Emily Carr As I Knew Her

by Carol Pearson

  Miss Carr loved books; they were friends to her. We kept the mails busy, sending books back and forth. I would come across one I liked, and would send it out to her. She would read it, mark with pencil several passages she liked, and was afraid I might have missed, then send it back. Friends here, who had never met her, but who had seen some of her letters, and shared some of the marked books, were amazed to learn that there was more than forty years difference in our ages. We were so thoroughly alike in so many of our likes and interests, that differences in age were never thought of.

  On my last visit with her, in the evening, if she was tired I would read to her, if not we would talk. She would tell me stories of her childhood, lovely stories of her Mother and of the little personal things that she loved, but were so beautiful and perfect, the very telling made her sad. They gave me the peculiar ache that comes when one is faced with perfection of any kind. Emily Carr had the ache more than anyone else I knew, because she was able to see perfection in all manner of small things, where it abounds, but is missed by most mortals. She saw it in flowers, in trees, in wild geese flying across the sky, in the wrinkles of an old face, ordinary things most of us do not even see. Often when we were in the park, walking among the flower beds, with our animals, laughing, chatting, at ease, suddenly she would stop, her hand would go to her throat. She would not say a word, just bend down and look. Her eyes would be shiny, then she would turn away and would walk home quickly, not saying any more. Then, how she would paint! At first I was afraid I had offended her. Then, years later, after I knew the story of her soldier, I thought some flowers reminded her of him, so I was sorry too. I would take her hand, and we would walk along in silence, and, as I thought, be sad together. About the time I was fifteen, these awful, sudden aches hit me so hard that I was afraid maybe I was queer, not like other people. Children do suffer.

  At quite an early age I started to attend the local dog and horse shows. If I was competing, I was all right; the excitement and exertion kept me busy but, if I was a spectator only—! I had to stop going, it was too embarrassing. We would be walking about, at ease, knowing almost everyone, admiring this animal and that, when suddenly, there would be a horse so perfect that my knees would turn to water, and along my backbone would run chilly little ripples. Or it might be brought on simply by a dog looking at me, and there would be Pan, or God, or it may have been a Soul looking at me from those deep beautiful eyes. My throat would tighten up, my eyes ache, and I would ache, and, all the time, I was full of an awful feeling that I would weep if I was spoken to! And, though all this was brought on by something so nice that I could hardly stand it, all of a sudden my good time was over. The friends I was with would wonder why, all of a sudden, I had had enough and was so anxious to leave. Then I would want to paint, or write to someone about it, but of course I never did!

  The year before I was married Mom was with me, one day, in downtown Victoria, when I was affected in just such a way, by a fine little piece of Dresden china in a second-hand store window!

  Mom recognized my trouble at once and she came over and silently took my hand. We walked along for ages, then she quietly and softly started to talk. “Little Baboo, you will not be a child very much longer, I am afraid. I am selfish, but I hate to see you grow up. I am proud of the character you are developing; the sympathetic perception of all things beautiful. You will never be unhappy for too long, but, Child, you will often be hurt.” Then she told me about the times I had seen her turn away from a flower, or something beautiful, and she said that it was the same as the feeling the little china figure had given me. It was like hearing a Bible story, the way she told it! I kissed her right there in the street, and I do not think she cared! We did not go in for kissing, Mom and I; I do not think you often kiss those of your own sex, that you are especially fond of, only on special occasions. Then I really had the ache, it made me feel so good to know that people, even wonderful people like Emily Carr, had feelings like mine, about beautiful things.

  But, to get back to the stories of her Mother. I would say to her, “Mom, if it upsets you, don’t tell me.” Then she said, “Child, it does me good to tell you. You love your own Mother, just as I did mine; telling you about her brings it all back so close to me. The pain goes out of heartbreak and memory after years, leaving only the memory and the blessing. And we remember. It is good to have someone we can live these memories over with. They come alive for us, the long nights stop being lonely. We must keep our memories alive; mine do not hurt any more.” Her gentle, quiet way of saying things like this made me feel that I really was helping her, that in some way beyond my grasp at the minute, the give was not all on her side. As I left her, when sleep was ready to take over, “Sleep well, Child,” she would say. “It is nice you are here, it is so easy to grow young again, with you.” You see, when I tell you of her generous nature, the giving was not always a gift, carefully wrapped! Her ability to be grateful to you, for something, that maybe you were thinking, and to let you know she was grateful, without upsetting either of you, a soul has to be very generous to accomplish it!

  Before she was ill and had to leave her big studio, we would talk in the long evenings, before her big window on the clear nights, in front of the grate on the stormy ones. “It does not take long to pass an hour,” she would say, with her chuckle, as several passed by. She would get into bed finally, and I would go in and sit on a stool, and still we would talk, and plan for the future. Then the sleep, which she was sure had missed her, would cuddle in beside her, and she would fall asleep in the middle of a tale about how her Mother had cured a neighbour’s sick baby. I would sit a minute or two to let sleep really take charge, get up quietly, and try to sneak out, but before I could open the door, one sleepy, still merry eye would open a crack, and “Thanks, Baboooooo! Blesssss!” My own dreams would be all piled up, in my little room under the eaves, hardly able to wait till I got into my bed.

  I am afraid I have been far away from the letters I was going to tell you about. But her letters are so much a part of her, they bring her back to me vividly. Even thinking of them, I seem to relive the stories of her that they recall. She was so very right. The memories do stay fresher, if we are able to retell them from time to time. In this way we are able to keep our memories alive, in a great many hearts.

  TREASURES: WE ALL HAVE THEM

  WHAT do you hold most dear, in all the world? Have you thought about it? You should, and I am sure you will amaze yourself with your reply. Almost always, anyone who is asked this question will, after a minute’s thought, give an honest answer, and name not the family jewels, or the sterling silver, but something held very dear for sentimental reasons. Often it cannot be pinned down to any one article, but may be a collection of them with a cash value of perhaps five dollars!

  You must know, then, what it was like for Emily Carr, who lived alone most of her life. She had always had a place of her own and she always had had her own private little places for storing away carefully the treasures, both big and small, gathered through the years. Her home had plenty of cupboard space and many drawers; things were put on a shelf and pushed well back, or in a drawer and covered over. It was a home with one woman, no men; and though things seemed a muddle to anyone who looked in, she could lay her hand on anything that was needed. The treasures gathered over the years. Miss Carr was a busy person who did not indulge in yearly cupboard sorting; so, things accumulated.

  Her collection of pewter was beautiful. She loved pewter and had gathered pieces from Europe and the States, as well as from all corners of Canada. This, with the silver and hand-painted china that she treasured, had nearly all been asked for plainly, mostly by distant nieces for whom she had very little use. “They can’t wait till I go, they want it now,” she would say; “but I’ll fool them; I’m not going yet a while.” She had little use for family tradition, among our people that is. “Our closets are full of rattling disgusts, that we are ashamed of, that we
try to hide. Why? The Indians, now, they are honest. If an ancestor was bad enough, he is upside down, maybe, but he stays there on the totem, out in the open, for all the world to see.” She respected these traditions.

  Imagine her situation when she was taken so sick, was not expected to live, and knew it. She was in hospital, where all the nurses and staff were strangers. Her own pets and loved things, her personal treasures, were at home, safe enough for the time being, but wondering about them must have been awful.

  She had her nurse write to me in the East. Our hearts are pretty stoutly made; if they broke from feeling, that letter would have broken mine! She did not mean it that way; she was trying, in spite of her illness, to put a smile between the lines for me! The words were so definitely hers, but not the writing!

  It was only a note, which said, “Come west, Baboo. Your old Mom needs you. I am a piece of driftwood on the shore, of no further use to anyone, not even myself. You have raked my lawn clean many times in the past, come gather my leaves for me now. Ticket following.”

  I cried as I hurriedly packed my things. My poor husband was so cross with me. “What does she mean?” he asked. I only half knew. I could not tell him, or put it in words. The trip took six days then; now you can fly in one!

  She was still a very ill little lady when I got there, but she was sufficiently recovered that she had been allowed to go home where she was confined to her bed. The first day or so we hardly talked; it was so good just to be with her again. We sat, and I held her hand as she lay there, relaxed again, after many bad days. She hated the bed, she hated not being able to do more than move. When you are with someone you love absolutely, words are often unimportant. In her room, she had a canary and a love bird; some doves still occupied the little glass house on the veranda, but all the animal pets had been gone for some time.

  I had been there about three days then, and not a word had been said by either of us, about why I had been sent for. One evening it was stormy, and blowing very hard. We had the house closed up tight, a nice fire going, and I was reading over to her one of her own manuscripts. Suddenly she interrupted my reading with, “Enough of that old thing.”

  She began then speaking quietly of her Indian friends. In a roundabout way (this added to my discomfort, she always had come so directly to the point!) she brought up the Indian burial customs. Religion is fine, she said, as far as it went, but some aspects of it were too commercial for her tastes, especially funerals, and all that went with them. From the time the soul became restless till the leaving was over, the fuss and social upset death caused, she said, made it, instead of a restful going, a thing to be dreaded. This was not the case with the Indians. When an illness struck, after everything had been done that could be, and the end was coming, the family gathered, not as is so often the case in our families, to haggle over treasures, but, while life lingered, to scare and ward off devils. This assured the soul going in peace, and helped to hide the heart-break; a lot of sorrow could be, and was, among the howls! There were no pent-up emotions at the bedside, and this made the journey easier!

  Then, all the belongings of the dead were gathered up, and buried with him, in little burial houses, or in boxes in the huge cedar trees, depending on which tribe he belonged to. The treasures remained with the dead for ever. The bodies were close to the surface of the ground, and helped, they firmly believed, to replenish the land. They could, and often did, give a valued treasure to a friend, when they knew of their going in time. But afterwards, nothing was claimed or given away. Often, in fact, the nicest thing they had ever owned would be given to them as they were breathing their last, so that they would not enter the next world empty-handed!

  “What I am getting at, Child, is this,” she said. “I am no Indian. I have no way of sorting my things. Will you be my sorter?” I went through drawers and boxes, there, beside her, for hours it seemed. Many times she wept as from an old trunk I would carefully unwrap all manner of things. There was a child’s prayer book (she gave me this), a pair of men’s large old gold cuff links, worn small books of poetry, bits of jewelry, mostly broken, worn small dog collars, faded pictures, a dear little mesh purse, several little silver snuff cases (these she also gave me), and lots and lots of other things. There were many bundles of letters. These we sorted; some were packed in boxes, a few we burned.

  Then she said, “Baboo, there is one last thing that I ask you, one last chore for you to do for me. These things would be of no value to anyone else, but they are a part of me, my past. I cannot bring myself to burn them. Take them, Child, out into the woods, and bury them for me, a box at a time, where they will rest with the trees, through the years. My spirit will rest with them. Bless you, Baboo.”

  It is hard for me to tell you this. So many may not understand, could never understand, and it should be clearly understood. Her love and deep feeling for the western forests was so real and vital. It is among them that her treasures should be.

  I cried as I dug. I cried as I did every time one of my pets had died, and I buried it in the dusk of the evening. Why, I wonder? Often the dead are better off. And these little boxes, I tried to tell myself, they had not died. Or had they? Was that why I cried?

  Emily Carr said, “We cry for ourselves; we know suffering for our loved ones ceases, but we feel we will miss something in life.” But she too cried, when her loved ones or her pets died.

  I have heard so many nice things about Heaven, and seen pictures of Artists’ conceptions of it, but I would like to be sure that there are many trees there, in a corner maybe, for Mom.

  Treasures? We all have them. Mine? I met Emily Carr, one lucky day, and I thank God.

  Copyright © 2016 by Carol Pearson

  TouchWood Editions

  First edition published 1954 by Clarke, Irwin & Company, Toronto

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