| At
a time when the Canadian critics have softened their
asperity toward our more ambitious songsters, when Mr.
Roberts is called a master, and when special beauties
are being found in the works of John Henry Brown, Bliss
Carman and many others of our deserving and painstaking
poets, I hope that the Canadian people will forgive
me for introducing them to another aspirant, who in
his own place is not unworthy of public recognition.
The poet in this case is Mr. James Ernest Caldwell,
who has rightly earned, if he has not gained, the distinction
of being the poet of the Ottawa valley. Mr. Caldwell
is also by right the singer of the Canadian lumber woods
and farm life. He is a young man of about 30 years of
age and most of his verse (for much of it has the right
to that title) was written before the age of 23. He
has worked all his life on a farm, and is now engaged
in that most unpoetical vocation of milk-selling, which
he adds to his other rural activities. I do not mean
this as an advertisement, but I believe he has a most
successful trade in that line and gives good satisfaction.
He has had no other education than that afforded by
a country school and not too much of that. But I should
say, from the evidence of his literary efforts, that
he has tried to read, and has thought not a little.
Though Mr.
Caldwell's work abounds in many crudities and immature
strains of thought and style, yet there is much of his
work that is both dignified and poetical, and showing
a strength of imagination and creative ability that
is scarcely credible in a young Canadian farm lad. His
two principal poems are "Cecilia," a poem
of the Ottawa valley, and "The Marketing,"
both written in rhymed couplets after the style of Scott.
The first is a story of over 2,000 lines, and is a tale
of love and treachery, the scenes being laid in Ottawa
and the lumber woods of the upper Ottawa. After taking
into account the lack of culture in the author, much
dramatic force will be found in the poem. Though written
at that formative age when a young poet would be liable
to imitate, the poem shows a rugged and quaint simplicity
of style that makes it his own, and almost leads one
to forget that the style of the romance writers is scarcely
adaptable to the relation of life-episodes in a lumber
shanty.
There are
many really good descriptions of nature, and all are
quite Wordsworthian in their direct simplicity, such
as the opening lines of canto I.:
The
sky was all a crimson glow,
Where the August sun hung rich and low,
The air was still, and the dying day,
Like a spent, ensanguined warrior, lay
Breathing
out its latest hour,
Conscious
of its spirit's power.
The
description at the commencement of canto II. of the
shantymen leaving Ottawa for the woods is a quaint word
picture, and is worthy of reproduction:—
The
clock is pointing round towards four,
The buss is at each tavern door.
In Murray street, where flock together,
To spend their hours of summer weather,
The hardy reapers of the woods,
The nimble riders of the floods;
Now many a farewell glass is taken,
And many a farewell hand is shaken;
And many a bag and box is stored
Within the bus, then "All aboard!"
Joe, Jacques, Baptiste, Francois, Xavier,
Dave, Peter, George; yes all are there;
Fresh from the barber's unctuous hands,
Fingers bedecked with jewelled bands,
A massive chain hangs from each vest,
A soft slouch hat, with care compressed,
Poised far and deftly on one side;
Shoes of the calf's soft, supple hide,
High-heeled and neat for merry dance,
So step they forth, their play time o'er,
Gay as the cavaliers of yore;
Bold, reckless hearts that know not home,
Joy in a life that bids them roam,
And love the freedom of the woods,
And all the perils of the floods.
Here
we get not only the seeing eye and the poetical imagination
but also the pathos which is depicted in the last lines.
There is also further on a fine song which contains
some strong and tender lines.
What
is more suggestive of outdoor freedom than—
Pull
boys, pull, leave home and friends behind;
Pull boys, pull, this life is to our mind,
In the pine woods deep,
Our camp we'll keep,
Where never a care will find.
And
the lines,
To-night
the murmuring pines shall steep
Our dreams in music while we sleep.
have
the beauty of true poetry.
I only wish
I had more room to quote some other fine descriptions.
"The
Marketing" is less tragic, but is a Canadian pastoral,
and opens with these simple yet truly poetical lines.
The
moon was breaking dull and drear,
In that cold
month which ends the year,
Deep, soft and pure the fresh snow lay
In woods and fields and broad highway.
There
is a true homeliness and tenderness in the description
of the daily toil and lives of the farmer's home, and
some delicate descriptions, such as—
Tardily
the pale light falls
Upon this
dusky cottage walls,
And through
the frost-enamelled pane.
Likewise
the description of the preparation for the market is
realistic in its quaint verity—
Jessie
must see the eggs well packed
In bran so
that they not be cracked;
The butter
prints so deftly made,
In snowy-napkined
baskets laid.
There
is also a graphic and terse depiction of the rural butcher,
at one time an institution, who comes to examine the
family cow, and who—
To
a shade the weight could tell,
And handled knife and steel right well,
And knew who'd fed the heaviest steer,
The fattest hog for many a year;
And now he viewed his latest case
With grave and calculating face,
And felt her brisket, ribs and flank
And then pronounced her "good" pont blank.
I
have not space to quote any more of this genuine homespun
poetry. Sufficient to say it is true Canadian pastoral
of the people and for the people. I do not claim for
Mr. Caldwell that he is a poetical artist. Much of his
work abounds in crudities and marks of immature inspiration.
It is the work of one who has lacked culture. But he
is something more than a mere writer of doggerels. As
I have shown, he has the poetical gift in thought and
imagination. And what he has done, if of no further
value, has at least shown that there can be thoughts
of beauty and inspiration drawn even from the everyday
toils and privations of Canadian farm life.
I will end
this review with one more instance of this Canadian
rural verse, which may not appeal to the worshippers
of Keats and Shelley, but which in its simple limitations
bears evidence also of the beauty of nature and the
pathos of human life:—
O
sing me a song, sweet sister,
A song of
the olden time,
When hearts were full of music,
And lips were
full of rhyme.
And a song shall bear me backward
To happier
times than these,
When flowers were in the pastures
And birds
were in the trees;
And the robin's song at morning
Awoke from
happy dreams,
As into the attic window
Came the sun's
first ruddy beams.
Gone
now are the happy songsters,
And gone from
the fields the flowers;
And few the trees that sigh for
The gentle
summer showers;
And never a juicy berry
To color the
finger tips;
And dust in hillside fountains
Where we drank
with eager lips.
Now never from out the greenwood,
In the days
of blooming spring,
Like the roll of distant thunder
Comes the
throb of the partridge wing.
Over
the world the shadow
Of Mammon
slowly rolls,
And a sacrilegious humor
Hath seared
uncounted souls;
Nothing too fair and sweet
To earn the
scornful gibing
That comes from the jester's seat!
Then sing
me a song, sweet sister,
A song of the olden time,
When hearts
were full of music,
And lips were full of rhyme.
C.
It
is a strange fact that, although 71 years have elapsed
since the death of Keats, no monument of any sort to
his memory has been erected upon English soil. Other
poets of less power, but greater worldly fortune, have
been crowned with every species of honor, and a corner
of Westminster abbey packed with the memorials of their
genius. Yet the fame of this poet, almost the brightest
of all, has been curious neglected. We learn, therefore,
with satisfaction that a very beautiful bust of Keats,
by Miss Anne Whitney, an American, is about to be placed
in the parish church at Hampstead, London, where Keats
lived and wrote many of his best pieces. The expense
of this memorial is being borne by a number of American
literary people, who have thus undertaken a duty which
should have been performed long ago by the poet's countrymen.
L.
The
madness of Monsieur de Maupassant is as singular as
one might expect from the character of his genius. For
some time after the power to compose left him he was
haunted by the pathetic sense that he had lost his ideas,
and presently he imagined that he saw them floating
about in the air in the shape of variously-colored butterflies,
one color representing one sort of feeling or passion,
and another another. Then he fell to work picking these
butterflies out of the air with his fingers, and carefully
setting them down and arranging them in imaginary patterns
on sheets of paper, thus, as he supposed, fashioning
works of fiction in a new and symbolical way. But we
are told that recently even this curious mode of imaginative
activity has been slowly deserting the unfortunate novelist,
and he is falling into that condition of stupor and
total vacancy of mind which is ominous of the end.
L.
The
doctrine—not a new one, indeed, but a very old
one—revived by certain contemporary philosophers,
that genius is simply one form of madness, is a very
comforting one for those who do not possess it. The
men of genius, if there are any existing in our day,
might well turn upon these wiseacres and maintain the
exactly opposite view—that men of the world are
the real madmen, and people of genius the only sane.
I think they could adopt this position with all the
best of the argument in their favor.
L.
Nothing
can be of greater importance as a factor in the education
of our youth than a good Canadian history for the use
of the schools, in their education as future citizens
particularly, as the mass which will before many years
commence to form public opinion. Any movement which
may result in the possession of such a book must receive
the interested attention of anyone who has the welfare
of Canada at heart, and any plan which has that in view
should be fostered by all those who are in positions
where their influence tells for or against such a project.
The future of Canada will to a great extent, in so far
at least as the national spirit is concerned, be determined
by the school children of the next thirty years. If
they are taught that they have reason to admire and
love the country in which they live, for the great deeds
that have been done in it and for the heroic sufferings
of those who laid the foundations of its peace and prosperity,
they will be fired to maintain the national integrity
at any cost. If they can be made aware that this land
of ours has had a development from small and arduous
beginnings and that men and women great enough to have
overcome difficulties and dangers are buried in their
midst, we may hope for the upspringing of a genuine
national pride. I cannot think of any task more difficult
or any more worthy of all the labor and care that a
writer could expend upon it than this "History
of Canada," and if a man comes forward who can
give us what we need we will be in truth a fortunate
people. Judged by results anything we could do for him
would be too small for his deserts. Nothing could be
more dreary than Canadian history as I remember it taught—a
mass of cold facts, unanimated by any spirit of historic
insight, administered tot he pupil as a matter of necessity,
like those household remedies which are held to be good
for the children whether they like them or not. Now
nothing can be more interesting than Canadian history,
which has its roots, if I may so express it, on two
continents, and which has all the romance of adventure
and all the heroism of pioneer effort. To attempt to
teach the early history of Canada without showing how
all its life flowed either from the old world or New
England, and how its development was retarded or advanced
by the intrigues and cabals of the old empires, is worse
than folly, it is lost time. So our historian must have
such a grip of European history that he can refer back
to its old world cause the effect which transpired under
our skies. And his history must be a record of the Canadian
people and have a constant reference to their social
condition, their aspirations and how these were gradually
transformed, and the deep waters through which they
passed. It should not presuppose any historical knowledge
whatsoever on the part of the reader, and each event
or actor should be explained or characterised as if
they had never before been heard of. For instance, when
we come to Lord Durham's mission to Canada, we must
learn what manner of man he was, what his antecedents
were, why he was chosen for his mission, and what became
of him after it was over. In a word, our history should
be based in sympathy, a sympathy which should extend
to every province of the Dominion, and which should
give as true a picture of the special characteristics
of maritime province life as that of Ontario, Quebec
and British Columbia. It may be argued that this would
make too long a history, but do we want a short history?
I think not. It might rather be too long than too short.
We want a book in which the scholars can read, and not
a mere skeleton of parched and confused facts where
he may become utterly confounded. We want a a book full
of spirit and color and liveliness, one that will tell
us not only the date of the battle of Lundy's Lane,
but of the condition of the people who lived in the
province at that time; a book that will tell us of Laura
Secord and Dollard, and of the thousand picturesque
characters which have played upon our stage. I would
not attempt to conceal the difficulty of writing such
a book, but we should not be satisfied unless something
of the kind is forthcoming. Would it not be better to
wait until such a book was written than to accept the
lesser of a number of evils and choose some production
which might be only a little better than what we have
at present? In the meantime any power making for the
development of a Canadian sentiment must largely reside
in the hands of the teachers of our schools. Unaided
they can foster it, but they should have that most desirable
of all assistants—a Canadian history.
S.
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