Hundreds and Thousands (46 page)

How selfish
everyone
is, and me too, I suppose. These women who come to tend one don’t give a hoot. They want to get as much as possible and give as little as they can. They like to make one feel it is very good of them to look after anything so lazy as you are and to indicate that they are rather martyrs and that you are taking rather more care than necessary and are quite capable. Poor old women, we are not nice as we begin to decay, to slow up and grow stupid. We hang on to youthful ideas and the youngsters laugh at us. We love our liberty and ability whereas we have no strength and ought to be in homes and cared for like the too-young-to-be-sensible are. We are no more fit than they to cope with heavy problems but we have known the freedom of independence and they have not.

Today I sat in the back yard with the chickens and dogs, seeing a million things that needed doing, little things but beyond me. I said to myself, “Quit it. Remember that you’ve done these things in your day and now you must sit and watch others do some things for themselves, not for you. You’re finished. You now take on a different phase of life. What is the good of struggling to keep up? That’s going back. Your job now is different. If you would go forward you must adapt and press on into something new befitting
the development you have attained, less bodily activity and more spiritual activity, accepting the change happily.”

It is a glorious day with a bitter wind. I am restless and empty. Want to stir and live again, to refill and relive. I do not want to write. I am dried up. Funny, sometimes you are juicy and ripe and sometimes you are like an empty cocoon. Mount Tolmie is quiet. Even the wind that buffeted it all day is dead. Under the brown of everything the sap is running. The green is bursting, shouting, hollering a song of growth.

Ottawa has bought two canvases, a paper sketch, “Blunden Harbour,” a Haida village and “Sky” for $750. Madame Stokowski, wife of the composer and conductor, bought a small canvas for $75. Mr. Southam bought a small Skidigate sketch in oils for $150 and Mrs. Douglas a French cottage for $15. An old Vancouver pupil took a Pemberton sketch, also for $15. How lucky I am, or rather, how well taken care of!

How comfortable Willie is! We had a long talk. If there was war and he had to go I’d die I think. It’s so awful about Alice’s eyes. If
you sympathize with her she says, “Don’t moan, I hate it.” It seems so heartless just to say nothing, and all the time you ache for her. Barriers, why must they be between all humans, even the ones we love best, things our self-consciousness will not let us voice, so scared of showing ourselves. Sometimes I feel as if it would be easier to see Alice die than go blind. It’s going to hurt her independence so. She just can’t stand being led or pitied or helped. I think I like a little to be babied and wheedled and coaxed (by some people). Alice repels petting or softness. She gives grandly and takes poorly.

Alice goes into hospital Wednesday to have one eye done. She is brighter, talks freely, so it’s much easier.

Alice did not go to hospital. They could not operate for another week. I’d have been all edgy. She is calm and resigned.

I have been painting a Nass pole in a sea of green and finished “Cauve,” an Indian story. I sent four pictures off to the Vancouver exhibition, “Massett Bears,” “Metchosen,” “Alive,” and “Woods Without Man” (invitation B.C. Artists show). I got a nice little maid, a farm girl from near Edmonton, called Louise. She mothers me.

I heard yesterday about my one-man show in Toronto. There were about twenty canvases collected from Toronto and Ottawa. I got two good write-ups from different papers and two letters, also a cheque for $50 from a Miss Lyle for a canvas.

I have been thinking that I am a shirker. I have dodged publicity, hated write-ups and all that splutter. Well, that’s all selfish conceit that embarrassed me. I have been forgetting Canada and forgetting women painters. It’s them I ought to be upholding, nothing to do with puny me at all. Perhaps what brought it home was the last two lines of a crit in a Toronto paper: “Miss Carr is essentially Canadian, not by reason of her subject matter alone, but by her approach to it.” I am glad of that. I am also glad that I am showing these men that women can hold up their end. The men resent a woman getting any honour in what they consider is essentially their field. Men painters mostly despise women painters. So I have decided to stop squirming, to throw any honour in with Canada and women. It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she’s something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are part of.

Today another cheque came, for $225. It’s almost unbelievable. Mr. McLean of Toronto bought one little old canvas and one brand new. Everyone is tickled. One thing I must guard against, I must never think of sales while I am painting. Sure as I do, my painting will roll downhill. Mr. Band writes, “I am considering ‘Grey.’ Do you like it? I do.” Yes and no. I did like it and many people have liked it, but since painting it my seeing has perhaps become more fluid. I was more static then, and was thinking more of effect than spirit. It is like the difference between a play and real life. No matter how splendid the acting is you can sit there with your heart right in your mouth but way down inside you know that it is different to the same thing in life itself.

It seems to me that a large part of painting is longing, a fluid movement ahead, a pouring forward towards the unknown, not a prying into things beyond but a steady pressing towards the barriers, an effort to be on hand when the barriers lift. A picture is just an on-the-way thing, not something caught and static, something frozen in its tracks, but a joyous going, towards what? We don’t know. Music is full of longing and movement. Painting should be the same.

Alice went into hospital to have her eye operated on tomorrow.

I have been painting all day, with four canvases on the go — Nass pole in undergrowth, Koskemo, Massett bear, and an exultant wood. My interest is keen and the work of fair quality. I have been sent more ridiculous press notices. People are frequently comparing my work with Van Gogh. Poor Van Gogh! Well, I suppose they have to say something. Some say I am great and some that I am not modern. I don’t think these young journalists know what or where or how I am. I am glad that they all seem to agree that I am preeminently Canadian. I do hope I do not get bloated and self-satisfied. When proud feelings come I step up over them to the realm of work, to the thing I want, the liveness of the thing itself.

It’s splendid to have the money just when Alice and I need it. I don’t feel as if it was money paid for my work joy. It doesn’t seem to have any connection. It is as if the money had tumbled out of the clouds, not as if I had bartered my thoughts for it. I feel that it came fairly and honestly and welcome. Alice is pleased about it, and very glad for me but the pictures or press notices or work don’t enter her head. When I mentioned that I had been
sent more press notices in letters she said, “That’s nice,” but she never asked to hear them or were they good or bad. She just rejoices in my luck as a bit of sheer luck; that’s all it is to her.

Alice’s eye was operated on this morning. I went to hospital where she lies patiently, bandaged up, shut into the blackness. It sickens one. Is it the beginning of the dark for her? I find myself shutting my eyes and imagining it night all through the day. We took sweet smelling flowers to her.

She’s had a good night and does not feel too bad this morning. I am back in bed. Felt weepy and not up to shucks. Guess the nervous tension was higher than I realized the last few days. If one could only
do
something for her. There’s going to be heaps of heartaches.

Victoria University Women’s Club are making me an honorary member. “In appreciation of your contribution to the world of creative art,” the letter said. It is very lovely of them and very embarrassing to me. Why should one be honoured for doing what one loves to do? If I have “contributed” it was because it was my job and I couldn’t help it.

I had a letter from Toronto this morning. Toronto Art Gallery has purchased “Western Forest,” “Movement in the Woods” and “Kispiax Village” for $1,075. I was stunned when I opened the
letter. It is wonderful. I should feel hilarious. I am truly grateful but so heavily sunk in pain (liver or gall) that I am dull as a log and rather cranky. I’d rather have twenty-five sick hearts than one sick liver. The doctor came today. Says heart fairly improved but liver ructious. Ruth came to say goodbye. She is a staunch and true friend.

I am afraid. Vancouver Art Gallery is considering buying some pictures. Suppose this sudden desire to obtain “Emily Carrs” were to knock me into conceit. Suppose I got smug and saw the dollar sign as I worked. That would be worse than dying a “nobody,” a thousand times worse. When they sat picking possibilities to be sent forward a great revolt filled me. I do not mind parting with the old pictures. I was glad of the money and a little glad that those who had always jeered at my work should see it bear fruit, but there was not the deep satisfying gladness of letters from someone who has felt something in my work that thrilled or lifted them.

King George vi and Queen Elizabeth were crowned today. I went to bed feeling punk and determined not to get up at 1:30 a.m. to listen to the broadcast but I woke promptly on time. I woke the maid, who was sleeping like a log. She is young and it seemed right that she should hear it to remember. She came in like one drugged. We sat till 4:30 listening. I was disgusted not to hear a peep out of the Queen. On and on it spun, one giddy succession of gaudiness and magnificence. Your mind saw them, up and down on their knees, sitting in this state chair and that and saying,
“I will” and “I do,” putting on crowns and taking them off. I just thought that if the King and Queen could be off in a wood and vow their vows straight to God away from the crowd, how much happier they would be, but perhaps they would not.

King George vi spoke to the people all over the world. I honour him tremendously. He spoke with extremely slow deliberateness. It must have been an ordeal for a nervous man with an impediment that has only recently been overcome holding that enormous position and facing the world. What he said always included his Queen and was solemnly grand too. Long live our King! I am glad the popular hail-fellow-well-met with all his lovableness has given place to this more sober, home-loving man, dignified and kingly.

The day is too glorious for words. Things are growing like wild-fire. I am in a blither of embarrassment over a great coffin full of lovely flowers that came from the University Women’s Club to welcome me as a member. It’s wonderful. I feel like old Koko at the Empress Hotel when they brought him a huge silver salver of cream that was upset. He was far too embarrassed to lap it. But I have sniffed and gloried in the flowers. Only it seems as if it was all a mistake, just old Millie Carr being a member of that group and being so honoured, and here I am such a liverish wreck, too nauseated and depressed to put a brush to work. I want to cry, but I haven’t any tears. I want to work. There are such lots of things to do and maybe only a little time to do them in. I don’t know, sometimes I feel finished and in tatters and then I think I am
good for aeons of ages. Ruth has gone. I did not know how blue I’d be without her. She has meant an awful lot these last months. Must hurry and get to another Indian village. It is marvellous how they help to keep one in place. There is something about the great calm of them.

Ruth has seen Dr. Sedgewick who likes my stories and will be glad to write an introduction if Macmillan’s will publish them. He is also willing to edit them.

I have been too busy writing Indian stories to enter my diary. I have been very absorbed. Some days it seems hopeless trying to say what I want. I just flounder in mediocre thoughts and words and paint. Well, those days one should plod away at technical difficulties and not worry or be depressed because that which is greater than oneself seems to have forsaken you and that which is greater than the objects to which it belongs seems to be asleep.

I am very tired. I corrected and typed the Skidigate story, “My Friends,” and worked on the gravel pit picture. Jack Grant came.

Dr. Sedgewick came to visit. It was the first time I had met him. He is a funny, merry person.

I posted twenty stories to Dr. Sedgewick for his reading and criticism. I had worked on them very hard and felt that there was good stuff in them but bad workmanship. I was very disgusted and
tired and felt one minute that I never wanted to see the things again and the next was ardently anxious to know what Dr. Sedge-wick would find in them. The stories were “Ucluelet,” “Kitwancool,” “Sailing to Yan,” “Tanoo,” “Skedans,” “Cumshewa,” “Friends,” “Cha-atl,” “Greenville,” “Sophie,” “Juice,” “Wash Mary,” “Martha’s Joey,” “Two Bits and a Wheelbarrow,” “Sleep,” “The Blouse,” “The Stare,” “Balance,” “Throat and a Monkey’s Hands,” and “The Heart of a Peacock.” The last three are not Indian stories. Probably when people do not know the places or people they will be flat but they are true and I would rather they were flat than false. I tried to be plain, straight, simple and Indian. I wanted to be true to the places as well as to the people. I put my whole soul into them and tried to avoid sentimentality. I went down deep into myself and dug up.