26 July 1925.
We all went to church and the Archbishop preached on the text “Thy sin shall find thee out.” I kept thinking: Yes, but will other people find out? Gerald came to lunch, as he does every Sunday. I saw him come sweating up the drive. He is always so hot, summer and winter. My heart sank when I heard his voice hallooing in the hall. Lunch was interminable. Gerald is such a slow eater and talks and talks about his amateur theatricals, whereas Mother bolts her food. Finally she said, “For the Lord’s sake, Gerald, eat up. We don’t want to stay here all day.”
27 July 1925.
Left in the morning for Newfoundland. When I got to the station Mary Binney was waiting for me there. I couldn’t help thinking how peculiarly dressed she was. She had on a very short skirt covered with flowers that looked as if it belonged to a girl, and she is Mother’s age. On her head she had a toque-style hat which seemed to be very high on her head instead of low, as toques usually are. Just as we were climbing on to the train there was a gust of wind and her hat blew off and went rocketing down the platform. I ran after it to pick it up and as I did so a lot of tissue paper blew out of the hat. Mary explained that it was a hat that had been given to her and had belonged to someone who has a bigger head than Mary, so she had to stuff it with paper. Now that the paper had blown away she just plumped the hat back on her head where it came down nearly to her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to care. All the way to Sydney she talked to the other passengers, asking them all sorts of questions in her loud, confident voice and soon had the interest squeezed out of them. She is just the same with everyone and talked to the train conductor the same way she does to one of her favourite admirals.
The train was loaded on to a ferry to cross the Straits of Canso to Cape Breton and Mary and I stood on the prow smoking cigarettes. She says she smokes sixty cigarettes a day, more even than Mother.
When we reached Cape Breton the train passed by the Bras d’Or Lakes, very romantic stretches of glistening water splashed with dark-green islands and ringed about with hills of dim blue. It was like a setting for Scott’s Lady of the Lake. From this scene the train rushed into the grimy greyness of the coal-mining country where the miners have been on strike: hard, rocky land, and little cabins where the miners live. There were men in the streets with blackened faces, sitting on their haunches staring into space, and skinny women at the doors of the houses.
At Sydney we boarded the boat for Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland. It was a smelly little tub. I sat up quite late with Mary in the smoking saloon. She had picked up a kind American and was drinking whisky and sodas with him. As we got out to sea the boat began rolling and I began to feel seasick. They said, “A whisky will settle you.” I had one, but as I am not very used to whisky, it did not settle me but only made me feel sicker, so I went to my cabin, which I shared with two good-natured men who did not seem to mind my being sick in the basin. When I did get to bed, what should I see crawling over my pillow but an army of bedbugs! So I dressed and lurched upstairs to the saloon and slept on the floor next to Mary, who was sleeping peacefully on a sofa with her coat over her. For economy’s sake she had not taken a cabin.
28 July 1925.
It was pouring rain and very cold in the morning. Port-aux-Basques is nothing but a fishing village, so we took the train for our destination, Black Duck. The train is very high off the ground and has old-fashioned straw seats, and it goes so slowly that they say people have walked beside it and got there first. The country is oppressive, mile after mile of marshy, barren lands, stunted trees, and little huts like animal pens where people live, all of this under a dull grey sky. At mid-day we came to Black Duck, which turned out not to be a place at all, just a train stop and a shed. Colonel du Plat Taylor and Cynthia and an enormous Newfoundland dog met us and we walked about three miles, carrying our suitcases, over a track through the woods to their house, which has just been finished. It is built of logs and has a big central room with a long wooden table. Passages lead off to the bedrooms, but I am not to sleep in one but in a tent near the house. The property adjoins that of Captain Campbell, the explorer, and du Plat Taylor’s cousin. His house has plumbing; the du Plat Taylors’ has not. The woods are very thick and close round the du Plat Taylors’ house. It is very airless, muggy weather and the blackflies are everywhere, they even got into my tent last night. I started smoking to discourage them and burnt a hole with my cigarette in the tent. This is a bad start to my visit here as Colonel du Plat Taylor is particularly proud of his tent. It was hot during the night and I began to wonder why I had come here at all.
29 July 1925.
First day at Black Duck. It was a topping day and I know I shall enjoy myself here. There is a Captain Smith staying here. He is in the Guards, a most charming chap – tall, handsome, and awfully amusing. He took me on an exploring expedition with him today, punting upstream on the river which is on the edge of the du Plat Taylors’ property. It is a fast-running salmon stream with plenty of rapids. We built a fire and lunched on Oxo and biscuits and started inland, blazing a trail with axes through the woods. The trees are dead-looking and are coated with dank moss. We came out of the woods into a great stretch of swampy ground, which they call here “mish.” When you walk on it it is like walking on a sponge. There were curious scarlet flowers everywhere. I don’t know what they are called. The sky was grey and the air oppressive and the stunted trees and those queer flowers and the stillness of the woods seemed somehow prehistoric. We got back to the stream very hot and stripped and swam in a pool. Captain Smith when stripped might pose for a Greek statue.
We reached home late for supper. All the food here is tinned except the fish caught in the stream. Even the milk is milk powder out of a tin. Of course, there are no deliveries here and no cows in the neighbourhood, not even in the nearest village. This doesn’t worry the du Plat Taylors; in fact they enjoy discomfort and privations. Mrs. du Plat Taylor is particularly spartan and rather alarming in her contempt for what she calls “muffishness,” by which she means any kind of softness. Colonel du Plat Taylor is a great advocate of common sense, which is his standard of judging people. I hope I can rise to it. Cynthia is a dear, so genuine. All the family have been kind in welcoming me and I hope I can be of some use here. Captain Smith is not a devotee of discomfort.
30 July 1925.
The first full day’s work for me. Colonel du Plat Taylor took me out to the farther clearing, explained to me about sowing the grass seed, and I was left in charge of two local men to show them the work. I don’t think I made any blunders. The men are from around here and are half French. I talked a lot with them. They are very entertaining company but the work went rather slowly.
In the afternoon Cynthia and I worked on making a bench. This is where my carpentry lessons should come in useful as I had the planing of the wood. Cynthia is becoming quite a friend. She is a good sort. She certainly doesn’t try to be fascinating. I think her parents are rather too much for her.
I don’t know how much Mary Binney is enjoying herself here. She says she has had indigestion from the food ever since she arrived. Mrs. du Plat Taylor is rather stern with her and said to me, “Why does she dress in clothes so much too young for her and such unsuitable shoes for the country?” Of course I could not tell her that Mary wears what is given her. Mrs. du Plat Taylor said, “She is mutton dressed as lamb.” In the evening Mr. B. came to supper. He is an Englishman, a “remittance man”: his family in England pay him a certain amount each month to stay away. He lives in a dishevelled house near here with a local girl whom he may have married. He is good company, talks a lot and drinks a lot. He has a bald head on top, curly ringlets about his ears, flashing dark eyes, and looks like a pirate. He has been all over the world and is a wanderer. He and Captain Smith had several drinks down by the stream before supper, as drink doesn’t exactly flow at the du Plat Taylors’. After supper everyone was sleepy and argumentative. Captain Smith and Mr. B. are more modern in their ideas than the du Pl
at Taylors, who are quite feudal in their outlook. Certain subjects irritate them into a state of violent disapproval, such as Lloyd George (because of his taxes, which have ruined the du Plat Taylors and made Mrs. du Plat Taylor give up her home on the Scottish border, where her family have lived since the twelfth century). They also disapprove of all Americans and everything American. Mr. B. unwisely said that he thought the Americans a great people. I thought Colonel du Plat Taylor’s false teeth would fall right out with rage. Mary tried to pour oil on troubled waters but got snubbed for her pains.
31 July 1925.
Spent the morning overseeing the men who are sowing grass seed. The Newfoundlanders are like no other people. They have an uproarious sense of humour and independence and their poverty does not seem to quench their enjoyment of life. Captain Smith and Colonel du Plat Taylor set off today for Port-aux-Basques to buy supplies, Captain Smith clad in grey tweeds with a marvellously cut double waistcoat and a pale grey hat. I should like some day to have clothes like his. Even his roughest things are of the best. Colonel du Plat Taylor is quite a contrast, wearing an old broad-brimmed hat that all the family use at different times, with a mosquito net draped over it.
In the afternoon I cleared a lot of undergrowth, hacking away at alder bushes which are surprisingly strong and apt to spring back at you like india-rubber. Later, Cynthia and I went salmon fishing but got nothing. The flies were swarming. Never have I seen or imagined anything like the flies in this place, every variety of them. I looked down at my hand today while fishing. It was absolutely black, covered with thousands of tiny blackflies, and there are swarms of mosquitoes always round one’s head, and worst of all are what they call “caribou flies.” They take a real piece of meat out of one’s neck and fly away with it. Of course we squirt ourselves and plaster ourselves with anti-mosquito stuff, which I think the flies find rather tasty.
1 August 1925.
Spent the morning shovelling some manure and then cut down trees, dragging up roots, etc. I am getting a bit handier with an axe but it rather worries me that I don’t believe Colonel du Plat Taylor thinks I am as useful about the place as he had hoped. Probably he expected me to be a Canadian woodsman, and that I am not. He never says anything critical about my work but looks at the results silently and sighs, which makes me nervous. I do try hard.
In the afternoon Captain Campbell came over from his place and asked me to go along with him to find a lake which he had heard of from the local people but which is not on the map. It was rather a lark for me to be exploring with a man who was on Scott’s expedition to the Pole. We went through an impenetrable jungle of trees and alder bushes, blazing our way on the trees with our axes, and came to a huge marsh or swamp. We climbed a hill and there we saw the lake and sat down on an up-turned tree trunk to look at it. It was a little grey lake with a lot of firs around it.
When we got back the du Plat Taylors gave us each a glass of vermouth, which I have never tasted before. Then we discussed what we should call the lake and I said, “Why not Lake Mary?” as I wanted to cheer Mary up. She has not been her usual self since we got here, very subdued. At first Mrs. du Plat Taylor was rather cool to the idea and wondered, “Why Lake Mary?” but the others all welcomed it and the name will be sent to the map-making authorities and Mary will be immortalized. Part of the trouble is that Mary does not work. Mrs. du Plat Taylor never stops planting and hoeing and making her garden and stalking about the place overseeing everything and everybody. I don’t know what Mary does all day except write letters.
8 August 1925.
In the morning our party started out in the streaming rain in an open motor-boat to explore the coast. We disembarked at Stephenville to collect letters and newspapers and there the thunderstorm began. The encircling hills threw back the shock of it. The rain came down on the water, prickling the silky surface till the sea was like a pincushion full of little holes. In the afternoon it cleared. Cynthia and I took the ferry to Sand Point. It is a curious little village built on a spit of sand jutting into the sea. The streets of the village are sand paths with picket fences on either side and baaing sheep go strolling along the streets. On either side of the village the Atlantic pounds on a pebbly shore. There is a white wooden church and the churchyard is full of purple and yellow flowers. The wharves and the fishermen’s huts face the bay.
When we came back to Stephenville the whole du Plat Taylor family took the train to Black Duck. Eric Smith and I were left with the motor-boat. We could not get away in it as the wind changed and the seas were heavy, so we put up for the night in the small hotel at Stephenville and sat talking for hours in the hotel parlour. He talked about women, of whom he has many in his life. He thinks of marrying a particularly rich one called Iris. He says she is “rather unwieldy” but quite clever. Then he talked about his Sandhurst training, how tough it was, and he lolled in a rocking-chair in his blue shirt singing obscene songs of his Sandhurst days. He said that I should go into the diplomatic service and he would wield his influence with his cousin in the Foreign Office. He has many schemes for his own future but they change every time he talks of them. He let me smoke his pipe, which made me very sick afterwards.
9 August 1925.
Back at Black Duck. Spent the morning transplanting beets and “singling” turnips. You squat down in front of a row of turnips, pull six turnips out of the row and leave the seventh, and so on and on, so that they will have a better chance to grow. It is a monotonous job, and the flies are fierce. Working with me is a man from the Hebrides whom the du Plat Taylors have imported. He is deaf and dumb and I pass the time by telling him all the secrets of my soul and body as they are safe with him. I can’t help thinking that this new job of mine shows that singling turnips is about all Colonel du Plat Taylor thinks I am capable of.
In the afternoon we went fishing but caught nothing. Colonel du Plat Taylor says a local man is netting the pool and that is why the fishing isn’t better. This naturally annoys him very much but he can’t prove it.
Raspberry pie for supper. Boxes of the du Plat Taylors’ books arrived from England. Mrs. du Plat Taylor got out the Baronetage and read excerpts about her relations, as her brother is a baronet with four names hyphenated. Mr. B., the remittance man, came in, having “drink taken.” Among other things, he said that anyone who wrote a diary every day must be a bloody fool. This startled me and for a moment I wondered whether he knew I did, but that of course is impossible. Mary was inspired by the du Plat Taylors’ researches into the baronetage to talk about various titled people she knew, but Mrs. du Plat Taylor greeted this with a veiled smile.
Eric Smith had the nerve to say to Cynthia tonight that the canned beef we had for supper had gone off. She just looked absolutely wooden and said nothing.
13 August 1925. (four days later)
I have not written this diary for several days as I have been so sleepy every night that I could not keep my eyes open. Mine is quite a routine now, singling turnips and transplanting cabbages in the morning, stumping trees in the afternoon, fishing in the evening. At last I am catching on to fishing and got two salmon yesterday, biggish but not as big as Eric’s, who got one of thirty-five pounds. I have been seeing a lot of Cynthia as we do stumping and go fishing together. I do like her. She would be a wonderful girl to have with you in an accident as she never loses her head. She doesn’t say much but one feels how genuine she is. Of course, our tastes are different. She loves dogs and her ambition is to have kennels of her own.
Today, as a reward for my industry, or because the turnip singling is finished and they don’t know what to do with me, I am to go off alone overnight with Eric on a camping trip.
It was adventurous of the du Plat Taylors to come so far from home and try to start a new life, and they don’t care about discomfort, bad food, or flies and are willing to work all day or oversee others. They must be a bit like the early English settlers in Canada, but they are out of date. They should have lived at the time the Empire was be
ing founded. Mrs. du Plat Taylor could run an Empire single-handed.
14 August 1925.
In the morning we set out, Eric and Mr. B. (Eric had not told me that he was to join us) and myself. We hopped on a freight train to Fishells. The train bumped and swayed along. We were joking and singing. At Fishells Eric saw a railway worker wearing the tie of his Guards regiment and went up and spoke to him, thinking he must have been in the regiment, but he said he had bought the tie at Stephenville.
We camped beside the swirling salmon river opposite some white cliffs. Then we set off through the woods blazing a trail and climbed a steep cliff covered with thick undergrowth and dead trees and ferns that clogged our path. Eventually we reached the top, and from a sort of lair among the ferns and undergrowth we saw below us a great valley of green forest waving in the breeze and pierced by the broad sweep of the river. I felt like an explorer I have seen in some movie lying there peering into the wide, endless horizon. Eric said this would be the ideal place for his house. He is now talking of settling in this country. When we got back to the tent we covered the floor with spruce and lit our stove to keep the flies away. It got terribly hot inside the tent and we sat talking. They were drinking whisky. I had one. They said why didn’t I join them and buy some land in Newfoundland. It is going for thirty cents an acre in these parts, but you have to sign an agreement to clear a certain proportion every year. I think I will. I have five hundred dollars of my own and for that I could be a landed proprietor and come to survey my broad acres.
Appetite for Life : The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927 (9781551996776) Page 9
