1890/10/13: Ebenezer to Agnes
Medical attention at Quorn Ranch, Calgary Agricultural Exhibition, memories of Agnes at their "Valley of Reconciliation," thoughts of the future, desire to take Agnes to Quorn Ranch if she reads again
Calgary, N.W.T.
13, October : 1890.
My Comrade,
You had scarcely waved good-by to me down the gloom of the stair-way that forenoon, when Dr. Laf::ferty came to me with the news that he had been sum::moned to the Quorn Ranch1 to see Mr. Barter who was reported to be dangerously ill, and asking me to go with him there. And your train could hardly have passed the entrance to the Glen of Discord (or the Valley of Reconciliation--which shall it be?) when we were away out on the Macleod trail2 and I was haunted with its memories and associations. We ran out to Barter’s in a little over three hours, past Midnapore3--where, in the creek still lies the rugged cotton-tree trunk but no longer brown and picturesque with the naked bodies of the half-breed children!4--past Pine Creek5 and all the rest of it, until we left the trail about five miles from Sheep Creek and struck out in a South::westerly direction for the Quorn Ranch. The good Doctor won::dered why I was so silent as we came along, + hoped that I was not ill! Ah me, ah me!
We found the Barters in quite a sea of troubles--not only was poor Mr. Barter himself seriously ill with mountain fever6 but the little boy had got his legs badly scalded by the upsetting of a boiler in the Ranch-house. We had quite a busy time of it after we arrived, getting things put to rights and arranging for what was imperative--the running of the invalids next day to Calgary, where they could be properly attended to. But I had time to steal out into the frosty twilight and see the marvellous light that lay along the mountains--where passionless snows were bathed in opalescent bloom, reflected from a sky as of pure ether “and the body of heaven in its clearness”7, of a tender cowslip colour, lucid, low in which, burning with a beauty and glory that poured into my soul, hung our star. And you were out there somewhere I knew not where in that great twilight cathedral, where sculptured stones were the God-built rocks of the mountain side and its roof that sky of gleaming opal lit with the lustre of afterglow and evening star--Agnes, my comrade, my comrade!
We got back to Calgary next afternoon with our waggon8 load of invalids, poor Mr. Barter lying on his mattress like some wounded hussar9. The day was lovely and he was none the worse of10 the necessary exposure, nor was the wee laddie with the scalded legs. After we got the invalids to Mrs. Gibb’s11 (where they now are, getting along as well as can be hoped for) I went to the great Calgary Agricultural Exhibition12 with two of the English Farmer Delegates--to a poor Exhibition with as poor a crew of men as I ever met, coarse uncultured rogues with as little sense of moral responsibility as their pigs and sheep. I felt ashamed of England and Wales when I found out the stamp of men chosen to represent them. Let us hope that the representations from Scotland and Ireland are worthier the name of men.
Yesterday afternoon I walked to the Valley of Reconciliation (I cannot call it now by any other name) and in its loneliness and amid its memories, with the October sun shining fair on the calm decay of its russet rose trees, I read my Christian Year13 and Prayer Book for the day. -- I am not so lonesome since last you went away as I was when you left me for the West before, and not nearly so much so as I was when you went away in the midnight to Medicine Hat14. We know Each other better; we trust Each other with a trust that knows no fear, and I cannot but realize that, through the imaginative purity of the emotion, my feelings towards you are building for me a wall of patience around a home of honour.
I am arranging to send Williams, poor fellow, to New Westminster for the winter and the future will probably unfold itself to him there in the West in some wise15. May all Good16 guide and guard him! This is the first real step toward my own departure from this new land where I have found new life to the old land where my Future lies, Extant though unseen, hiding in it, I doubt not, gladness and sorrow. May all Good guide and guard us, too, my comrade! To shape the whole Future, as Carlyle said well, is not our problem; but only to shape faithfully a small part of it, according to rules already known17. Let us with true heart do, and continue doing, from this moment what, with due earnestness and after reverent inquiry, we have ascertained we ought to do. The general issue will, as it has always done, rest well with a Higher Intelligence than ours!
I should like much, if the weather be propitious and our arrangements allow, to drive you and Mrs. Tom Lafferty--to whom convey my very sincere regards--to the Quorn Ranch when you return. I humbly and affectionately tender you this as my reward if you read as you ought to do when you come back. Be well when you return, and you will read well. You know I am going to be your true + faithful critic, and methinks that I am of that high temper that judges most clearly where it loves best.
A thousand thanks for your Sunday evening notes from Field which I have just received. But do not refer to anything that I have said in the past as to short letters or aught else! Take me as I am now--
“Good to forgive,
Best to forget”.18
Shall I forward to you a little sheaf of verses with a word or two about “A Daughter of St. Peter’s”19? I shall try. Meanwhile Good-night.
Your Faithful Comrade,
Charlton Black--
FOOTNOTES and EXPLANATIONS
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Quorn Ranch was established in 1886 as a cattle and horse-breeding operation. This large-scale, British-based ranch was home to early cowboy John Ware, but it was broken up in 1906 as harsh winters had been too challenging to maintain the open-range operations.
The original Macleod Trail of Calgary was a critical pioneer wagon and ox-cart freight route connecting Fort Benton, Montana, through Fort Macleod to Calgary.
Midnapore started as the Calgary area's first non-Indigenous European settlement, founded as Fish Creek in 1873 before being renamed in 1883. It is currently a neighborhood in the southeastern part of Calgary.
"Half-breed" was the common contemporary term for Métis people. Terms like this were typical of the era and are retained in the transcription for historical accuracy.
The Pine Creek district south of Calgary was a growing rural and ranching settlement anchored by the recently established Pine Creek Cemetery, founded in 1889, and the 1890 opening of St. Andrew’s Pine Creek Church, which was originally Presbyterian.
Mountain fever was a catch-all label 19th-century travelers and doctors used for a fever they encountered in mountainous/frontier regions without a clear diagnosis for it at the time. Symptoms, generally non-fatal, included intestinal discomfort, diarrhea, headache, skin rashes, respiratory distress, and fever.
Exodus 24:10 (KJV) describes a divine vision on Mount Sinai featuring a pavement of sapphire, resembling the sky in its absolute clarity.
Ebenezer spells wagon as waggon, the standard British spelling of the period.
A hussar was a type of light cavalry soldier, famous for scouting, speed, and fancy uniforms, originating in 15th-century Hungary. Hussars were a recurring stock image in Victorian illustration and popular press well into the 1890s. Dashing cavalry officers were a familiar romantic trope, similar to how "a knight in shining armor" functions today.
The expression "none the worse of" is an older, more Scots-inflected construction than the "none the worse for" that is standard today.
Mrs. Gibb likely refers to Jessie Brown, who had married John Gibb, a prominent builder and pioneer contractor. Calgary had not yet opened a formal hospital, so this was likely a cottage clinic overseen by Mrs. Gibb, who later became the matron of Calgary General Hospital and Brandon General Hospital.
The Calgary Agricultural Exhibition, organized by the Calgary and District Agricultural Society, was formed in 1884 to promote settlement and encourage farmers and ranchers to move west. The Society held its first exhibition in 1886, drawing roughly a quarter of the town's 2,000 residents, and by 1889 had acquired grounds on the Elbow River (later Victoria Park) to host it. The Society would run it annually until financial troubles forced it to cease operations in 1895, decades before it was revived and eventually grew into the modern Calgary Stampede.
The Christian Year is a devotional poetry collection by John Keble (1827), one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. It contains poems tied to every Sunday and feast/holy day of the Anglican liturgical calendar and was explicitly written as a companion to the Book of Common Prayer.
Medicine Hat, a likely stop on Agnes's elocution tour that autumn, formed in 1883 as a young Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) town on the South Saskatchewan River, roughly 295 km (183 mi) southeast of Calgary.
"In some wise" uses wise in its older sense of manner or way (same root as "otherwise" and "likewise").
"All Good" here functions as an epithet for God ("the All-Good"), similar to constructions common in Victorian literary and philosophical religious writing ("the All-Wise" or "the All-Father”).
Ebenezer is paraphrasing Thomas Carlyle's well-known line from Sartor Resartus (Bk. II, ch. 9): "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."
From the dedication of Robert Browning’s poem “La Saisiaz,” published in 1878. The full opening stanza reads: "Good, to forgive; / Best, to forget! / Living, we fret; / Dying, we live."
A Daughter of St. Peter's was a novel by Janet C. Conger, published in 1889.