can I learn more about these? Well, old girl, you’ll have to get down and
dig.

Thoreau has returned my glasses to the Arts and Crafts. I’m sorry. Now I have no excuse to visit MacDonald. It doesn’t seem fair to disturb those workers again, though I know they are bighearted enough to help one. I’ve got to go and shop. How I hate it! And there’s a tea this afternoon. I don’t care about that.