The Quintland Sisters

by Shelley Wood

  After you left, Ivy and Fred came to town so Fred could pack up the rooms he’s let ever since the girls were just a few months old. It feels like the end of an era, Fred moving away.

  Ivy had more extraordinary, albeit thirdhand, gossip, about Dr. Dafoe, the guardians, and the Dionnes. She told me that Mr. Munro, the man in charge of nursery finances, heard that a reporter at the Star got a tip that the police had investigated M. Dionne on a complaint of seduction and illicit connection, brought forward by the parents of a girl who was helping at the farmhouse when the babies were born. According to this anonymous source, which the reporter was never able to verify, police didn’t press charges because of the intense media scrutiny the farmhouse was facing at the time.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Munro himself has accused M. Dionne of hiring a private detective to prove that Dr. Dafoe and Mr. Munro are embezzling funds from the girls. I simply can’t believe this. Mr. Munro—you must remember him: a lanky, older gentleman with a white, shaggy mustache and a head like a mop—seems to be absolutely scrupulous about everything, and is careful to keep me updated about the payments I receive for my drawings and paintings. But according to Ivy, Mr. Munro has been unable to provide certain documents and says that these went missing when his home was burgled, a break-and-enter, he claims, that was orchestrated by M. Dionne.

  Good gracious. It must be a measure of my cloistered little life or my winter-addled mind that I’m stooping to all this tittle-tattle. I sound worse than Marguerite! Promise me you’ll throw this letter on the fire when you’re done.

  Yours truly,

  Emma

  Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

  Callander, ON

  * * *

  February 10, 1939

  11 Rue Saint Ida

  Montreal, Quebec

  Dear Lewis,

  Your letter caught me off guard: I hadn’t even thought of applying to another art college or even to Mrs. Fangel’s school in New York, for that matter. It’s easier to imagine staying right where I am, continuing to care for the girls with the freedom to paint when and what I choose.

  If only I knew what the future holds for the girls, and for me—whether my place is here with them indefinitely or whether the Dionnes will oust me the first chance they get. Ivy has always nettled me with questions about my “plans,” and I have never had an answer. It’s like bumping around in a dark room groping for a match. I can’t picture the quintuplets “all grown up” and living a life outside the nursery any more than I can picture that for myself. And what an odd expression that is: picturing yourself. I’ve been dabbling with a self-portrait, just for the challenge, and the fruits of this labor have been laughably bad. What does that say about me, I wonder: that I am completely incapable of drawing a reasonable likeness of my own face? Someone I recognize as myself? Or worse, that I fundamentally don’t know who I am or what I should be.

  Mr. Munro was at the nursery last month and sat me down to explain how I’m being paid for my latest paintings. I hadn’t realized I would be paid a commission each time the same picture was used. I have mixed feelings about all this. I know these advertisements bring in much-needed funds for the girls, but they also keep the girls front and center, don’t they? In any case, it seems I have a little nest egg for my own shadowy future, whatever it holds.

  Yours truly,

  Emma

  Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

  Callander, ON

  * * *

  March 20, 1939

  11 Rue Saint Ida

  Montreal, Quebec

  Dear Lewis,

  I expect you’ve gone up in your plane and come back safe and sound or I would have read about it in the papers. Next time I’d much prefer you just told me after you’ve returned to earth in one piece.

  As you’ve no doubt heard, the girls will now be traveling to Toronto to meet the King and Queen. They are excited beyond words, but what on earth will they make of the ragged world beyond the gates? The rest of us are ill at ease, partly because this abrupt change of plans seems to have come about through some crafty manipulation by M. Dionne against the wishes of Dr. Dafoe, who ended up looking a fool. The doctor has always insisted that it wouldn’t be safe for the quintuplets to leave the premises, not even to cross the road to visit their brothers and sisters in the house where they were born. The lethal germs of the outside world would be too much for their delicate constitutions, not to mention the constant threat of kidnappers, blackmailers, and barren couples poised to snatch one of our precious five and keep her as their own. Fear and precaution have been the code we’ve lived by for nearly five years, so to watch Dr. Dafoe now waving them aside like a puff of pipe smoke just because he’s been granted an audience with the Royals has been, well, a little unnerving. Everything seems on the verge of crumbling down. It’s dawning on me that all these rules, walls, and fences may not have been for keeping danger out, but for locking us within. And who knows what we’ll find when the doors swing open and we stumble from our cells, blinking in the light.

  Write and tell me about the flight. Did everything go smoothly? How about your landing feet? I hope they tucked up and down exactly as you expected.

  Best wishes,

  Emma

  Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

  Callander, ON

  * * *

  April 18, 1939

  11 Rue Saint Ida

  Montreal, Quebec

  Dear Lewis,

  Your letter arrived today describing the FDB’s maiden flight. I could feel your exhilaration coming off the page in gusts—a welcome distraction from the matter on everyone’s mind here: the visit to Toronto to meet the King and Queen. The girls spend every waking moment peppering us with questions about how a train goes uphill, who pushes it, how fast, and so on. They simply can’t believe they themselves will go somewhere by train just like the children in their picture books. And I was worried about your flight, I won’t pretend otherwise. But even more than that, I was happy for you. Thrilled. And proud. You’ve worked so hard—I know how much you wanted this.

  Will you pay a visit to Callander this summer? I would love to talk to you, really talk—not just about all this gossip from Ivy. I can’t think of any other person who listens as well as you. Let me know if that’s in the cards.

  Yours truly,

  Emma

  Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

  Callander, ON

  * * *

  May 9, 1939

  11 Rue Saint Ida

  Montreal, Quebec

  Dear Lewis,

  Your letter inviting me to visit arrived the day before yesterday and I have read it a dozen times, probably more. I’ve decided to take a page out of your book and speak plainly in a way I could never do if you were standing here in front of me. These letters have done that for us, haven’t they? Allowed us to say what’s on our minds.

  The thing is, Lewis, I can’t tell you what I “want to do,” because I don’t know what that is myself. For as long as I can remember all I wanted to do was to paint and draw, and to have the freedom to ogle the world without the world ogling me, recording everything in my scribble book. Then, in the queerest twist—because I’ve never paid much attention to children and never felt I was cut out for motherhood—I fell in love with five baby girls and for better or for worse became the closest thing to a mother they’ve ever had. My priorities shifted. Suddenly all that mattered to me was that they simply survive, that they grow healthy and strong, and that they love me the way I loved them.

  And then, out of nowhere, art sauntered back into my life.

  I wonder sometimes if I’d never met Mrs. Fangel or Dr. Dafoe hadn’t insisted I show her my work—if I was merely a “nurse” here and nothing more: would I be just as happy? Would I have stayed so long? I’m not sure. Being paid for my art, being admired for it and knowing it’s made a difference, however small, in the fortunes of the quintuplets has for some time been a source of real pride.

  But Mr. Munro visited aga
in the other day, showing me my current bank balance and explaining that M. Dionne has received copies of all payments made to me, which makes me squirm. Mark my words: I’ll be hustled out the door quick as you please if M. Dionne decides that I’ve profited too much off his family. What’s dawning on me now is that he won’t be entirely wrong. I’ve worried for so long about whether the quintuplets would have enough money to keep them safe forever: safe from the prying crowds, from the poverty of their parents, and from dangers I can’t even put a name to. Now it seems the only thing money has done here has been to poison people against one another, coloring their every thought, and leaving them hungering for more.

  But things are changing here, we all feel it. If not later this month when we board that train for Toronto, then the next month, or the next: change is around the bend. The girls are growing up and Europe is rumbling toward war while Canada taps its feet and feigns disinterest. And you, Lewis. You are building Canada’s planes.

  But that doesn’t address your question about a visit. I’ve spoken with Dr. Dafoe and received permission to take some time off after the royal visit, so getting leave is not the issue. In fact, Ivy has also invited me to stay several days with her in Toronto, so I’m feeling popular. I do need to see Ivy, not only to catch up but because Fred is photographing my portfolio—I’ve sent everything to them this evening. I could, however, spend the night of the 22nd with them, then take the train on to Montreal the next morning. I am not due back at the nursery until the night of the 28th.

  So here’s my question, Lewis. Are we simply good friends? Is that why we’re writing back and forth? Over the past few months your letters have been the brightest moments in some otherwise gloomy days. You’ve made me smile while everyone around me seems to have forgotten how. When you went up in your plane I was worried, truly worried, about whether your invention would manage to bring you safely back to earth. But I’ve wondered, what grounds do I have to be concerned? Or rather, on what terms?

  Let me be frank. I don’t have the best instincts and I’m a poor judge of people, men in particular. I tend to see meaning in the lightest words and gestures, but am blind to everything real, everything important, taking place right in front of my very eyes. I’ve made a fool of myself in the past with unfounded assumptions and hollow hopes, then regretted them dreadfully. I don’t want to make the same mistake here.

  Yours sincerely,

  Emma

  Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

  Callander, ON

  1954

  Epilogue

  August 9, 1954 (The Canadian Press)

  * * *

  TRAGIC, SOLEMN: QUINTS BID ADIEU TO ÉMILIE

  5,000 Wait in Rain to Pay Respects

  By C. M. Fellman

  Callander, ONTARIO—It was like those famous old years all over again—but with solemn, tragic overtones. Crowds stretched in long lines in front of the Dionne home today, just as they did in the 1930s. They spilled out onto the grey asphalt parking grounds where cars stood row upon glistening row.

  This August afternoon in 1954 was typical of a warm Sunday afternoon from 1934 to 1940 when the Dionne quintuplets were on display.

  It took death to revive that old familiar scene.

  Today there were no impish children on exhibition behind huge one-way-view windows in the public pavilion. Instead the long lines of men and women turned left to an imposing yellow brick Georgian mansion where the body of Émilie, fourth-born of the famous five, lay in state.

  For two hours in the afternoon a stream of 5,000 persons flowed in and out of the quiet Dionne living room where the open casket was placed.

  Outside the gate of the iron fence surrounding the Dionne property had been flung open to the public for the first time in 14 years. Not since the public viewing of the girls was discontinued in 1940 had a public visit been permitted by the publicity-shy Dionne family. The four grief-stricken quintuplet survivors—Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, and Marie—sat beside Émilie’s body from the time of its arrival from Montreal at 10 p.m. Saturday until 2 a.m. today.

  Among those who came to pay their final respects today were nuns and priests from schools where the quintuplets and their siblings had studied over the years, as well as many of the physicians, nurses, orderlies, teachers, guards, secretaries, and domestic staff who once worked at the Allan R. Dafoe Hospital and Nursery.

  Used with permission.

  November 2, 1954

  303–555 West 57th

  New York City, NY

  Dear Emma Trimpany,

  You likely won’t remember me, but as a young girl I was great friends and pen pals with your little sister, Edith, who I came to know during the many holidays I spent with my grandparents in Callander. I don’t recall whether I ever met you back then, but I knew from Edith’s letters and Christmas cards that she had a big sister—an artist—who left for New York and never came back. My family and I were deeply sorry to hear of the accident that took your parents and Edith last year.

  We are coming to terms with our own family tragedy now. As you may know, my Uncle Lewis drowned on the Humber River during Hurricane Hazel last month. I found your letter in a bundle of mail when I was helping my mother clean out his flat in Toronto and recognized your name and the New York address, as well as the Callander postmark. Perhaps you saw my uncle when he attended the Dionne girl’s funeral in Callander a few months ago? Her death affected him profoundly, I think: he ended up spending several weeks in the area, which had been his boyhood home, and has made several trips back again over the last month. I don’t know if you knew him before he went away to England. He was a wonderful man—funny, imaginative, and kind, with a lucky streak that kept him safe through the whole war, always landing with his backside in the butter, as my father used to say. But his luck ran out. It’s been extremely hard to accept that he could have survived all those years zipping around the Jerries in his beloved planes only to be taken from us now. In any case, I’m returning your letter as I found it, unopened, and I hope I’m not surprising you with our sad news.

  Yours sincerely,

  Sheryl Cartwright

  292 St. Paul Street

  Burlington, ON

  [ENCLOSURE: Letter from E.T. to L.C., October 1954]

  October 10, 1954

  239 75th Street

  Toronto, ON

  Dear Lewis,

  Tonight the rain paused (no doubt to refill its buckets) and I walked our route down to the lake on my own, missing you, wondering what you were doing at that very moment in the honk and bustle of Toronto. I couldn’t help but sense the curtains twitching in every window in Callander as I strolled the streets of my childhood. My reputation as the gin-swilling, paint-splattered, communist-leaning, Gotham-corrupted spinster has no doubt been enriched beyond measure, since I’ve been shacked up for weeks with a man in the old Trimpany home. And with the shell-shocked Cartwright son, no less! A wag already established in the county records as an unrepentant bachelor. My parents, bless them, must be turning in their graves.

  At least we’ve given the busybodies something fresh to talk about, something other than Émilie’s death. I’ve tried not to think about how this tragedy has thrust the other Dionne girls back into the spotlight again, just as they were starting to find normal lives for themselves. All those photographers and reporters milling around at Em’s funeral, just as they used to do in front of the farmhouse and the nursery—it makes me cringe. Because normal isn’t possible for them now, is it? And I had a hand in that, despite my best intentions: painting my pictures for all those adverts and calendars, helping to keep them in the public eye. Celebrity couldn’t keep them safe and it didn’t keep me safe either, it just made the shadows offstage that much darker. We did everything wrong, Lewis, we all did. Even those of us who thought we were doing some good. The worst part is, even now, knowing what I know, I can’t tell you how on earth we could have done any better.

  Seeing the four of them at the funeral after all thes
e years, the weight of their grief—I don’t think I could have made my way back out of the church if you hadn’t at that moment laid your hand on my sleeve. I’ve told you this a dozen times over the past two months, but seeing you again, so changed yet so much the same, it was as if my lungs were being filled like bagpipes, like a stone was being rolled off my heart.

  I digress. What I mean to say is that I couldn’t care less what the wagging tongues of Callander might be saying about you and me and our middle-aged romance. The truck comes Tuesday to collect the few things that I’m keeping from the old home, and the buyers have agreed to take the rest. I’ve spent these last days scrubbing and scouring (I found your suit button, by the way—it had slipped into a crack in the floorboards, underneath the bed). Now I’m exhausted and ready to be gone. Colin Stuart, my old classmate from New York and now an instructor at the Municipal Art Centre, has taken care of all the arrangements for my accommodation in Ottawa, plus organized my train tickets. All I need to do is show up at the station here Wednesday, board the correct car, and he’s done the rest. I speak to his art class at the centre on Thursday.

  I’m looking forward to having a few days to prowl around the National Museum and perhaps take my paints and easel somewhere along the Ottawa River. The colors should be spectacular now, as long as the weather holds. Here in Callander the maple trees are finally dropping their fiery hues, leaves drifting down like sparks. The weatherman on the radio keeps warning about a hurricane they’ve named Hazel, brewing in the Caribbean and expected to make its way up the Eastern Seaboard: promise me you’ll keep away from your planes and stay on solid ground if it starts heading your way. I’m hoping it will peter out before Ottawa so I can do a little painting en plein air. The opening for my exhibit is Saturday—if you can get away for the night, please do come. Otherwise I’ll see you on the 18th in Toronto. I still shrink like a violet at these public events, although they’ve gotten easier. I like to remind myself of something you told me many years ago, although you’ve likely forgotten. I was dithering about whether to apply for art school and you told me in no uncertain terms to “do the harder thing.” It was very pithy, however you put it. Something like, it is in doing the hardest things that we find ourselves the happiest, and that when we’re happy, the harder things come easy. I’ve lived by those words for a long time now.