Opposite Contraries (25 page)

“Are you going to?”

“— Maybe Jimmy by and by — he is strong and very bright, not this one —.”

“I never saw brighter eyes than your Joe has.”

Louisa clutched the boy tight. “Don’t tell me that. They say shiny eyes and pink cheeks mean — … If he was your boy, Em’ly, would you send him away to school?”

“
NO
.”

One day our father and his three little girls were going over James Bay Bridge in Victoria. We met a jolly-faced old Indian woman with a little fair-haired white boy about as old as I was.

Father said, “Hello Joey!” and to the woman he said, “How are you getting on, Martha?”

Father had given each of us a big flat chocolate in silver papers done up like a dollar piece. We were saving them to eat when we got home.

Father said, “Who will give her chocolate to Joey?”

We were all willing. Father took mine because I was the smallest and the greediest of his little girls.

The boy took it from my hand shyly, but Martha beamed so wide all over me that I felt very generous.

After we had passed on I said, “Father, who is Joey?”

“Joey,” said my father, “was left when he was a tiny baby at Indian Martha’s house. One very dark stormy night a man and woman knocked at her door. They asked if she would take the child in out of the wet, while they went on an errand. They
would soon be back, they said, but they never came again, though Martha went on expecting them and caring for the child. She washed the fine clothes he had been dressed in and took them to the priest; but nobody could find out anything about the couple who had forsaken the baby.

“Martha had no children and she got to love the boy very much. She dressed him in Indian clothes and took him for her own. She called him Joey.”

I often thought about what Father had told us about Joey.

One day Mother said I could go with her, and we went to a little hut in a green field where somebody’s cows grazed. That was where Martha lived.

We knocked at the door but there was no answer. As we stood there we could hear someone inside the house crying and crying. Mother opened the door and we went in.

Martha was sitting on the floor. Her hair was sticking out wildly, and her face was all swollen with crying. Things were thrown about the floor as if she did not care about anything any more. She could only sit swaying back and forth crying out, “Joey — my Joey — my Joey —.”

Mother put some nice things on the floor beside her, but she did not look at them. She just went on crying and moaning.

Mother bent over Martha and stroked her shoulder; but it was no good saying anything, she was sobbing too hard to hear. I don’t think she even knew we were there. The cat came and cried and begged for food. The house was cold.

Mother was crying a little when we came away.

“Is Joey dead, Mother?”

“No, the priests have taken him from Martha and sent him away to school.”

“Why couldn’t he stay with Martha and go to school like other Indian boys?”

“Joey is not an Indian; he is a white boy. Martha is not his mother.”

“But Joey’s mother did not want him; she gave him away to Martha and that made him her boy. He’s hers. It’s beastly of the priest to steal him from Martha.”

Martha cried till she had no more tears and then she died.

Page 215: Photo inscribed on the back: “Lady June [the dog] and Emily Carr wish Ira Dilworth a Merry Christmas, 1942.” B.C. Archives I-51568

The letters to Emily Carr from Sophie Frank are few, but they indicate that a continuing if intermittent contact between the two women was kept up over several decades. The letter from Jimmy Frank, Sophie’s husband, written at Christmas the year Sophie died, speaks to the importance of this friendship, and the recognition accorded it.

The two women met in Vancouver shortly after Carr went there to live in 1906. Carr would often cross Burrard Inlet to visit with Sophie Frank at her house on the reserve, which in those days was called Squamish Mission. She followed her friend’s travails with her sickly children; when one infant, whom Sophie named after Emily, died, Carr purchased a gravestone for her. And when Carr left the city to return to Victoria, the friendship continued.

Although one of Sophie Frank’s letters has been published, the record has continued to construe her as but an acquaintance of Carr’s, an illiterate “funny” English speaker, who was not so much a friend of Carr’s as a figment of her imagination; a prop for her painterly persona. The more generous view has described Sophie as a kindly protegé of Carr’s. However, with these letters come Sophie Frank’s voice and a glimpse into her life. Given that she was the only indigenous artist with whom Carr had an ongoing relationship, Sophie was a significant figure in her life and almost certainly a source and probably a mentor. Still, she
remains a shadowy figure. Little is known about her beyond the Native community, and what is known comes mainly from Emily Carr. Sophie Frank’s background and family, as well as her reputation as a basket maker, have only begun to be investigated.

The correspondence between Emily Carr and Ira Dilworth constitutes a large file, several folders thick. Although originally from Victoria, Dilworth was living in Vancouver, where he was regional director for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, when he met Carr. The distance necessitated communication by letter, and Carr was an assiduous correspondent. More than two hundred missives poured forth from her. Dilworth’s responses were not nearly so effusive, but he reciprocated and was ever attentive, communicating with Carr by phone (occasionally) and by wire, and on special occasions sending flowers. (So often at one point that Carr wrote him to suggest he was being extravagant.)

Early on in their friendship, and perhaps occasioned by the stories of her childhood that she was preparing for
The Book of Small
, Carr began adopting the voice and character of her childhood self, whom she dubbed Small, when writing to Dilworth. Often Small and Emily would write together in the same letter, Small addressing him as her “dear Guardian,” and Emily calling him “Eye.” In September 1942, talking about Small, Carr writes:

I look up at your picture and wonder how you would have fathered Small. I’ve never had any fatherly feelings towards you; as you know I adored Father as a tot and then hated him. I’ve only known a very small brother’s love. The love I gave you certainly was not the type I gave to my sweetheart, a love that expects a whole heap back. It was a better love than any of these; its foundation was in lovely things…. When Sophie
called me “friend” it was friend in the true sense of the word. When someone says my friend Mrs. Smith it means nothing; friend can be a deep word or have no meaning at all. Perhaps the kind of meaning my love has for you and I’d like yours to have for me is comrade; comradeship seems so expansive somehow, a turning into things together.

The affection and closeness between Carr and Dilworth are palpable, and on a few occasions she speaks of her love for him. In a letter in September 1944, she trails off at the end with this message, and without her usual fond farewells:

Beloved old Ira, how I have loved you for that very quality [his appreciation of music, poetry and painting]. I have only done you one wrong, been possibly only one way unfair, I have possibly loved you too deeply. I can only beg — forgive me —

And in the autumn of 1944, a few months before she died, she writes:

I’ve been so proud of your friendship, and my love for you has been very deep and very sincere. I can’t imagine life since I had to give up painting (tramping round free) without [it].

Ira Dilworth was Emily Carr’s editor, confidant and the last great love in her life. Indeed, she wrote more frequently to him in her last years than she did in her journal, sharing her thoughts, her memories and her obsessions with him. She does not often write about art, but she talks about writing and the reviews of her books. She also writes about her sister Alice, and Alice’s descent into blindness. But the letters also chronicle the story of Emily Carr’s own decline, the slow narrowing of her world, as she prepared for her own departure.

Squamish Mission
North Vancouver
March 19th, 1915

My dear Emily,

With great pleasure I write you these few lines in answer to your letter. I am well and Frank too but he is just as bad in drinking. I just begin to feel alright and good of heart and then he drinks and makes me down-hearted again. I can’t get cheerful for I can’t make him good.

I am very tired of selling baskets. I have lots though but no one cares much for them. All say that they have no money. Frank has not been working lately. He has been home always so I can’t make much alone. I buy all our food. I love the warm weather that is coming. I have not been working in my garden for I am in Vancouver every day trying to sell baskets.

Yes it is too bad about the war. I feel sorry for the poor ladies that tell me of their husbands who are gone.

My father is well and he does feel sorry for Alexander. I was to Squamish River to see my sister to see her little new baby and her only little girl is not well at all.

Sarah is well and Mary Annie too. She is gone to her home in Sechelt to get dried herring. Granny is well too. She is at Squamish River at present.

My father is getting old and foolish now. He comes to town and spends his money in drinking and every way foolishly. I never see him; he does not come to see me.

Well, I will close with my best love and wishing you a Happy Easter when it comes. I hope you will enjoy the time.

Your ever loving friend
Sophie Frank

August 6th, 1915
North Vancouver, B.C.

My dear Emily,

I would only be too glad if I could go, but I am not feeling well. The waves make me sick. So you must not feel sorry about it.

I would bring the mat or send it but because the lady is not sure to buy it. The Indians are not like the white people; the lady is not allowed to go alone any place.

Don’t be too sorry about it though. I can’t help it. I’d like to go but I don’t like the sea voyage.

Your dear friend,
Sophie Frank

North Vancouver
March 1st, 1929

My dear Emily,

I received your letter of the 4th and we was sure glad to hear from you once again.

We feel sorry you was sick with the flu and I hope you will be strong in the near future. As for ourselves, we are well at present.

Yes, I am selling and making baskets for my living. Frank can’t work now. He got odd jobs once in a while. Well, my father is old now and his house got burned about a month ago. I feel bad for I cannot get to go and see him up Squamish Valley.

I must come to a close and hope you be alright soon.

Your friend,
Sophie Frank

Squamish P.O.
British Columbia
December 8th, 1939

My dear friend,

I guess you thought I forgot you but I still think of you. So I just thought I would drop a line and let you know how I’m getting along. I am quite well at present as I still staying at Squamish as I left North Vancouver after my wife died.

I’m keeping away from drink. I’m better off here. I’m having a hard time but I get along. I’ll be in North Van before Xmas.

I cannot forget my wife. It’s pretty hard and sure is very lonesome without her. I hope you are well and please answer.

Jimmy Frank

P.S. Wishing you a very happy Xmas and happy New Year.

December 14th, 1941
Sunday Morn, 3:30
A.M
.

Dearest Guardian,

How wonderful our Birthday party was! I was terrifically happy. When Emily saw all those people she thought she was going to get the jitters. But I didn’t, though. I can’t say what I might have felt if I hadn’t seen my dear Guardian almost first thing. It was so comfortable to see my home right there.

Wasn’t everybody
lovely
? And the dear flowers and the letters. And best of all that lovely kiss you gave Small in front of them all when you finished reading. (Better than the whole bottle of Emily’s heart pills.) I am so grateful to you for being there; it meant everything strong to Emily and to me.

Your Small

Noon Sunday

Cod. P.S. from Emily

Would you expect the child to sleep all through the night after such a day? She didn’t, but she’s ok and gloating over her room full of flowers. They are fresh and new as the morning. They are so lovely.

P.S.er The letters were marvellous. You shall read them.
Do tell me
what to do about the
enormous
ones. Do I write to Canadian Press (Where and how?) the Mayor? The Women’s Canadian Club? How about the Lieutenant Governor? And the Premier. Surely not?? The Indian Agents, yes, of course. There are twenty letters in the mail.

P.S.est I am resting in my poems today. Small loves them. Snooze poems, snooze poems, that’s the order today.