Eastern Passage (7 page)
Authors: Farley Mowat
Two weeks later I wrote again, this time enclosing a 2,100-word book outline.
I have had second thoughts about the Pommela story. If, instead of using Pommela’s life as the central theme, I expand it to include the
Ihalmiut as a whole, it should make it easier to tie in a number of related subjects. Three of these – biology, anthropology, and geography – have been major interests of mine for many years. Biology led me to study the Barrenland Caribou and the Arctic Wolf together with many other animals of the region. To give you an idea of what I’ve been doing in this connection, let me tell you briefly about the wolf work
.
In May of 1947 I located a wolf den not too far from our camp and for the next six weeks spent much of my time in a small tent near the den spying and prying into the family life of the more or less unsuspecting wolves through a 15x binocular telescope. This resulted in my acquiring much scientific data, and even more illuminating and thought-provoking observations that I think are both amusing and enlightening. This study concluded with a visit to the den, down which I crawled under the mistaken belief there were no wolves at home. But there were. Three of them, in fact
.
My anthropological studies included the folklore, religion, hunting methods, etc. etc. of the Ihalmiut: an archaeological survey of their portion of the central Barrenlands of Keewatin and, most important of all, personal relationships with many of the surviving Ihalmiut. I have been able to build up a fairly good idea of what the aboriginal culture was like and to reconstruct at least some of their history during the last half century and more
.
I also spent some months in the country of the Idthen Eldeli, the most northerly Indian people of the region, and have enough material about them to begin a book but would dearly love to spend more time with them
.
White men also provide a splendid source of material ranging from the story of mad “Eskimo” Charlie, to the 45-year sojourn of a German missionary priest on the boundary between Indian and Eskimo territory, whose summation of his life, as expressed to me, was: “It was an evil day for these people when I came among them.”
The geography of the country is almost as interesting as the people and animals. This was the last retreat of the great, mile-thick glaciers
that relatively recently covered much of north-eastern America. Their titanic imprint remains as visible as if made only yesterday. Examples include the eskers running like monumental deserted railway embankments for hundreds of miles over a broken and shattered landscape of rocks and water; ancient marine beaches ringing hills at heights of several hundred feet and distances of several hundred miles from Hudson Bay – the last remnant of an enormous ocean that once covered the entire region
.
These things are only scraps from the material I have to work with but may serve to illustrate the wealth of information I can draw upon
.
Now down to cases. I appreciate your earlier suggestion that the first book should be primarily a personal narrative told in the first person, but I would like to keep myself out of it as much as possible. I want to let the Eskimos tell most of their own stories. I think this can be done with authenticity since one of my labours was the compilation of an Ihalmiut vocabulary, the doing of which made me at least somewhat familiar with their language…
.
The book must have a heart and, equally vital, a purpose. The fate of the Ihalmiut is at the heart of the story, and the purpose is to draw attention to their plight and to that of all the native peoples of the north. And elsewhere, for that matter. So you can expect me to beat the drum about that quite a lot. But if it gets out of hand I am sure your editorial wisdom will find a solution
.
I suspect this is a pretty poor sort of prospectus, but if it interests you enough to warrant even a tentative commission, it will have served. You understand, don’t you, that I must write this book?
The time required to write it will depend on how well the Mowats manage to scrape a living during the book’s gestation period but my guess is it will likely be as much as a year. An advance would be of great assistance of course but it will probably be necessary for me to hammer out a mess of pot-boilers too
.
You will suspect from the foregoing that I await your reply with great anticipation and no little trepidation. But please, Mr. Cloud, despite my sins of omission this past summer, don’t keep me on tenterhooks too long
.
Farley Mowat
Urgently needing money, I now revised the short-story manuscript that had been rejected by
Atlantic Monthly
magazine and sent it away again – this time to
Maclean’s
magazine in Toronto. I hoped it would do better in home waters. My anxiety about it mounted until a day in mid-November when Fran returned from a mail trip to Palgrave waving an envelope. It was a small envelope – too small to contain a rejected manuscript – and hope leapt within me as I tore it open. It contained a handwritten note from W.O. Mitchell,
Maclean’s
fiction editor, inviting me to drop in to his office for a chat the next time I came to town. Nothing was said about my story.
Fran and I were on our way to Toronto a couple of hours later. I took a bath at the Thornhills’ house, donned one of my father-in-law’s clean shirts, and drove downtown to the formidable Maclean-Hunter building, having convinced myself that Nirvana was within.
W.O. Mitchell (his friends called him Bill) was a little older than I and had published a number of folksy short stories and radio plays, thereby becoming one of Canada’s few successful writers. His recent appointment as fiction editor of
Maclean’s
had been something of a coronation, yet he greeted the novice in friendly fashion, waved me to a comfortable chair, and suggested I light up as he searched for my manuscript amongst the papers cluttering his desk. Finding it, he sat back and, in the nicest possible way, blew me out of the water with a single salvo.
“Interesting little story you’ve got here. Unfortunately it doesn’t really fit our needs. A little too grim. So I can’t buy it but I
can
give you some useful advice.”
He paused before delivering this.
“Fact is that what general circulation magazines like ours want these days is boy-meets-girl-three-thousand-words-with-a-happy-snappy-ending. You should bear that in mind.”
With which he stood up and shook me warmly by the hand.
Torn between fury and despair, I drove to my father’s office in the nearby provincial parliament buildings, where I subjected him to a blasphemous account of what had just happened to me. And he forever redeemed himself in my eyes by taking me to the nearby Mocamba Bar for a double rum and this apology.
“Sorry, old son, if I haven’t seemed to be playing on your side these past months. I
was
, you know, but felt I had to keep it deep inside me.
“Truth is that what you were trying to do was what I had most wanted for myself after my war. And, well, I didn’t have the ability, or maybe the guts, to carry it off. I was afraid you’d fail too. That’s what I was trying to shield you from. But I was wrong to try. Dead wrong.
“It won’t happen again.”
Nor did it. From this time forward, Angus did almost everything he could to help me on my chosen way. (Almost, but that comes later.)
The first thing he did was to take me back to his office and give me a page torn from the American
Saturday Review of Literature
. It dealt with literary agencies in New York and especially sang the praises of one called Littauer and Wilkinson that specialized in finding markets for new writers breaking new ground.
“The hell with
Maclean’s –
big frog in a little pond,” my father said. “Send your Eskimo piece off to these people. What have you got to lose?”
It was a
very
long shot, but on the last day of November
Eskimo Spring
was in the mail again.
December of 1949 was as dour a month as any I have endured. The snows came early and fell heavily. Nevertheless, almost every
day I made an attempt to get to the post office. There seldom was any mail, and nothing from New York – not even an acknowledgement of my submission. Nor was there anything from Boston – no ray of light anywhere.
We were now so hard up that I was debating with myself whether to ask my parents for a loan. As the snowdrifts mounted and our woodpile shrank, so did my hopes of making it at the writing game. I became seriously depressed – so much so that I even gave up the long walks on snowshoes Fran and I had been taking through the swamps and woods and over the wind-whipped hills.
Then, on December 21, Lulu Belle bucked her way through the drifts to Palgrave and the postmistress handed me an envelope bearing a U.S. stamp.
The letter it contained was short and sweet.
Dear Mr. Mowat
,
I’m glad to tell you that Saturday Evening Post has bought your excellent piece
Eskimo Spring,
which they will publish as
The Desperate People.
They are paying $500.00 of which our agency will take the usual 10%. The cheque will be in the mail this week
.
We look forward to finding good homes for many more of your pieces
.
Yours in serendipity
,
Max Wilkinson
3A BOOK IS BURNW
e had a quiet Christmas. Snowfall was so heavy it immobilized even Lulu Belle, and, except on snowshoes, we were unable to go visiting or be visited. I was exhilarated by Max Wilkinson’s coup, but distressed that for a long time I had heard nothing from Atlantic Monthly Press.
Although Dudley Cloud had initially written that the press was interested in a travel book from me “full of rich anecdotes and personal adventures,” there had been no follow-up.
The year was coming to an end when I wrote him again.
Mr. Dudley Cloud Dec. 29, 1949
Editor in Chief
Atlantic Monthly Press
Dear Mr. Cloud:
I have had no word from you about the outline for the arctic
book I sent you. I am a trifle concerned because I want to make a new expedition to the north for more material during the summer of 1950 but financial considerations will prevent me from doing so unless I can obtain some assurance of publication
.
Mr. Wilkinson of the firm of Littauer and Wilkinson has kindly consented to act as my agent so if my book prospectus appeals to you would you be so very kind as to communicate with Mr. Wilkinson
.
Best wishes
,
Farley Mowat
This time Cloud replied promptly and affirmatively but, rather than accepting my book and offering an advance against royalties (as was the norm), he proposed an option, for which he offered three hundred dollars.
I was delighted – yet disappointed. An option was no guarantee of commitment and, moreover, that much money would barely cover our ordinary living expenses for two or three months. It was, however, better than nothing so I accepted.
Cloud then sent me a succinct but definitive outline of what he expected the book to contain, including what amounted to a dissertation on method and purpose. Although smoothly phrased, his letter implied that the author’s role was that of artisan, while the editor was effectively the architect.
My hackles rose. But I did not want to alienate the man who evidently considered himself in command of the project, and I contented myself with giving him some of my own thoughts about the proposed book.
Dear Mr. Cloud: Jan. 16, 1950
So far I have written five chapters – and discarded four. Now I leave the typewriter alone for a few days while I cut firewood
.
My information about the Eskimos is, as I have previously explained, by no means as complete as I would like. So I want to make another expedition to the Ihalmiut country but unless I obtain a good advance for the book I won’t have funds to finance it. As my grandmother was fond of saying, “I am in a quarry about this.”
I have come to the conclusion that I must divorce my personal “travel” experiences from the book. I have come to feel that the best way to write it is as a straightforward history of the people, explaining my presence in a foreword only. Since it is the Eskimos who are important to the story, and not myself, I think this is the best plan
.
I think that the book should be as simple, as direct and unadorned as the life of the people it will try to portray. It will be no scientific treatise, nor will it be a “travel yarn” … it will begin with the genesis myth and then continue with the lives and history of the people from about 1850 until the present. My part in it will be that of narrator only. The central, tragic theme will therefore emerge in its own way without distortion
.
Please let me have your reactions as soon as possible and in the meantime I will get back to work, even though the cellar leaks, our new dog is in heat, and my wife has stomach flu!
Cheerio
,
Farley Mowat