Hundreds and Thousands (40 page)

Shan’t mention weather again till it improves. It’s just awful. Suffice it to say rain continues to pour. The Spencers are “straight nice,” Father, Mother and boy. Mrs. likes to talk and Mr. to joke and all three like the dogs. I keep remarkably busy tending
beasts, cooking for them, fixing the good old van — everything has to sit
so
or we couldn’t move. Then there’s writing and a
very
occasional sketch in a five-minute period of “1ne,” and letter writing and reading and singing to the dogs to keep their hearts up and playing “this pig went to market” on Woo’s toes and fingers to make her life less drab in the wet. Two families come to my tap in the woods to get water. I notice they come no more. All they have to do these days is hold a cup up to the sky and hang clothes on a line and iron. Poor strawberry growers! Their crops sopped to mush!

THERE IS A DEAL
of satisfaction in singing rubbish to the beasts. They take it for what it is worth. Today is radiant though now and again the sky puckers up. I have sketched this morning near the van. This afternoon will attack the gravel pits. The stuff about is big. Its beauty consists of its wide sweeps and is difficult, for space is more difficult than objects. Objects are all well enough for studies, but what this place has to say is out in the open. It is like a vast sound that must be produced with very few notes and they must be
very true
or else it will be nothing but noise. There are no interruptions to complain of for beyond the baker not a single soul has been to the camp. I can go to the Spencers’ when I want to. Three black bears were down in the next bay two nights back. They killed one and wounded one.

There is great heat. The earth has forgotten about the sousing it recently received. This poor fine little grass is drying into hay that will never be cut. The sheep pant and crop just the tidbits.
For the first time in days one of the people who use my tap in the woods has come. I suppose their cloud water is finished.

It is not good for man to be
too much
alone unless he is really very big, with stores of knowledge to draw from and a clear brain to think with. That’s the whole problem: a clear brain that can take thoughts and work them out, can filter — clean out — muddy, confused thoughts, can read meanings into things, draw meanings out of things and come to conclusions, a brain that converses with life and can, above all, enable a man to forget himself. The tendency in being alone and not having anyone to exchange thoughts with is to be always on the fence between yourself and yourself.

It’s one of those days that blare. Sky high and blue, sun dictatorial, wind uncertain, puffing here, huffing there. The grass is ripe. It is turning pinkish and leaning. The seeds are heavy on the sere stalks. The sea has no depth. It is all shimmering like a glass-topped table. You could slither things over its surface and they’d go on and on as far as the momentum of your throw. Nothing would sink, just slide over the top. It looks like ice except that it
looks
hot, not cold. The pines are solid colour now, no contrast between the new tops and adult needles. Lambs are blithering for their m-a-a-as. How
do
the lambs know the silly face of their own m-a-a-a from all the other silly faced m-a-a-a-s or each sheep know its own waggletail, woolly child. All their b-a-a-a-s are in exactly the same key.

Up at six — van gets hot. All the camp chores now done. Powerfully hot but a nice breeze. Last night I called on Mr. Strathdee,
my camp host of two years ago. We conversed, me holding three dogs, he leaning on the fence. I heard all the little neighbour gossip and told about my move and the monk and dogs. He was pleased I went; his life must be very humdrum. What a help radio is to those isolated souls too shy to exchange much with humans! The unbodied voice comes to them; there is no one there to make them self-conscious by scrutinizing their reactions. They can talk back if they want to, they are utterly free, they have neither to agree nor disagree. Thoughts and news and music tumble into their minds to be sorted by them at leisure — very wonderful and humanizing. I got home just at dark. The Spencers were going to bed as I passed. My pines were black. There was no moon or rather such a baby he was hardly born. I meandered through the black stumps keeping to the road for fear of treading on an ant hill but I was not scared even when I thought of the three bears in the neighbourhood. I ate doughnuts and strawberries in bed and read myself to sleep amid snores and puffings of the beasts. “D’Sonoqua” is laid by again for more blemishes to rise and be skimmed off at a future date. It disappoints me.

THIS MORNING IS
a morning superb. The camp jobs are jobbed, pups and monkey bathed, all our beds aired and made up. Woo is tethered to a five-gallon shiny coal-oil can. She can boost it round camp and I can keep tab by the clank, and she cannot get it through the van door on a wrecking bout. Now for a few moments of quiet and then the woods. Did a good sketch yesterday — woods, light, movement, and wrestled with the gravel pit last night of which I made a botch and learned something. I suppose the whole hitch is I am not sufficiently interested in the pits. They are spacy but there is the crudity of men about them,
and they smell commercial. The merry rattling stones and the glistening gravel are now roads and buildings, married to other ingredients, dead and uninteresting, and nature has not had time to heal the scars and holes yet. Fluffy little trees are bobbing out of the gullies. The pines are wrapped about in warm, sunny greens and standing still. Yesterday those silly single spikes on top of the young growth bobbed and bowed to each other like gawky, immature youths. Today they are trying to straighten and brag who can reach the sky first.

HUMPHREY CAME OUT
to camp this morn. Nice of the boy to bicycle ten miles in the heat to see an old woman. (There is such yards of clean, fresh
him.
) I made buckets of fresh lemonade for him. I can’t help wishing I had been in town this week. There were lots of ones I knew came for a medical conference, many from a long way away. But from the paper it seems that most of the time was spent in garden parties. I’d think that after the expense and all they’d want to hear and hear and talk, talk, compare, consult and chin over all the new stunts, not gad and garden-party. Gee, if we only had artists’ conventions and all met, how luscious it would be!

I don’t know anything as cold and deep a blue as the sea today with the sky high and blue above it. There sits Mount Baker, very unreal, nosing up in the sky, and there Victoria, rather dull and aggressive today, between sea and Heaven. I got lost in the woods. Did not note the direction I took going in. I was very hungry and very cross and went round and round and came out where I least expected. It must be awful to be really lost. I knew
the woods I was in were not vast and that I’d get somewhere some time. When I came into camp the monkey had eaten my dinner — I was mad!

Indians must have felt the same way as I did when I ran into town for one hour yesterday. The town felt and smelt stale. It was hot, airless and noisy. Folk looked feverish and sweaty and ugly. My sisters’ gardens looked lovely, one mass of flowers, but when I got out of the motor, such a rush of heavy perfume from all sorts of blooms burst out at the gate it was almost nauseating. Country smells are sweeter and wilder, more subtle and mysterious and evasive.

WHAT A PLACE
this is to dream and drift and let the world go by, to go on and on and never catch up with your thoughts, to chew and stare like cows and sheep! The sky is low and full over a grey sea, and the breeze is moist and sticky.

THE SUN SHOUTS
, “Right about face,” and every little dandelion looks him plumb in the eye. The grass is full of them, bright and pale yellow among the now warm pinky ochre of the drying-up grass. It is cloudless. Heaven has put on her blue dress and climbed to the top beyond all reach.

It’s not raining but very cold and miserable. The grass and trees, even the birds’ wings, are all heavy with wet, and the sheep look waterlogged. If there is going to be another deluge like June’s I’m glad to go home though I’ve done good work these last few days
and am in the swing of it. Yesterday it was the open spaces; burnt stumps and sea and sky trimmed up the edges, but it was the hole that I was trying for.

Therese and Dr. Gunther brought us in. House dirty and much housecleaning necessary. Great tiredness. Welcome from Phyllis and Mary and the other kids in the neighbourhood did the heart good. Sisters looking bleached with weariness. I feel bad about it and can’t do anything. They are impossible to help. Weeds in garden knee-high, weeds in yard neck-high, a wilderness. Nan Cheney came Saturday. We had a long talk. Willie, Sunday. Edythe, today.

GOODBYE TO LIZZIE 1936

I’m just whizzy! Sold four pictures, one from Vancouver Gallery, “Shoreline,” one paper sketch, one French cottage, one Victoria.

What a help to finances! Mrs. de Pencier of Toronto bought the first and her daughter the other three. Edythe and Fred came to supper and we had a lovely evening. I read them my “D’Sonoqua’s Cats.” Some of the descriptions they thought beautiful. I felt there was something did not satisfy Fred though apparently he could not quite put his finger on it. He suggested condensing it more and he took it home to read again. How sweet a place the world and all its inhabitants are at times!

Everything seemed shining today, from the freshly cleaned house and the sleek new pups to the sunny little “Mrs. Bird” and my visitors, one of whom was the daughter of an old pupil of mine and brought such happy memories of her mother and me in the old studio in Vancouver. The world of today was clear, bubbly, and just straight nice.

Yesterday the Cathedral bells were consecrated. I did not go to the service but went to my radio. Suddenly joy burst right into the room. The whole air seemed alive. It was as if the tongues of those great cold, hard metal things had become flesh and joy. They burst into being screaming with delight and the city vibrated. Some wordless thing they said touched something so deep inside you that they made tears come. Some of them were given in memory of dead people. That’s a splendid living memorial, live voices speaking for the dead. If someone were to die and you were permitted either to see
or
hear them, I think it would be best to hear their voice. What a person says comes out of his heart; you have to use your own imagination to interpret his looks. People reacted far more to the bells than they would have to a picture.

Received $120 for picture “Shoreline.” Gallery took $30 commission from $150 sale price to Mrs. de Pencier. Also got $75 for three sketches from Miss de Pencier.

Glorious weather. Bright sun. Spanking breeze. I went with Alice to Gorge Park. How good she is, dragging those million kids to pleasures! The gardens were so lovely, with the flowers, birds and fish, and the Japanese waiters all smiles. Children bobbed everywhere and sunshine trembled on to the walks under the trees in little pools. The trees were so tall and green and protective. There was a hum of chatter as people unpacked baskets and the Japanese ran here and there with teapots and ice cream, the children revelling in revels and licking lick-sticks.

Lizzie has been in the hospital four days now, suffering patiently. Oh, why? Alice is wonderfully competent and untiring. I feel such a flab. All the prayer people poke in to pray beside Lizzie. Why can’t they do it at home? I think they like to be
seen
doing it. Seems like I can’t pray much these days. Seems like I just want to lean up against God and say nothing. I take myself to task for not praying more but I guess He understands. Why is it when one goes to a hospital they want to burst out blubbering first thing? I feel blunted all over and very old. Tonight is very lonesome. Lizzie lies in St. Joseph’s Hospital very ill. Alice lies in her little house, with the children’s soft breathings all about her and the great powerful dog Chum standing guard on them all. And I down in my cottage with just the dogs.