Emily Carr As I Knew Her

by Carol Pearson

  Often when Miss Carr was out in the garden, or away, and the phone rang, Woo would take off her collar, let the parrot out if she happened to be locked in, then take off the receiver! The parrot loved to yell into the phone, and she made sense for a time at least. The conversations would go something like this: After several “hello’s” that grew gradually louder and louder, at each end of the line, Miss Carr would be asked for, and the parrot would yell, “Who else?” Then there was a pause, during which the parrot and the monkey surveyed each other. Then the parrot would yell, “Speak up, speak up.” Another pause. After several more violent “Hello’s” and “speak up’s” the parrot’s yell was so loud that the monkey got nervous and hung up in haste. The party on the line would be left to wonder what manner of woman the artist might be.

  Have you ever noticed, when strangers meet your family pets, that they are never able to fool the animals for a minute, though they could fool you for years, about almost anything they really put their mind to? It is a funny sort of sixth sense that nature has given the animal. They know at once if a person is genuinely fond of them. This reminds me of a trait of Miss Carr’s, her animal instinct, as she called it. She had a way of reading people that was uncanny. It worked about anything at all. Perhaps someone would come, intending to buy a picture. Several paintings would be brought in, and set up, one at a time on the easel. Long before a comment was made, Miss Carr knew his true reaction. She did not expect people to like all her work; they were not supposed to; it varied so; but she did expect honest comments about it. If the picture was not one that pleased the guest she would lift it down, put in its place another of an entirely different type. But if a false “How nice,” was said, it rang so untrue in her ears that her reaction was almost as if they had slapped her. “Rubbish,” she would say; though if they were really interested she would continue to show. If, however, they were just putting in time, as an excuse to get into her studio, Miss Carr soon knew, and she would ask them to leave, as her time was valuable to her.

  Much has been said about the pictures Miss Carr destroyed and did not sign. She was loyal enough to herself not to sign any that had not reached the standard she had set herself. We have all destroyed things which we considered a failure; if the cake burns, the dog gets it, even if the man next door does like burnt cake. Once, in my presence, a painting was being unframed, to be washed so that the canvas could be re-used. A visitor protested and asked for the picture, as it was so pretty. “I am near sighted and will never notice the perspective,” he said. “But all those who see it hanging in your home, my friend, will not be so lucky; some may see well,” Miss Carr replied, as she proceeded with her work. We all make mistakes, which we are not criticized for, simply because the public does not know about them. The fact that the cleaning woman liked a discarded picture was not reason enough to leave it about, to be condemned in the future as “one of that Carr woman’s.” This was her reply, if the matter was brought up before her.

  Perhaps this “inner sight” of hers was one reason why she got on so well with all animals. She had pets of all sorts. Peggy was a white rat that lived for years, happy in a little cage. Joseph was a chipmunk; he lived to be a great age and was a delight to her always. Sallie was a white cockatoo, Jane the green parrot that talked. There were also several budgies, a canary, and some English doves. The doves had been mating and multiplying, as doves well fed and happy do. Miss Carr loved them, had brought the first pair back from England many years before, fearful then lest our Canadian winters be too cold for them. But from the very first they had settled down, and checked all corners of the home she gave them for a suitable spot for a nest. She had given many pairs away to friends at different times. One day her eldest sister, Big, said a friend was ill and a good gift for her might be a pair of roasted doves!

  “Be a cannibal if you must,” said Miss Carr, “but eat my doves you will not! I do not have my friends eaten, raw or cooked.”

  She could tell at a glance which were the older birds and which children belonged to which. When giving pairs away she chose always the young ones so that they would not fret for a home they had come to know. She was as concerned about the doves as about her dogs, and recognized their separate traits. If people were as easily understood, she said, things would run much more smoothly. Dogs, pets, are never hypocrites, their only sin being jealousy, usually, and sometimes greed. Although we do try to correct it, inside I think we enjoy animal jealousy. “Being loved for ourselves alone,” as Emily Carr often said.

  Apart from the domestic animals that Miss Carr was so fond of, there were a number, both animals and birds, ordinarily wild, that knew and loved her. The sea gulls would circle around her garden calling their peculiar call, but would not alight till she went into the garden, or to the open studio window. She could brush her hand along their feathers, or take up and hold a foot, as they stood on the sill before her. A gull is tame enough when hungry to share a meal with almost anyone, but try to touch one some time! The squirrels loved to visit with her; they would romp and scamper about on the little landing on the studio outside stairs. Miss Carr taught me a lot about animals; about their thinking, habits, their loving; their very deep trust and respect; how one has to strive to attain it; and the value of it once it is yours.

  Emily Carr is known to many as a famous painter, to many more as a great author; to me she is also a great naturalist.

  GREEN THUMBS, OR HEARTS

  THE little lawn behind the studio was bordered along both sides by lovely flower beds. The perennials and flowering shrubs, roses of all sorts and every shade, bloomed in a mass of colour. Though they were beautifully weeded and cared for, they had an air of freedom about them. Some of the healthiest, biggest plants were wild flowers that Miss Carr had transplanted and, in her garden, they were lovely. Quite often, after a sketching trip, when the brushes were being unpacked to be cleaned, there, poked down among them, would be a root of a wild flower. Some, in the section they came from, were considered weeds, but in Emily Carr’s garden, cultivated, they really came into their own, and the variety of their colour helped to set the others off to advantage.

  Indian John came when he felt like it, and worked, for what Miss Carr felt like giving him, in her lovely garden. He had no fixed time to arrive; some mornings when she got up at six, he would be there, his tools and young plants all around him, in seeming disorder, as though he had been there all night. At other times, after an absence of perhaps a month, he would appear in the middle of the afternoon. When he came late, he dawdled all day and very little would be done. That was why Miss Carr paid him no set wage. His wife, Indian Mary, was a chubby, merry Indian, the type Miss Carr always loved. Quite often, on John’s nearly idle days, she would send a gift home to Mary, a dress or shoes, not always new but with lots of wear left. Mary loved these gifts, and John accepted them silently. Most of the Indians were silent people. Miss Carr said, “It is because they have lived with the mountains so long; they have learned the secret of their strength and their silences.” John, at first acquaintance, gave the impression that he was gruff and unfriendly. After he had seen me in the garden, trying hard to make something grow, his manner became more friendly. But he did not speak unless he had something of importance to say.

  He was slight and strong, and when he came to Miss Carr’s in his canoe, he had quite a walk from the bay where he left it. When asked why he did not take a street car the mile or more, he would grunt and say, “Me walk, cars all time slow.” Many years before, Miss Carr had stayed in his village on one of her sketching trips. His dog had become very ill and some of the medicine she had with her had cured it. Indian John had never forgotten. One morning he appeared in her garden with some plants, wild ones, wrapped carefully in some birch bark. He had seen her painting trees and growing things years before and he was sure she would like these. His wife, Indian Mary, used to do Miss Carr’s washing for her. She had been brought up in Victoria and w
as well educated. Mary had been coming to her house a long time before Miss Carr knew she was the wife of Indian John. Hers was the only garden that he ever tended and, as I say, he did it only when the spirit moved him.

  The kennels were along the bottom of the garden. They were very comfortable, each with its own shade tree. On Sundays the dogs were all let out into the garden, and how they loved it! All had been trained not to go on the flower beds, and as the young puppies came along it seemed that the older dogs tried to help with their training! If a pup did get into the flowers unnoticed, one of the old dogs would start barking till he was discovered and removed. The kennels were extra large and roomy for the little Griffons, as they had been built for the big, hairy English Bobtails. But as the city grew, and the vacant land on either side became lots, there was no longer any room for the big, galloping fellows.

  There were several fruit trees in the garden; the loveliest of them all was the cherry tree. When in blossom, it resembled most a little girl on her way to her first Communion. From the big studio window the blossoms were almost on a level with one’s eyes. It was like lace against the sky. Emily Carr’s room joined the studio, mine was up a small flight of stairs at one end. Often at night when the tree was in blossom, I heard her moving about, and I would go to the little landing outside my door, to offer my help if it was needed. But, once there, I could not speak; it was as if she were in church, as she stood looking at the tree, there in the moonlight, before the big window.

  Miss Carr had painted the tree many times, in oils and in water colours, but she was never quite satisfied. Each effort was a truly beautiful picture, prized by whoever had it, but it was not “beautiful pictures” that she wanted to paint, it was the awesome holy feeling the tree gave her, which it is impossible for me to describe. But Miss Carr was able to leave the feeling, with the tree, on the canvas. “Only God can make a tree?” But Emily Carr knew just what He was thinking of, when He did it!

  Woo was never so happy as when she was chained to this tree. There were always several birds which built their nests there, and these would be carefully inspected by Woo. She would gently change the eggs from nest to nest, while the frantic little mothers flew around, scolding. Miss Carr would watch, from a distance, to referee; she would never stand for any harm, either to the eggs or nests, and often observed with a smile that though the birds were definitely annoyed with the monkey, they were back on their nests as soon as they thought they had driven her away. If a human had handled the eggs, Miss Carr said, they would be very apt to desert them for good. The fun started when the young arrived. Some little mother bird, a wren perhaps, would be trying to care for a young robin, nearly as big as itself. Miss Carr always kept an ample supply of food on a flat board on top of a pole, safe from the monkey and the cats.

  The tree seemed to use up all its strength on the blossom, as it never did very much in the way of fruit. “Beauty reaps its own reward,” Miss Carr would say, as she always did when something almost perfect to see presented itself. “Beauty is to look at every time; if it is substance or effort that is wanted, depend on the plain, everyday things,” she would grin and add, “this explains our lack of beauty, eh Baboo?”

  Any fruit the tree did bear belonged to the monkey, by common consent. Woo was very generous, and if she liked someone, she would insist that he have a cherry. She would watch the visitor like a hawk to make sure that he was entering her part of the garden. Then up the tree she would climb, and soon have two cherries in her little fists. These she would pop into her monkey pockets. Coming down was not so easy, as she had to be very careful to pass by each branch in the same path she had gone up. In this way she kept the chain free and was able to watch her little dresses so that they did not catch on any twigs. It was interesting, and amusing, to watch her, and it ended up by being almost nauseating, as she landed with a grin before the visitor, and reaching down inside her jaw, she presented him with a nice ripe cherry, gleaming with monkey spit!

  I think it was Miss Carr herself who taught the monkey to be so generous. They are usually greedy, miserly little beasts, of the dog-in-the-manger type. I have never seen anyone like Miss Carr. Like a lot of other people, I miss her dreadfully. It hurts, now and then, as I meet interesting new people with the alert, clear minds she enjoyed so much. We always shared our friends, as we shared our books, our hopes and ideas.

  It is such a shame that she was not known to many more people; so few really had the chance to know her well. I realize fully now just how much the world really lost when she died. So many people, the world over, have received and will continue to receive, pleasure from her paintings, her books, and the pottery.

  One day in 1944, on my last trip West to visit her, she said to me, “Child,” (I was past 30!) “do not let the fact that you do not appear in any of my books upset you. I have kept your memory in my heart along with my other true love. The rest, the world can know if it must; these two are mine. You will understand later on. Age is a teacher, Child, a torment, a healer, a living memory, who takes care of her own!” Such a gentle twist to thoughts that hurt a little. Am I unfair, do you think, in telling you things which she left unsaid? I do not mean to be.

  While on one of our walks one day, along Oak Bay, we noticed that a small, run-down house was occupied, which had been deserted for years. Miss Carr was glad for the little house’s sake. She spoke of its weather-beaten boards and thick walls as if it were a wrinkled little old man. In the back yard was an old holly bush that had been isolated for so long that it had grown long spikes, a fierce courage of its own. It needed no love.

  The only other plant near the lonely little house was an anaemic-looking rose bush. All we had ever seen on it were a few yellowish leaves. It was indeed a very poor little bush, that had been planted, loved, then deserted, and had tried for years to be gay. Now it seemed content just to live.

  Before long, as we passed that way, we noticed a poor little old lady, as proud as Lucifer, poking about, but so crippled with rheumatism that she could neither straighten up, nor bend right down. Unlike most of the people on the Pacific coast, who are eager to chat, she made it quite clear that she liked to be alone, so we never stopped to speak, as Miss Carr generally did in cases like this. I used to wonder, often, why she was so interested in this funny, crabby, little crippled lady. If we passed and failed to see her poking about the ill little rose bush, Miss Carr would say, “Wonder where our wee elf is today?” And she would worry, and mention her several times, till our next trip, when the old lady would generally appear. At these times there was an awful, dirty man, fat and greasy, who sat on top of the three little steps at the door; he just sat and held his tummy. His pants always seemed on the point of yielding to the strain, the two remaining buttons seemed always about to pop. He never helped in any way, just sat, and smoked, sometimes spitting far out on the grass. Emily Carr hated him; or perhaps it was all he stood for that she hated. She was always glad for the little lady’s sake when he went away. Who they were, or where he went, we did not know, but it made no difference to Miss Carr.

  One day everything was very quiet, the next there was still no sign of life. Miss Carr was very upset. Several days passed. She worried as much about the lonely little rose bush as the little old lady, I think, whose poor crippled fingers were not green.

  Almost a week had gone by, when one day we saw the mailman coming down the street. Miss Carr stopped him to ask if he knew where the little lady had gone and if she was all right? She was relieved to hear that the old lady had gone to visit a sick sister up the Island, that she would be back in several weeks. Miss Carr’s relief was quite evident, but she said no more. We continued our walk in silence.

  Very early next morning she got up, saying only, “Come along.” First we gathered a bag of droppings from the birds’ cages, a supply of fish food, which she kept on hand always for the fish at Beacon Hill Park. Then, from her best rose bush she cut the best
branch, wrapped it in a strip of damp cotton, handed me the small shovel and a part of her little collection, and said again, “Come on.” She seemed deep in thought; that she was really up to something was quite evident! We were on our way before seven o’clock, a very early hour for the sleepy little Island.