1891/1/17: Ebenezer to Agnes
Cheering up Agnes, peace, the Ibsen "craze," the Pall Mall Budget, Canadian universities, a new pupil, the destruction of Ebenezer's writing, the Bow River, Agnes's trip to Scotland
Calgary, N.W.T.
17, May: 1891.
My dear Comrade
It is exactly a year ago to-day by the day of the month since I came to this house. The motto for the day from the Shakespeare calendar is an ex::cellent one from 2 Henry vi: “...O Lord that lends one life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!” How little one knows what the days and weeks are to bring! How the whole horizon of life changes, ay--its very sky, fresh stars ap::pearing in the night! How dif::ferent were my relations to this strange world of life and action a year ago from what they are to-day! Let us be thankful but silent. Your letter of the 8th has come with its sweet enclosure of pansies. But, my comrade, why are you un::happy, for I read between the lines that you are troubled about something? You are tired--is not that so? Tired, tired; and are longing for peace--for rest. Here are some lines that brought balm to my spirit the other day when I read them. Simple they are, with no mighty “somethingness”, but they breathed Peace to my soul when it was chafed by one of those petty worries of which life is so full:
I cannot wish that I could put away
The web I’m weaving, for a little while;
The shuttle is so heavy, the threads stray
Broken and crushed, and the tangles spiral.
The beauteous design; I am so tired
It irks me even to recollect the lay
I dreamed, when in my childhood I aspired
With sacred thirst to making it some day
In rapturous idyllic verse, so sweet
And strong that all the multitude would pause
And, marvelling at its beauty, gladly greet
The singer with a guerdon of applause.
Even if the coveted applause were mine,
My need and earned by burning midnight oil,
Lavish libations, streams of generous wine
Poured at my feet, rewarding thus my toil;
If loving hands bowed up my brow with hays
And wreaths of laurel, if around my name
A lustrous glory gleamed, if shouts of praise
And trumpet voices heralded my fame,--
I think I would not care to listen now;
I am so weary and it’s growing late;
The crown would be too heavy for my brow,
I’ve waited patiently beside the gate
So long, so long. Oh now that it might yield
And, swinging back upon its hinges, grant
My feet the passport to the blooming field
Where stray the streams for which my longings pant!
The cool, ombrogenous, vistas, green and sweet,
Dusky and dim with hushful silences,
Entice the tired pilgrim’s tired feet
To tarry in their restful silences:
And lay aside the dull, dun garb of care,
And don the soft white drapery of rest;
To loose the sandals and unbind the hair,
And quite the race and cease the feverish guest.
Of flitting fantasies, of glory dream;
No luxury, no gift that fate bestows
From all the blessings in her keeping, seems
As blissful as the rapture of repose1.
Dante, when asked at Santa Croce2 what he sought, said only: “Peace”. How one understands that answer now, though once it was so unin::telligible! It is not in seeking, it is not in endless striving, that peace is--that is certain. Is it anywhere but in self-renunciation? These verses that I have written out above, poor as they are in execution and trifling in quantity, have moved me more than ever I have been by the Sturm und Drang3 of Ibsen4. You ask me if I know Ibsen’s work. I know it to a certain ex::tent. Ghosts I studied somewhat carefully, but with little profit. It is an uncomfortable, if not an unclean, piece of work, against the public production of which men may reason::ably protest. I do not say that the play is prurient; it is rather Puritanically stern. But it is dull; it is undramatic; its subject is re::volting; here and there it touches on subjects which are unmentionable in public. It is not an immoral play; it is fiercely moral. But it seems to me that he is essentially provincial, and his scientific knowledge is entirely out of date. Have you seen his latest work--Hedda Gabler? It cannot but be a trial to many of his admirers. The Ibsen cult is, however, so well established that this last product of the Norse poet’s genius will find devotees and interpreters, and it must be admitted that it needs both. Archer and Gosse are the two apostles of the new cult, and they have fallen terribly fond of each other regarding the trans::lations of this latest of Ibsen’s creations. You will notice how Punch5 is ridiculing this last literary craze of Ibsenism, and I think rightly. After all the public is an ass, and requires at times to be driven out of awkward corners with a well applied cudgel!
When I saw the thumb-nail sketch of you in the Toronto Saturday Night that you so kindly forwarded to me, I could not but think of the story that W.H. Courtney told at the support given in his honour when he resigned his tutorships at Oxford on his appointment to be Editor of Murray’s Magazine. I think you heard me tell the story--one of my “yarns” as you used to call them! He dreamed that he was dead, and, on Peter refusing to let him into heaven because of his having done nothing worthy, he said, “But surely you will admit me seeing that I have suffered so much in that wretched world.” “What have you suffered?” asked Peter. “Why,” said Courtney, “there was a portrait of me in last week’s Pall Mall Budget.” “Step in”, said Peter, throwing wide the door, “and take a front seat among the martyrs.” I think you deserve a front seat among the martyrs. But the Hypatia6 hit was distinctly good and worthy.
You ask for news of the Literature and Philosophy Chairs at Winnipeg and Vancouver, and it is right that you should know all I know. Here is how the matter stands.--At Winnipeg the authorities have de::termined to readjust the whole work::ing of the University of Manitoba and found one or two new chairs in the Arts department. Chief Justice Taylor, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Principal King, with both of whom I stayed for a little while when passing through Winnipeg, have approached me with regard to allowing my name to be proposed for one or other of these appointments. I have consented on condition that, if any other appropriate position come my way before their scheme is carried into effect, I may not be trammelled in my decision regarding it by anything I have said to them. With respect to the pro::posed University of Vancouver I am in the same position. Meanwhile I am getting together testimonials and credentials that I may be armed for the fight, if fight there is to be. Would that I could tell thee something more definite, my lassie, but patience and courage! Let us not yield ourselves to despair or downheartedness.
Here I have got a new pupil--an Englishman, about 30 years of age, of some gifts of head and heart, owner of the Buckland ranch on the Elbow river, who has taken it into his head to read Greek and Latin literature, and was recommended by Bishop Pinkham to come to be for help. He comes to me here on Wed::nesday and Saturday afternoons and I do for him what I can:
“I mak his pickle meat
And I think I mak it well.”7
How strange it will be one day to look back upon these humble duties and how from day to day I fulfill as conscientiously as possible! They are doing this much for myself these duties--they are making me more patient and more accurate than I was used to be. These months of misery and ignominy may after all be a blessing in disguise, keeping me clear of many temptations to degrade myself, training me for the work that I have to do. All things make for good. For both of us here and now this may be best. I am glad that you like Anderson’s portrait. Few more genuine men walk this earth to-day than Anderson8--a wholesome, hearty, genial restful brother, with open heart and soul, speaking forth with earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual con::dition of his own being. As face answers to face, so does the heart of man to man.
A strange and serious calamity has overtaken me, which I made up my mind once not to mention to you, so cruel does it seem and inexplicable. The best of my writing, of the last five years have perished in the conflagration that destroyed the mail-car at Sudbury9 last week! When circumstances determined me to remain in this land a little longer, I sent to the Home-land10 for the MMS. of all those writings--verse and verse--of the last five years of Liddelbank, which I had deemed worth preserving and which, when I set out upon this pilgrim quest that brought me here, I left behind me for safe keeping. These, there is little doubt, were in the mail-car that plunged into the burning trestle and perished along with so much else. What does this mean? That I am to be tried to the uttermost--made perfect by suffering? I can only bow my head and, adopting Carlyle’s noble figure, say what I feel: so if the unseen schoolmaster had torn my copy-book when I showed it, and said, No, boy! then must write it better. So be it. Patience, then, and calm heroism. There still remain to me heart, head and hands, and paper, pens and ink have not taken leave of this planet! I shall be courageous for thee, my trusty and trusting comrade; then art worthy of it all. Let me not refer to this strange, sad busi::ness again. To my labours, then, and until the long night!
I have had a long solitary twi::light walk by the banks of the Bow. The river is in foaming flood “from bank to brae”, tawny as old Tiber, the high temperature of the last two days melting the mountain snows very rapidly. I have been standing a long while on the Eau Claire bridge, watching the huge logs of timber that, having escaped from some of the lumberers’ booms in the mountain forests, were being swept down swiftly to be cast up away down on the prairies, a blessed treasure-trove to some poor settler on the treeless plains. Now and again one of the unwieldy masses collided with the piles of bridge, and how the timbers would creak and vibrate!
Spring comes slowly up this way, but it is coming, and I am making a heroic attempt to make the most of it. We now have five varieties of wild flowers on the hills, and last night--for the second time since I came here--I heard a bird singing!
Your letter of the 14th and the pansied11 post-script of the 15th have come. By no means abandon as impracticable the trip to Scotland. But of all this and other issues raised by your letters I shall write you in the end of the week. How strange you should write so about Ibsen after what I have written about! You are right; there is no doubt of it. Not otherwise would I think of Ibsen than I do, than you do, if, in addition to Archer, Gosse and all the Ibsenites, the Sun on my right hand and the moon on my left were to pro::claim him Prophet, Reformer and Great Teacher of the future! The world is as mad every whit as it was of old, as ready to listen to every quack and charlatan who many happen to come round, all the more so if his tongue, or his panacea12, profess to deal with the indecencies and obscenities! When will a Savonarola13 arise to preach to us a Gospel of Reverence--Reverence for what is here and bright in youth; for what is true and tried in age; for all that is gracious among the living, great among the dead,--and marvellous in the Powers that cannot die!
It is good of you to say that my letters please you and to ask me to write to you often. Sometimes I feel as though I should like to write to you some word of my doing, thinkings, doubts and hopes every day. It is hard that we are so very far away from each other. How I wish that I could be near you to assist you with your preparations for your Autumn lectures! Ah for the someday--the someday, when, joining weakness to strength and giving strength to weak::ness, we learn through each other what it is to live.
Now do not abandon the trip to Edinburgh and Liddesdale, nor let your mother do so. Would that I could accompany you!
Your Sincere
Charlton.
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FOOTNOTES and EXPLANATIONS
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This poem could be Ebenezer’s own composition or an obscure period poem.
A minor basilica in Florence, Italy, where Michelangelo is buried. There is no evidence that Dante Alighieri, the 14th-century Italian poet best known for The Divine Comedy, ever went there, and it was under construction before he was exiled from Florence.
A late 18th-century German literary movement (“Storm and Stress”) that emphasized emotional extremes, the power of nature, etc.
Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) was a pioneering Norwegian playwright often regarded as the father of modern drama. Known for his bold critiques of social norms, his plays explored themes like morality, gender roles, and individual freedom. By the early 1890s, A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), and Hedda Gabler (1890) had stirred considerable controversy and acclaim across Europe.
Punch, or The London Charivari, was a popular British weekly magazine of humor and satire founded in 1841. By the 1890s, it was widely read in intellectual circles for its witty commentary on politics, society, and culture. Known especially for its cartoons and satirical prose, Punch helped define Victorian humor and was often referenced by writers of the period.
Hypatia was a female philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer in Alexandria (c. 350–415 AD) who became a symbol of learning, reason, and martyrdom after being murdered by a Christian mob.
From Robert Burns’s poem "The Twa Dogs" (1786).
This is the man Ebenezer mentioned in a previous letter whom he commissioned to take his photographic portrait.
See the included image for an article in the May 11, 1891, morning edition of the Boston Globe for details of this incident.
Ebenezer’s home country of Scotland. He was raised in Edinburgh and also spent time in the Scottish Borders.
A reference to one of many pressings of flowers and plants they would include in their letters.
Panacea here could mean truth, grace, and love, which would align with poetic and religious uses of the word. It could also mean reason, education, and progress, as it was used during the Enlightenment and Romantic literature.
Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) was fiery Dominican friar and preacher in Renaissance Florence, known for denouncing corruption in the Church and civic life; preaching against vanity, luxury, art, and moral decay; and leading the famous “Bonfire of the Vanities” (1497), where books, artworks, and luxury items were burned in Florence. He was executed in 1498.