Opposite Contraries (3 page)

Perhaps what is most noticeable in reading the journal “outtakes” is the host of racial slurs, starting with Carr’s entries about “the Jew” who lived next door to her on Beckley Street, and her references to black people as “niggers.” She describes “niggertown” in Chicago, for instance, and is prompted to wonder out loud, “I can see the American Indian falling in step with the white races and the Eastern peoples — Chinese and Japanese — but I can’t see the niggers. I like them but I don’t feel sisterly exactly.” In “Young Town and Little Girl,” she tells the story of being snatched out of harm’s way by a black man when some cattle stampeded down Wharf Street in front of her father’s store. He whisks her into a saloon and plops her onto the bar where she sits agog, torn between wanting to watch the wild animals carrying on outside and wanting to take in her first sight of the inside of a drinking establishment. The version of the story published in 1942 avoids the word “nigger” entirely (referring to the man as either a “black man” or “Negro”) and reworks the ending, changing the focus of the story from its emphasis on race to one highlighting the social disgrace represented by bars and saloons.

At the same time, other expurgated sections of the journal indicate that Carr was not at all ignorant of race issues. She notes that people reacted more superficially to her paintings of Native imagery than to her newer landscape sketches, and implies it is because the creation was not all hers. And in a passage about a Mr. Shades who was obsessed with Native artifacts, whose“soul rolls around Indian designs, colours, robes”and who had “done his summer house up Indian,” Carr writes: “There is a falseness about a white man using those symbols to ornament
himself. The Indian believed in them. They expressed him. The white is not expressing himself; he’s faking.” It would seem that Carr was quite conscious of the racism around her and was not reticent about chastizing white society for its intolerance and superior attitudes. However, she was not able to turn the critique on herself, tending instead to promote herself as the exception, a special friend and interlocutor for Native culture. She is conflicted and inconsistent. In discussing her friendship with Sophie Frank, Carr is doubly enigmatic, telling us very little about her beyond the usual stereotypes; Carr praises her lavishly and folds Sophie Frank’s character and story into her literary project while actually disguising the friendship and misrepresenting the real person to posterity.

Nowhere is ambivalence in Carr more evident than in her handling of the subject of love. She is coy, suggestive and, in the end, deliberately (one suspects) gives us clues but not the whole story. On combing the journal manuscript, for example, while I did find the occasional phrase and clause deleted, none of them were of any moment except for one. In the published entry for January 9, 1938, the second-last line is missing six words. The passage begins with the reflection that her love had endured three crushing blows in life. This is followed by a sentence of six words that was twelve in the original:

I have loved three souls, passionately
, passionately, two relatives and a lover.

Her father, obviously, was one of the two relatives, and the nature of her relationship with him is explored in several entries as well as in a letter to Ira Dilworth. But the other relative
remains a complete mystery. Carr rarely mentions her brother Dick, who died in a tuberculosis sanatorium in California in 1899 shortly after she arrived in England (the news came with her first letter from home). A set of studio photographs dating from 1891 shows the brother and sister together. In one, they appear in a formal pose and street attire, but in the other, they are in a relaxed pose of easy and intimate affection. The gloves and hat are gone, and Carr stands behind her younger brother, who is seated, leaning into him, arms crossed and resting on his shoulder. This photo is impossibly little to go on, of course, and the very idea might seem to imply incestuous feelings on her part, though perhaps not. The expurgated journals and other writings in this volume indicate that her conflict with her father was not obviously the result of sexual abuse; they demonstrate that the conflict between them had an intellectual and emotional content that does not presuppose incest any more than it precludes it. Is it possible that Carr had a special relation with her brother that ended when he died and that his death was one of the blows to which she refers? She wrote, albeit briefly, about Clara, her oldest sister, who married and left home before Carr was a teenager, so it does seem odd that she scarcely mentions Dick. He is the blue-eyed, curly blond little brother with whom she had to have been close, physically if nothing else, because of their proximity at the end of a long line of children, with only three years separating them. She wrote about her father, her mother, the hired help and endlessly about her sisters, so why, then, if there was special love and hurt between herself and Dick, did she never write about him? Yet there are no other candidates. She could be referring to her mother or even possibly one
of her sisters, though all are improbable, specifically because she wrote so much about them, otherwise. So, in the end, the identities of the two passionately beloved “relatives” are left to our imagination and conjecture, perhaps deliberately.

With the vignette called “Love” (heavily scratched out in the original), wherein Carr recounts her traumatic first encounter with romance and sex, together with the other excised entries referring to her Manichaean tussle with love, we are now in a position to know something about the person she is referring to when she mentions the lover. Not enough to suggest the young man’s identity, but enough to place him in her biography and to illuminate the allusion to “love found” in
Hundreds and Thousands
. That Carr clearly wanted the story known but was not willing to revive the humiliation by divulging names is evident in her obvious delight in telling half the story, in her candour coated with ambiguity.

A good deal has been written on the subject of Carr’s relationship with her father, Richard Carr, particularly his crude introduction to the facts of life and its seismic aftermath. References to this event in letters to Ira Dilworth, together with the short piece entitled “Mother” and the journal description (April 22, 1935) of Carr’s reflections when she and her two elderly sisters reread their father’s diaries, offer a rather more positive view of the man than he has had heretofore. Similarly, the consternation, the dreams and the caustic comments about Bess Harris that pop up throughout the journals indicate an emotional tie of significant proportions between Bess and Emily that has not been evident before. They reveal an anger that lasted long enough for the disaffection to become common
knowledge, it being widely known in art circles that Emily Carr had no use for Bess Harris. The other side of the story is the depth of feeling involved, the love that preceded the bitterness.

The second person who haunts Carr’s subconscious during these years is Sophie Frank. Carr writes of Sophie with unrestrained love and refers repeatedly to their spiritual connection and mutual trust, to the special quality of their love. She also tells tales about Sophie’s drunkenness, her reputed stint on the streets and her fall from grace (in Carr’s eyes), so it would appear that there was a rupture in this friendship too. Carr does not hide her judgementalism. Sophie’s behaviour was abhorrent to her and violated all sense of decency as she understood it. Yet her desire to think well of Sophie, to think of their love as unconditional, triumphed. One wonders, though, how this might have felt to Sophie; whether or not she forgave Emily the same way, whether or not she took the white woman to heart in return.

The previously unpublished portions of Carr’s journals are presented here in chronological order and are grouped under the same headings as in
Hundreds and Thousands
. As with
Hundreds and Thousands,
the restored excerpts peter out in the last years —1939, 1940 and 1941— as Carr became increasing ill and unable to write. Some of the restored excerpts, for the sake of comprehension, have required presentation in context, which is to say within the published passage from which they were deleted; the previously published fragments are italicized. Furthermore, an ellipsis within italicized square brackets
[
…
]
marks the beginning of an entry that follows a published section, or the end of an entry that precedes a published section, or an omission within a published section; an ellipsis within roman
square brackets [. . .] marks an omission in an unpublished section. Words added for understanding or not readable in the original manuscript are in square brackets.

Carr’s text is reproduced here as it was written; her syntax is not altered, though her spelling is regularized, some punctuation is introduced and some excessive underlining removed. (Her underlinings are indicated here by italics.) As a rule, she preferred to write without capital letters at the beginning of sentences and with commas in lieu of periods. This often gives her prose the feel of stream-of-consciousness writing, and occasionally this takes off like a riff on a tenor saxophone. Although she often writes in short snappy sentences, more often they are long and convoluted, and though confusing without the presence of commas and colons, they usually do scan for sense. In this way, Emily Carr has to be appreciated as an accomplished prose stylist very much in control of the language.

Carr had a title for her journals, which she inscribed on the inside cover page of the lined notebook she began in November 1930. “Oddments on Thoughts and Feelings on Work,” she called them, and so they emerged, patchwork, piecework: part story, part reflection, part confession.

[Emily Carr’s final trip to Native sites on northern Vancouver Island, with her dog Koko]

Left home midnight of August 19 for Alert Bay sketch trip, taking Koko. Phil saw me off. We sat on bags and had ginger ale and a cigarette on the wharf. Long nights.

Rather misty or smoky. The recent
CNR
fire must have been frightful. The charred remains were pitiful. I went right over to North Vancouver to see Sophie. My heart stood still when I found the gate nailed up, the house forsaken. I thought she might be dead, but the Indian next door, who came at my rap half-naked, told me she was away with Frank hops picking. I went to see the church and prayed earnestly for help with my work and for Sophie. It is very quiet and lovely and peaceful in the little Catholic church in the early morning. One forgets the tawdriness. The Virgin looks so serene and St. Joseph so kindly and there is the Christ Child and the crucified Christ. The altar was decked with flowers. Some were
real
from Indian gardens — astis and perennial phlox purple pink. I went up rickety stairs into the gallery. There were signs of many rats. It was ill kept and littered cobwebs hung. There were rat holes in odd corners. So I went
below again and sat quiet with my arm around Koko. Then I went on past the derelict boats lying in the mud and the derelict houses leaning, broken dreary windows stuffed with rags; derelict cats scuttled off under houses across the accumulated litter of rubbish, between the drunken foundation blocks of drift[
_wood
] that the houses are set upon. Quite a portentous house is being built on the church green. Will it have as good an ending as beginning? They always tire and leave their buildings half-complete.

Sara was well locked and barred as to gate. Her big perennial phlox was blooming lavishly, its circumference circled with rags to help it from being wind wrecked. The steps and narrow railless verandah were more dilapidated than ever. Boards tipped as you trod. I stepped warily and it took Sara some wrestling with the key and some jiggling to get it [the door] open. There she stood in a very clean undervest and meagre shawl, also clean, and a cotton skirt gathered fully into belts that would not meet and had no fastenings. The wrinkles of her face did wonderful gymnastics around their “It’s Emily!” There was no doubting her welcome. “Lumatism bad. Here and here.” She pulled up garments and down garments to show me the misshapen members and crawled back to her bed, a veritable mountain of patchwork quilts and oddments with white pillows and sheets, an eructation of woollies built in stacks and covered with every manner of rag to help keep off draughts. With a long stick she hooked about her, gathering a blouse made of several different pattern prints, a few more cotton skirts and a pin cushion stick with scissors, and as she talked she pinned things about her. Her thick iron-grey hair hung in a heavy plait. She is life weary and full of pains. We’d a great talk and then we spoke of Sophie. The news is bad. Sophie is drinking and worse. Though she is Sophie’s aunt she has nothing
to do with her now. I wondered how much was true. I went on to the priest’s house, a worn green thing next to the church, little better than the Indians’. He ambled down the stairs at my knock. I had never talked with him before. A dirty little man who lisps a lot but not pleasantly. He confirmed all. Sophie is a prostitute. She is drinking hard. She is always over in town. A woman on the street, the chattel of the lowest waterfront derelicts. Frank takes her to them and waits while she earns the beastly dollar. Then they drink. Poor Sophie who I have loved so. She has lied hideously and sunk so low and there is little one can do. She’s the worst in the village and leading all the young girls wrong too. She used to be good and straight and true yet she’s had so much trouble. Twenty-one children all dead and she loved them so every one. Sophie that told me that she loved me like a sister, and that I loved and believed.

It is early Sunday morning. I came last night, slithering through the still waters of Quatsino Sound on the flat little mail boat bulging all over with mailbags and stuff. I sat on the back deck on a big mail sack with my back to a barrel. Koko in my arms, the two of us covered with my oilskin coat. The great September moon was playing hide-and-seek, an overgrown baby way behind the clouds; and then it moved back behind mountains and tall trees, leaving us in the dark. It loved to tantalize, hiding away just as one felt that we were getting to a particularly lovely bit. Then I sat in the dark and wondered things. Life has always been like that — wondering why. I remember lying on my bed in the little north bedroom and fancying that all over the low ceiling where the roof sloped was written great “whys.” Well, I
wondered about all the mail I sat among, who would get these letters, what they’d say and feel, and how the letters would give them joy or sorrow or perplexity, or tell of births and deaths and marriages. It seemed as if I could feel portentous things in men’s and women’s lives poking out of the sacks. Letters that had been longed for and letters that had been dreaded and unexpected letters that would be too late. Then the engine made queer noises and I wondered if things were ok below. The engineer had been on the stage from Hardy Bay. We had had to wait for him at the beer parlour, he and another man, and they walked foolishly, were both obviously a little drunk. When I knew one was our engineer I felt indignant that brutes like that had human lives at their mercy. They’re not fit to have charge even of “His Majesty’s mail.” There were, I think, only a couple of passengers besides myself. A gentleman (how they tell out in this country of slouch and rude speech) and a China-man. Except for the clang there was absolute silence. No one spoke. Perhaps they were wondering too — wondering why an old woman, very shabby and uncommunicative, was sitting there on the mail sacks, hugging a wee dog. Eventually there were lights and a series of bumps and heavy uncouth forms around barrels and boxes. No women. I clambered over the side and then asked where the hotel was and where I paid my boat fare. After a bit a man came from somewhere and took my dollar and a slouching old man took my bags. We went over long uneven board floats with gaping holes and unevenness, up a steep little bank and through a cow gate. A few giggling girls and loutish boys stood around the pot of fire at the store waiting for the mail to be sorted. They stared rudely at me. The hotel keeper was plump and kindly. She showed me to a room on the ground floor. The beds were clean and at first sight I thought it
looked not bad. But daylight reveals much dirt, cigarette stubs, dead flowers, matches and, loathsome to a degree, someone has been drunk sick behind the bureau. These whites are little better than the Indians in clean habits. Koko and I walked behind the house a bit. It was very still and lovely. Koko was tired and fixed his head on my coat behind my red canvas bag and snored grumpily. I had a splitting headache, the rough churning on the sea earlier in the day and the tiresome wait at Hardy Bay had frayed my nerves and temper and brought on a splitter. But I had an aspirin and read one of the three books provided in my room, A
Vindication of the Life of Lady Byron.
I slept and I dreamed.