Growing Pains (26 page)

The Indian caught first at the inner intensity of his subject, worked outward to the surfaces. His spiritual conception he buried deep in the wood he was about to carve. Then—chip! chip! his crude tools released the symbols that were to clothe his thought—no sham, no mannerism. The lean, neat Indian hands carved what the Indian mind comprehended.

Indian Art taught me directness and quick, precise decisions. When paying ten dollars a day for hire of boat and guide, one cannot afford to dawdle and haver this vantage point against that.

I learned a lot from the Indians, but who except Canada herself could help me comprehend her great woods and spaces? San Francisco had not, London had not. What about this New Art Paris talked of? It claimed bigger, broader seeing.

MY VANCOUVER CLASSES
were doing well. I wrote home, “Saving up to go to Paris.”

Everybody frowned—hadn’t London been a strong enough lesson but I must try another great city?

But I always took enough from my teaching earnings to go North and paint in the Indian villages, even while saving for Paris.

One summer, on returning from a northern trip, I went first to Victoria to visit my sisters. There I received a curt peremptory command: “Hurry to the Empress hotel. A lady from England wishes to see you on business connected with your Indian sketches.”

The woman was screwed up and frumpy, so stuffed with her own importance that she bulged and her stretched skin shone.

“I wish to see those Indian sketches of yours.”

“For the moment that is not possible; they are stored in my Vancouver studio and it is rented,” I replied.

“Then you must accompany me to Vancouver tonight and get them out.”

“Do you wish to buy my sketches?”

“Certainly not. I only want to borrow them for the purpose of illustrating my lectures entitled ‘Indians and Artists of Canada’s West Coast.’ ”

“Where do I come in?”

“You?—Publicity—I shall mention your work. Oxford! Cambridge!”

Her eyes rolled, her high-bridged nose stuck in the air. I might have been a lump of sugar, she the pup. Oxford and Cambridge signalled. Pup snapped, Oxford and Cambridge gulped—me.

“I shall see you at the midnight boat, then? You may share my stateroom,” magnanimously.

“Thanks, but I’m not going to Vancouver.”

“What! You cannot be so poor spirited! My work is patriotic. I am philanthropic. I advance civilization—I educate.”

“You make nothing for yourself exploiting our Indians?”

“After expenses, perhaps just a trifle … You will not help the poor Indian by lending the Alert Bay sketches? My theme centres around Alert Bay.”

My interest woke.

“You have been there? Are you familiar with it?”

“Oh, yes, yes! Our boat stopped there for twenty minutes. I walked through the village, saw houses, poles, people.”

“And you dare talk and write about our Coast Indians having only that much data! The tourist folders do better than that! Goodbye!”

“Stop!”

She clutched my sleeve as I went out the hotel door—followed me down the steps hatless, bellowed at me all the way home, spluttering like the kick-up waves behind a boat. She stalked into our drawing-room, sat herself down.

I said, “Excuse me, I am going out.”

She handed me a card.

“My London Club. It will always find me. Your better self will triumph!”

She smiled at, patted me.

I said, “Listen! England is not interested in our West. I was in London a few years ago, hard up. A well known author wrote a personal letter for me to a big London publisher.

“ ‘Take this to him with a dozen of your Indian sketches,’ she said, ‘and what a grand calendar they will make! England is interested in Canada just now.’

“A small boy took my letter and returned, his nasty little nose held high, his aitchless words insolent.

“ ‘Leave yer stuff, Boss’ll look it over
if
’e ’as toime.’

“I started down the stair.

“ ‘ ’Ere, where’s yer stuff? Yer ha’n’t left any?’

“ ‘It is going home with me.’

“At the bottom of the third flight the boy caught up with me.

“ ‘Boss says ’e’ll see you now.’

“The elegant creature spread my sketches over his desk.

“ ‘America, eh? Well, take ’em there. Our British public want this.’ He opened a drawer crammed with pink-coated hunting scenes. ‘Indians belong to America; take ’em there.’

“ ‘Canada happens to be British,’ I said, ‘and these are Canadian Indians.’

“I put the sketches back in their wrappings.

“Teach your English people geography, Madam! Then maybe they will be interested in British things. Half the people over here don’t know that all the other side of the Atlantic does not belong entirely to the Americans.”

“TWO PARROTS OUT
in Canada waiting your return! Is it absolutely necessary that you buy another, Millie?”

“Those at home are green parrots; this is an African-grey. I have always wanted an African-grey frightfully. Here we are in Liverpool, actually at Cross’s, world-wide animal distributors—it is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Perhaps pity of my green, sea-sick face softened my sister’s heart and opened her purse. Half the price of the “African-grey” stole into my hand.

We called the bird Rebecca and she was a most disagreeable parrot. However, nothing hoisted my spirits like a new pet, the delight of winning its confidence!

HURRYING THROUGH LONDON,
we crossed the Channel, slid through lovely French country—came to Paris.

My sister knew French but would not talk. I did not know French and would not learn. I had neither ear nor patience. I wanted every moment of Paris for Art.

My sister studied the history of Paris, kept notes and diaries. I did not care a hoot about Paris history. I wanted
now
to find
out what this “New Art” was about. I heard it ridiculed, praised, liked, hated. Something in it stirred me, but I could not at first make head or tail of what it was all about. I saw at once that it made recent conservative painting look flavourless, little, unconvincing.

I had brought with me a letter of introduction to a very modern artist named Harry Gibb. When we had found a small flat in the Latin Quarter, Rue Campagne Premier, off Montparnasse Avenue, I presented my letter.

Harry Gibb was dour, his wife pretty. They lived in a studio overlooking a beautiful garden, cultivated by nuns. I stood by the side of Harry Gibb, staring in amazement up at his walls. Some of his pictures rejoiced, some shocked me. There was rich, delicious juiciness in his colour, interplay between warm and cool tones. He intensified vividness by the use of complementary colour. His mouth had a crooked, tight-lipped twist. He was fighting bitterly for recognition of the “New Art.” I felt him watching me, quick to take hurt at even such raw criticism as mine. Mrs. Gibb and my sister sat upon a sofa. After one look, my sister dropped her eyes to the floor. Modern Art appalled her.

Mr. Gibb’s landscapes and still life delighted me—brilliant, luscious, clean. Against the distortion of his nudes I felt revolt. Indians distorted both human and animal forms—but they distorted with meaning, for emphasis, and with great sincerity. Here I felt distortion was often used for design or in an effort to shock rather than convince. Our Indians get down to stark reality.

I could not face that tight-lipped, mirthless grin of Mr. Gibb’s with too many questions. There were many perplexities to sort out.

Strange to say, it was Mrs. Gibb who threw light on many things about the “New Art” for me. She was not a painter but
she followed the modern movement closely. I was braver at approaching her than her husband with questions.

I asked Mr. Gibb’s advice as to where I should study.

“Colorossi,” he replied. “At Colorossi’s men and women students work together. At Julien’s the classes are separate. It is often distinct advantage for women students to see the stronger work of men.”—Mr. Gibb had not a high opinion of the work of woman artists.

The first month at Colorossi’s was hard. There was no other woman in the class; there was not one word of my own language spoken. The French professor gabbled and gesticulated before my easel—passed on. I did not know whether he had praised or condemned. I missed women; there was not even a woman model. I begged my sister to go to the office and enquire if I were in the wrong place. They said, “No, Mademoiselle is quite right where she is. Other ladies will come by and by.”

I plodded mutely on, till one day I heard a splendid, strong English “damn” behind me. Turning, I saw a big man ripping the lining pocket from his jacket with a knife. I saw, too, from his dirty brushes how badly he needed a paint rag.

I went to the damner and said, “Mr., if you will translate my lessons I will bring you a clean paint-rag every morning.”

Paint-rags were always scarce in Paris. He agreed, but he was often absent.

The Professor said I was doing very well, I had good colour-sense.

THAT MISERABLE, CHALKY
lifelessness that had seized me in London overtook me again. The life-class rooms were hot and airless. Mr. Gibb told me of a large studio run by a young couple who employed the best critics in Paris. Mr. Gibb himself criticized
there. Students said he was dour and very severe, but that he was an exceedingly good teacher. I would also have the advantage of getting criticism in my own language.

I studied in this studio only a few weeks and, before Mr. Gibb’s month of criticism came, I was flat in hospital where I lay for three hellish months and came out a wreck. The Paris doctor said, as had the London one, I must keep out of big cities or die. My sister and I decided to go to Sweden.

While gathering strength to travel, I sat brooding in an old cemetery at the foot of our street. Why did cities hate, thwart, damage me so? Home people were wearying of my breakdowns. They wrote, “Give Art up, come home—stay home.”

I showed some of my Indian sketches to Mr. Gibb. He was as convinced as I that the “New Art” was going to help my work out West, show me a bigger way of approach.

We enjoyed Sweden. She was very like Canada. I took hot salt-baths. In spring we returned to France, but I never worked in the studios of Paris again. I joined a class in landscape-painting that Mr. Gibb had just formed in a place two hours run from Paris. The little town was called Cressy-en-Brie. Mrs. Gibb found me rooms close to their own. My sister remained in Paris.

Cressy was quaint. It was surrounded by a canal. Many fine houses backed on the canal; they had great gardens going to the edge of the water and had little wash-booths on the canal—some were private, some public. The women did their laundry here and were very merry about it. Shrill voices, boisterous laughter, twisted in and out between the stone walls of the canal. Lovely trees drooped over the walls to dabble their branches. Women knelt in wooden trays, spread washing on flat stones before the washing-booths, soaped, folded, beat with paddles, rinsed. Slap,
slap, went the paddles smacking in the soap, and out the dirt, while the women laughed and chatted, and the water gave back soapy reflections of their rosy faces and white coifs.

The streets of Cressy were narrow, and paved with cobblestones. Iron-rimmed cartwheels clattered noisily, so did wooden shoes. Pedlars shouted, everybody shouted so as to be heard above the racket.

Opposite my bedroom window was a wine-shop. They were obliged to close at midnight. To evade the law the wine vendors carried tables into the middle of the street and continued carousing far into the night. I have watched a wedding-feast keep it up till four in the morning, periodically leaving the feast to procession round the town, carrying lanterns and shouting. Sleep was impossible. I took what fun I could out of watching from my window.

Distant from Cressy by a mile or by a half-mile, were tiny villages in all directions. Each village consisted of one street of stone cottages, whitewashed. A delicate trail of grape-vine was trained above every cottage door, its main stem twisted, brown and thick as a man’s arm, its greenery well tended and delicately lovely.

They grow things beautifully, these Frenchmen—trees, vines, flowers—you felt the living things giving back all the love and care the growers bestowed on them. A Scotch nurseryman of wide repute told me arboriculturists went to France to study; nowhere else could they learn better the art of growing, caring for, pruning trees.

I tramped the country-side, sketch-sack on shoulder. The fields were lovely, lying like a spread of gay patchwork against red-gold wheat, cool, pale oats, red-purple of new-turned soil, green, green grass, and orderly, well-trimmed trees.

The life of the peasants was hard, but it did not harden their hearts nor their laughter. They worked all day in the fields, the cottages stood empty.

At night I met weary men and women coming home, bent with toil but happy-hearted, pausing to nod at me and have a word with Josephine, a green parrot I had bought in Paris and used to take out sketching with me. She wore an anklet and chain and rode on the rung of my camp-stool. The peasants loved Josephine; Rebecca was a disappointment. She was sour, malevolent. Josephine knew more French words than I. I did flatter myself, however, that my grin had more meaning for the peasants than Josephine’s French chatter.

Mr. Gibb took keen interest in my work, despite my being a woman student. His criticisms were terse—to the point. I never came in contact with his other students. They took tea with Mrs. Gibb often. Mr. Gibb showed them his work. He never showed it to me. Peeved, I asked, “Why do you never allow me to see your own work now, Mr. Gibb?”

The mirthless, twisted grin came, “Don’t have to. Those others don’t know what they are after, you do. Your work must not be influenced by mine. You will be one of the painters,—women painters,” he modified, “of your day.” That was high praise from Mr. Gibb! But he could never let me forget I was only a woman. He would never allow a woman could compete with men.

One day I ruined a study through trying an experiment. I expected a scolding. Instead, Mr. Gibb, grinning, said, “That’s why I like teaching you! You’ll risk ruining your best in order to find something better.”