Canadian Artists Bundle. Kate Braid
The native people gave her the name “Klee Wyck,” the Laughing One, and she quickly made friends in their community. Without speaking either Chinook Jargon or the local native language, and using only gestures and facial expressions, she received permission to visit them and sketch in the great houses that were home to several families. But it never occurred to her to paint the forest. The Canadian forest was still too vast to imagine trying to express it in paint.
Living conditions on the reserve were poor. There was little work for the men, and many people were fatally ill with German measles, whooping cough, or tuberculosis. Residents were sick at heart, and perhaps because of this, there was widespread drinking and gambling.
Emily felt great sympathy and she firmly blamed Europeans for the natives’ dispirited condition. She especially blamed the missionaries, who called traditional ways “ungodly” and taught native people to be ashamed of their heritage.
Her sympathetic response was unusual for the time. Most white people in British Columbia, although they had relied heavily on the skills and kindness of First Nations people to help them adjust to a new country, by the 1870s were hostile, and regarded most native people as “drunks and idlers.”
Her visit to Ucluelet was the first time Emily found comfort and pleasure in the company of First Nations people. Unlike most of the white people she knew, native people left her alone. She didn’t feel lectured or scolded or disapproved of. Mostly they accepted her presence in silence, and so, in their company she could focus on her passion – her art.
On the steamship home, Emily became friends with the ship’s purser, William “Mayo” Paddon, son of an Anglican priest in Victoria. Mayo soon became a frequent visitor to the Carr house. He and Emily walked and talked together through the park and along the cliffs above the sea. Emily even attended his church, the Holy Saviour. Mayo, who was deeply religious, was drawn to Emily because he found her the same, in spite of her rebellion against what she saw as the hypocrisy and mistakes of the church.
He proposed marriage more than once, but Emily turned him down, although one time she almost changed her mind. It happened when she told him about a time when Edith was furious at her (again) and trying to shame her. Edith had said, “Poor Mother worried about leaving you. She was happy about her other children, knowing she could trust them to behave – good reasonable children – you are different!” It hurt Emily’s feelings badly, and for years she cried over it until Mayo whispered in her ear, “Don’t cry, little girl. If you were the naughtiest, you can bet your mother loved you a tiny bit the best – that’s the way mothers are.” For that, she said, she almost loved him.
But not enough to marry him. Apart from the fact that all her life she was bashful about her body and squeamish about sex, Emily, like every Victorian woman, knew that her duty when she married was to bear children and care for her husband and family. (Partly, a woman had no choice but to bear children; these were the days before birth control.) At best, the woman’s own interests – like art – must take second place. Emily wasn’t ready for that. Besides, by now there was enough money in the shoes. One of her friends from Victoria, Sophie Pemberton, had had great success studying in England and was now making her artistic debut in Paris. In 1899, Emily announced to Mayo and her family, “I’m going to London to study!”
The trip was a difficult one. Emily could not go on the water without being seasick. For the entire voyage to England she was violently ill.
4
Breakdown
Have you ever rubbed your cheek against a man’s rough tweed sleeve and, from its very stout, warm texture against your soft young cheek, felt the strength and manliness of all it contained? Afterwards you discovered it was only the masculine of him calling to the feminine of you – no particular strength or fineness – and you ached a little at the disillusion and said to yourself, “Sleeves are sleeves, cheeks are cheeks, and hearts are blood pumps.”
– Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands
When the World Gets One Too Much
When the World is Midling Fair
Emily (centre) could always sketch and draw cartoons that made light of even her darkest moments.
It had been arranged in Canada that Emily would be the paying guest (this was a polite name for “boarder”) with her British aunt, Amelia Green. Aunt Amelia met her at Euston station in the middle of a blazing hot London summer. Emily had never seen such a huge city and was amazed by the “writhe of humanity… as indifferent to each other as trees in the forest.” Both trees and crowds made her feel insignificant and she immediately ached with homesickness; London’s overcrowding and its stale, smelly air were hateful to her. She begged Aunt Amelia to help her.
“Miss Green, is there any place one can go to breathe?”
“There are London’s lovely parks.”
“Just as crammed – just as hot as everywhere else!”
Miss Green was a little surprised. Her idea of a nice time was to go stand on a street corner and watch lords and ladies passing by. If you were very, very lucky, you might even catch a glimpse of Queen Victoria.
“Dear me!” Miss Green exclaimed. “You Canadians demand a world apiece. I have offered to take you to Hyde Park, show you our titled people riding and driving, but no, you Canadians have no veneration for titles.”
No. Emily wanted only quiet, outdoor space. When she persisted, Aunt Amelia finally suggested London’s Kew Gardens, the largest botanical gardens in the world. Here, there were trees and plants from almost every part of the globe.
When she arrived, Emily was at first put off by all the “Thou shalt not …” signs: “No person may carry a bag, parcel, or basket into the gardens,” they said. “You must not walk upon the grass, or run or sing or shout.” Emily strode along the paths, deeper and deeper into the Gardens. What had those signs said again? Oh yes: no bags, no singing. Defiant as ever, she clutched her bag, and sang her very loudest.
When she found a small grove of Canadian pines and cedars, she was delighted. Their needles, when she rubbed them between her fingers, smelled like home.
She registered at the Westminster School of Art, located just behind Westminster Abbey in the heart of London. Emily probably chose England over France for her art studies because there was no language problem and because her sisters would be less resistant to her going to the “old country” familiar from their parents’ stories, than to the “foreignness” of France. But it was not a happy choice. In San Francisco, Emily’s status as British (as the Americans then saw Canadians), had made her feel somewhat equal to her American friends, but in class-conscious London, she was reduced to being a mere colonial, and a shabby one at that. It increased Emily’s feelings of being unwelcome and uncomfortable in this huge city.
Also, English art was traditional and conservative. The newest ideas were happening on the continent, and though the Westminster school had once been England’s best art school, it wasn’t any longer. The instruction Emily got here was to be no better than in San Francisco – and that hadn’t been good. Her unhappiness with the City of London quickly deepened to loathing, and she was further depressed when she heard of the death of her brother, Dick, from tuberculosis.
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