February 2 1964, Ban Righ Hall in bed
[journal]
A weekend past. I went home with Olivia to Toronto. I remember a wonderful,
lean, house with three stories - red carpeted stairs leading up - the dining
room at night with its deeply-recessed diamond-paned windows, the center-ceiling
lamp radiating strange lines and orderly dribbles of light on the table
and floor, the basket of fruit, the straight-backed chairs with their red
seats, the rows of decorative glass bottles, the paintings by Mrs Howell
- the carved Welsh chair with the wonderful daisies and stems and leaves
in its polished slab-back - large-eyed little Richard enunciating so clearly
- Mrs Howell smiling under her large black hat - Granny smiling rather forlornly
beside her turkey - Joscelyn tumbling out to meet me with her thin body
vital under a funny orange print dressing gown - Mr Howell at first austere,
then playful, then, when I said goodbye to him, warm. (I think I could love
them all!)
The movie, "Irma la Douce," about a thin, pretty fille
in Paris, green-stockinged and very dignified in her winning little appartment
- a very loveable prostitute. A wonderfully loveable movie as well. That
was last night. We had a very early breakfast downtown, Olivia with spaghetti
and I with an omelette.
Sat and talked in her living room until three, like the night before,
munching apples, watching the wonderful dining room gleam in its dappled
light, speaking spasmodically, and feeling no compulsion to. Knowing firmly
now that we are friends.
Travelling back on the train, sitting together in a back seat watching
the sunset on Lake Ontario, the sky turning pink - orange - rust - maroon.
A thrilling burned-down crimson. Houses, trees, reduced to silhoette. Sky,
lake reduced to color. Beauty in simplification - intensification.
Olivia was half-asleep with her cheek on the windowsill and my face was
reflected on the window against that vast background. We are friends.
[back to letters]
February 3, Monday
Want to hear about the weekend? I've seen Toronto; there is more to it
than a skyline running by the train windows and the lower platform of Union
Station!
We left at noon. Janet and Olivia from Ban Righ Three and sixteen others
so that we could get a group rate of $7.25 return, compared to the $11 something
regular. It was exciting to be back on a train, and our car full of university
students reminded me of Stratford. A pixie brunette named Joan had her guitar,
so we sang hootenany songs most of the way there; Olivia and I talked, we
read, stared at the black snowless countryside. I couldn't help comparing
this with the other time I'd taken that train route in the other direction,
arrive at Queen's for the first time. I had an overwhelming cold, had been
travelling without sleep for about three days - and LOOKED it. And then,
I was frightened too of all those terribly suave-looking co-eds arriving
in their tweed suits and their coiffeur hairstyles and shiny high heels.
It was rather awful. Remind me to tell you the whole truth about that grim
first week some time.
But this time was very different. In time I discovered that the hair-dresser
hairstyles were pretty infrequent for most of the kids, that the high heels
are stuffed away in a corner in favour of tennis shoes here, that the tweed
suits were brand new and anxiously calculated to IMPRESS all the other poor
scared co-eds who were also wearing tweed in an effort to impress them.
Very funny now, but rather tragic then. Note well, Judy, and get a tweed
suit now!
Arrived in TO just after dark, and in straggling through the lower platform
of Union Station for the fourth time in my life, was met by a tiny smiling
woman in a large black hat who hugged Olivia and welcomed me very warmly:
Mrs Howell. She grabbed a bag and hurried us outside to the car, at last,
at last, outside the station. In ten Volkswagon minutes we arrived at the
house on Dale Avenue in Rosedale (a very old, very well-to-do section of
Toronto - more about it later). Barely inside the door, I met Granny, the
seventy-year-old windmill-turbine of the household. And before I'd properly
had time to say hello to her, Olivia had dragged a writhing mass of limbs
in a garish orange print bathrobe around the corner and introduced it to
me as her fourteen year old sister Joscelyn. More about HER later too. And
on the way upstairs to Olivia's third floor room we stopped by the television
room and I met Richard, her large-eyed and precociously intelligent five
year old brother. That left only Mr Howell who was away studying until dinnertime.
He came down just before dinner and I met him then (frightened to the
toes I was too). He is a fairly large man with a hooked nose, large Welsh
eyes like Olivia's, glasses, dark hair with grey edges around his face,
an enormous sort of dignity, and an air of ignoring anything that displeased
him. I was terrified that I wouldn't think of anything intelligent to say
to him all weekend - as it happened, I didn't have to because he really
didn't expect me to: didn't notice me most of the time, and when he did,
was really very nice. He is studying feverishly for an exam he is going
to England to write on Thursday - law examinations that he has never had
a chance to write before, and that he has dreamed of passing all his life.
We had a most wonderful dinner, with all sorts of good things (even the
parsnips were delicious) and a dessert of cheese and coffee, continental
style. (They have travelled quite a bit in Europe, especially when they
were still living in Britain, and so are really more European than Canadian.)
Then, luxuriating in having no work to do - we listened to Olivia's favorite
record - Rachmaninoff's Concerto in C Minor, mmmm! - and lay in front of
the television set munching potato chips, crackers, cheese with our coffee,
rotting delightfully (us, not the food). After the latest late movie, we
sat down in the living room until three, eating apples and talking.
The Howell house really is a wonderful and exciting thing. It is I-don't-know-how-old,
built long ago in Toronto's early days, and thus has all the wonders of
the age of Rosedale mansions. A fireplace in the living room, another in
the hallway (this one tiny and made of polished red stone), one in the upstairs
drawing room (ie Richard's beloved television room). There are three flights
of stairs, red-carpeted, going up to third floor. The walls are thick, about
eight inches, with the windows deeply recessed, and many of them made of
diamond panes. Also, the windows open outward, swinging way out far enough
for children to jump through and for people to lean out while they daydream.
On the second story are three bedrooms and a bath as well as the TV room;
on the third floor are Olivia's large bedroom and her parents'. There is
another bath on the bottom floor beside the kitchen.
The dining room is the most wonderful room of all. All painted white,
with a polished wooden floor and polished dark beams across the ceiling,
it looks like a Victorian dining room in a little country house, with the
set of large diamond windows on one end opening onto the back yard with
a wide window seat, a set of high little windows in the sturdy white side
walls, a large Welsh cupboard, a little door in the side just large enough
to send dishes through to the kitchen on the other side, a large and gracious
table - but the miracle of the room is the lamp hanging in the centre above
the table that turns the lighting a mellowed gold color, and seems to send
it out in rays and patterns, mysteriously. And the paintings on the walls
are all done by Mrs Howell.
Wednesday 5 Feb
Holiday from Toronto, I'll digress for one side and babble about Queen's.
Guess what we're studying in Music 1 - the Emperor Concerto, all three
movements.
A new resolution I've made is to go for a half hour's brisk walk every
day just before dinner, because at that time the sun is setting tentatively
and the sky comes in Many Exciting Colors - two evenings ago the sun (a
huge red thing) set at the exact middle of the end of Union Street. The
same evening, when it was very cold, the lake was wind-polished and covered
with skaters. And the houses are always curious, many of them elephantine
Victorian palaces with balconys in all the impossible places and spidery
wrought-iron widow's walk railings on the roof, imposing front entrances,
plump towers and angular roof-peaks all put together in some
architect's private joke - many of the houses have carriage houses attached
to them and small groom's quarters above the stables, and nearly all of
them are surrounded by massive grey stone walls. And grandiose trees everywhere,
higher even than the ridiculous peaks of those houses.
Today was spring-in-February. We have practically no snow left, have
had little more than a week of cold days all winter, and are luxuriating
in a thaw-sun nearly continuously. During my walk this afternoon I was so
warm that I had to carry my sweater; you can imagine that it was good to
be running around in shirt sleeves and tennis shoes.
Have I ever told you about the Ordeal of Entering Ban Righ? At the entrance
there is first a flight of stone steps, then another, then a Portal: a thick
heavy wooden door nearly impossible for us to open; even our dates have
to strain. In the vestibule there is another flight of steps, then another
Portal. Finally the hallway. There sits the lavendar lady at her desk. Say
something pleasant to her, and try to escape before she runs to anecdotes.
But that is not the worst: the Dean's office is along the corridor and the
door is always open - if one is wearing kneesox to dinner, one creeps by
with one's legs tucked up under one's skirt. Finally the stair landing.
A pleasant baking-potato smell. A half-flight of stairs. Window. Turn. Another
half flight. The first floor. Turn. A half-flight, window, turn, half-flight
- so on to a puffing panting collapse at Home.
Thursday 6 Feb
Toronto (con't)
I have gone on at great length about the house and it is because I was
nearly as crazy about the house as I was about the family.
On Saturday morning we woke of course rather late, had brunch, then went
on a shopping jaunt with Mrs Howell, driving through the Rosedale area to
show me the mansions where the very old very moneyed families of Toronto
live, and where the nouveau riche are making their insidious climb to the
top.
After a wonderful lunch - Olivia ordered her favorite dish which is
Welsh Rarbit, a cheese-egg sauce baked on toast - we went downtown for some
sightseeing. Perhaps you have heard of the exhibition now in Toronto, the
very ambitious and very lavish Picasso and Man exhibition featuring
some of the fabulously expensive Picassos done through his entire career
with particular emphasis on his interpretations of man.
Olivia I've found is NOT a person to tour art exhibits with, particularly
modern art exhibits. She walks very fast, makes terrible remarks very loudly
(talked this tour about the "alpine breasts and triangular tongues
of Picasso's women). Some of the work was grotesque, but even so it was
interesting and it is exciting to try to puzzle out his meaning. Olivia
has no patience for this sort of puzzling tho', and is in the next room
gallopping through the next period if I stop and stare. Wherever Olivia
goes, people inevitabley smile after her because she is not a bit less impetuous
in public than she is at home.
We gulped a lot of fresh air as soon as we were out of the building,
happy to see people who really have only one head and whose eyes are level
with each other.
U of Toronto was having their winter carnival that weekend, so we wandered
onto part of the campus to see the ice palace and the hordes of students.
The sight of this unfamiliar campus made us intensely patriotic to Queen's
and we found ourselves wandering raggedly over the campus singing an Oil
Thigh for Queen's. An inspiration struck us. There was a microphone at the
top of the ice palace, and we decided to sneak up to it and give a cheer
for Queen's and a "down with Varsity!" shout: this would be pure
treachery on the Varsity campus of course. But just as we reached the ice
palace, we met a boy taking the mike down. Foiled!
Then Olivia took me for expresso coffee (expresso Arabian = a demi-tasse
of very strong black coffee with a bit of lemon peel in it = forty cents)
and a Danish pastry. Then we ducked through one of the shopping malls (long
hallway like streets closed at each end and lined with shops, no cars allowed)
to the Toronto Village. Jazz cellars, arty little shops, expresso dives
for artistes and pseudobeats (to be continued).
[journal]
Night in February, nearing one o'clock, common room in Ban Righ Hall
It began to snow as I walked to the library last night, in plushy fist-large
flakes misting down from the luminous pale cream-colored sky with a sort
of jauntiness. And when I walked home again after spending the evening with
Beethoven's Emperor and Maugham's Of Human Bondage it was
snowing still and the sky was even paler. [I met] Norman, the albino boy
with his face very red from the cold and his hair whiter even than the snowflakes,
and Ghazali with his still, bronze face wondering at the snow and his black
hair stiff with it. Walked over to Ban Righ with them, and Ghaz asked whether
I'd like to go around the block - so we all trudged, with our ankles deep
in the cement-like snow around the block, speaking about DH Lawrence. Norman
and the albino left us to go home. When we came to the long stone flanks
of Ban Righ Hall I fell deliberately into the snow and squirmed - we threw
fistfulls of snow like children. When we walked on his arm was around me
for a minute with a sort of tenderness.
I came in again, wrapped my wet hair in a blue scarf, took my Mozart
recording from Judy downstairs, and am playing it now, alone, in the blue
beamed Common Room with its pots of flowers, symetrically arranged chairs.
I in a circle of light with Lady Chatterley's Lover and two yellow
flowers in my lap - feeling self-consciously a bit dramatic.
Wondering about this book. (The chimes in the hall clock are striking
one o'clock, with individual dings dodging through nets of Mozart
violin to reach me.)
1. I do not believe that man's civilization is "painted rotten fungus."
Even when as discouraged as I was this afternoon about myself (is Of
Human Bondage unwittingly my autobiography?) and the sandy grey world,
I could find no vanity and no ennui in Beethoven or the afternoon of yesterday
or the pink sky of several nights ago. Or now in even the lovely human sweetness-pickled-to-dispair
of this Mozart. Some good 'happens' - afternoons, pink skies, globs of wet
snow drifting impishly from an empty sky. Civilization has no credit there.
But Beethoven! Mozart! The Bolshoi! And I who sit with a sort of wonder
at myself, and even an admiration for myself: the blue scarf, the yellow
flowers, the wet hair, the fingers making permanent my tenderness toward
the world.
"The integrity of the self" - a phrase that is familiar to
me as tho' I had coined it. I do believe in myself, in my independent and
resiliant self, mass of neurons or whatever. I think I shall get
along, from sheer defiance perhaps. And strong in this integrity which is
trembling before no terrors - which is recognizing no terrors - (perhaps
there are none, and there would be no virtue in courage if this were so)
- I think I shall get along. But I want to tell my freedom and my tenderness
to people who wish for it, Frank and Mother. I do not know about Peter.
And Father, who thinks he is evil but is only very sad and very fearsome.
Will I age to fearsomeness myself? Is there a special arrogance in being
eighteen? But I am not naïve - my wonder at man is in full consciousness
(is it?) of the fragility, superficiality, pretence of man's society. But
I think there is a magnificence in even pretence - man building for himself
what God didn't think to provide. Only because other men understand that
it is man-made, a 'synthetic' as it were, do they despise the machinations
of man. I don't understand yet why man can reverence only what it does not
understand. There it is: I do not dispise society or religion or even bourgeois
respectibility. It is something made by people for themselves to appease
their own hungers and as long as these same people trust what they have
made (even to believing it 'inspired' by some One outside themselves) it
is to them good.
Only one problem is really troublesome here: the interference of man
against man. The prostelizing instinct. The power hunger as appeasement
to insecure gods of the children in us. Even the love that makes us fear
for the safety of those who do not share our society taboos, faiths, constructions.
But if we doubt our constructions to the point where we can see them as
constructions they have lost their usefulness to us. Combining objectivity
regarding the freedom of others with faith in our own scheme seems therefore
almost impossible! Well, there is a philosophical problem for me to ruminate
in my old age when I'm reluctant to admit to humanity at all and too rusty
for tenderness at all.
The philosophy of ellieyepp?
1. Isolation, independence. A self-sufficiency which is nearly but not
quite complete. I think it is ridiculous to be irritated about what happens
and even more ridiculous to dislike people. If I rely on myself I'm not
involved enough to need to be annoyed at persons and at weather. Is this
selfish or is it sensible, or is it one as well as the other.
2. Self confidence and self reliance make possible a warmth to other
people. A relationship involving too much stark, anguished need frightens
a relationship into rigidity. Lawrence says of marriage, "So it must
be: a voyage apart, in the same direction. Grapple the two vessels together,
lash them side by side, and the first storm will smash them to pieces. But
leave the vessels apart, to make their voyage to the same port, each according
to its own skill and power, and an unseen life connects them, a magnetism
which cannot be forced. And that is marriage as it will be, when this is
broken down."
I do believe in participation with things and people, even passionate
participation, although I do not sound much as tho' I do. But in all participation
there is a core of self, the me of our sensory neurons and connective tissue
and conditioned brain cells that receives and interprets and comments so
amazingly. This core has to be conscious of its wholeness and distinctness
and apartness.
[back to letters]
7 Friday morning
I'm going to spend the weekend looking after Mrs Brown's house and Tommy
and Bevan.
Got a CARE package this morning, from Grandpa and Grandma Epp, addressed
to Ellie Epp, Student of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, with a little
note saying "for good appetite, thanks for the card." - Cornflakes
box full of apple pieces with wee bits of fig and apricot and raisins thrown
in too. So I'll write them this weekend.
8, Saturday evening
Though I'm at the Browns, this afternoon Bevan and I went to International
House because it is Open House weekend and we are having a display at IH
- Calvin who is one of its ringleaders asked me if I could hang about a
bit and guide visitors through displays.
International House is an ordinary brick three story house with a front
verandah. All sorts of students live upstairs but there is a large living-dining
area in which we usually have our parties but which was set out in display
tables for today. One end was Indian things, a wonderful red embroidered
wall hanging, a maroon rug, saris, all sorts of vases and little boxes,
a drum, flutes. There was a heavy Alpaca wool blanket from Peru, a table
of curiosities from all over the world, an African table with a skin drum,
carved figures, a five-foot-long snake carved in unjointed links from one
piece of wood, a length of brightly patterned hand-woven material, and queerest
of all, an ingenious wooden figure balancing on a large block of wood. See
diagram. There is a wee two-'legged' centre piece made of wood, with two
long curving pieces each ended by a round wooden balance weight. When put
on any sort of surface at all, even the tip of a finger, this thing balances
perfectly; even when pushed over and swung around. - Bevan even balanced
it on my head.
The table I took was the China table with objects brought by students
from Hong Kong: a sandalwood fan wonderfully scented; models of the festival
lanterns with their red tassels and silk sides; a carved little ivory temple;
two plates made of fragile thin fragments of bamboo pieced together into
a surprisingly strong composition, handpainted and shellacked; and - my
favorite display item - a wonderfully intricate ivory carving from a tusk,
of tiny perfect figures on the bridge from earth to heaven, of horses and
sampans and little wayhouses, minute trees like frost-trees on a window
pane. I showed this one off with particular enthusiasm and most of the people
reciprocated it. But I remember one tall and gawky woman with a husband
in a leather jacket who continually remarked "tchuchh!" and accompanied
this adjective with an enraptured little whistle. And there was a woman
in a fur jacket who looked at it briefly, and said "lovely" in
so vacant a tone that I was startled and stared at her. She must have felt
that I thought her enthusiasm left a bit to be desired so she added - and
in the same tone - "delightful."
One of our star items was a Canadian symbol, a little seal made of real
sealskin. We had great fun showing it off, and when people had admired it,
we would flip it over to show them the large stamp on its back: "Japan."
Most of the time when visitors weren't about I spent talking to two of
the boys who live there, a very handsome Malayan called Anthony Syn and
an equally handsome West Indian called Tyrone with a wonderful face and
a wonderful beard who is majoring in philosophy.
During this time Bevan took care of the table of curios from all over
the world, like a trooper. She has all sorts of twelve-year-old composure.
At the moment she is reading up on her specialty of English History in a
Winston Churchill book.
9 Feb, Sunday night
Well I am glad not to be married and have to cook and wash dishes all
the time, but this weekend was rather fun, the kids are angels and it netted
me thirteen with-all-my-heart-welcome dollars.
In lieu of more rather dopey gab I'll give a bit of time to the grandparents
- Oh, we just saw the Beatles on television: they are mop-heads, ridiculous,
and rather dear. Although they are getting ovations of the Elvis-hysterical
type, they are not, as he was, suggestive - they are just loveable teddybear
idiots romping for money and I approve of them. Auntie hath spoken.
12 Wednesday
This weekend will be the weekend of the Levana Formal, the Valentine's
Day formal sponsored by the campus women. Several of the girls on the floor
are going, including Olivia and Marg Spurgeon. This morning Marg was modeling
her dress for Mrs Cox. It is a long pale blue formal with an embroidered
top, high front, low back, swishy skirt, that she's wearing with a blue
chiffon stole and gold shoes. Very pretty too, but incongruous with her
freckled clowning face and her rubbery wide mouth. Marg is a dear, but she
doesn't fit into blue chiffon.
My new English prof is very intelligent and a good lecturer. I especially
enjoy his clothes - he wears a tan suit, a blue pin-stripe shirt, a lemon-colored
vest, and a maroon tie.
You've read Great Expectations haven't you Mother? It is on our
English course and I'm rereading it for an essay, all fifty-nine chapters.
I'm comparing it with the more recently written "Of Human Bondage"
and though both books are essentially about a boy's development from childhood
to sadderandwiser adulthood, Dickins writes superficially (characterwise)
and with beautiful style, while Maugham includes the more realistic study
of moral, religious, philosophical evolution in personality, and writes
with no perceptible style whatsoever and absolutely none of the wonderful
Dickens descriptions.
TORONTO
I think I left you stranded in the little Village shops. We also stuck
our heads into a jazz cellar, the beatnick type of hideaway. It was very
much a cellar, dark and musty, with a few posters slapped onto the walls,
very crude wooden tables and benches and a roughly defined bandstand - cement
floors, cement walls, beamed ceiling, no paint. Coke bottles standing around.
From there we took the subway home: the Toronto subway is fantastically
clean and bright compared to the mole-tunnel New York subways, and it seems
much slower too.
We planned to go to a movie after dinner, but Olivia was in her usual
panic to decide which one to go to: result, the living room and dining room
were spread from corner to corner with newspapers opened to the cinema ads
page and Mrs Howell was on the phone finding out about times and Olivia
was running back and forth between the two. Eventually we went to "Irma
la Douce" a wonderfully funny film set in Paris, and gnawed our way
through a box of popcorn, a bag of nuts and a sack of candy. I've decided
that going to sad movies alone is not only quite comfortable, but actually
preferable: but funny movies have to be seen with somebody because it is
no fun laughing by yourself.
It was after one a.m. when we got out and in spite of all the gnawing
we were hungry so we ran down the street with our boots flapping and people
ducking out of our way, to catch a streetcar (the streetcars in Toronto
are still real trolleys with lines attached to electric cables overhead)
and then had spaghetti and an omelet downtown. Home by two. In bed after
another living room talking session by three.
Lo, next morning, at about ten minutes to twelve, there is some angel
at our room with coffee and orange juice for us! When the door closed behind
Mrs Howell, Olivia said "I think that is her tactful way of saying
she thinks we should get up."
But, luxury! Soon she was upstairs again with breakfast on a tray - an
omelette and toast, ooo. So even Oliver who is usually rumpled and a bit
surly when she gets up was quite cheerful. And anyway, by the time she made
it, it was nearer afternoon than morning.
A wonderful Sunday dinner. No doing dishes all weekend because of the
automatic dishwasher. Always cheese and fruit after meals, à la in
France, Grandma managing the household with a constantly beaming face, Mrs
Howell very warm and gracious and tactful in managing her erupting family
- Mr Howell not quite so formidible as at first, romping with Richard and
Josc. Joscelyn is a typical telephoning, date-anxious, fourteen year old.
And Richard the darling of the family screwing his face up and explaining
his theories very earnestly. I was rather sad to say goodbye to the whole
set of them.
Toronto was sunny for the first time that weekend on Sunday afternoon,
and we drove along the waterfront for a while, looking at the skyline, the
lakefront, and the uptown buildings. The Toronto skyline is rather ugly,
squat and irregular, grey and sooty. The lakefront, though is quite pretty.
All in all Toronto isn't awfully impressive. Or perhaps New York makes most
cities look dowdy? Nope, I still think Vancouver is impressive. In Union
Station I saw a Queen's scarf disappearing toward the tracks and shouted
after it - it was Sue, with her mother. So we boarded the Kingston train
together: what a 'pack'age! The two Kingston cars were so full that we were
in despair of ever finding a seat and five girls sat all the way home in
the washroom!
After a while Sue with her guitar in the washroom decided to have a hootenany.
So we sat in the sinks and on suitcases, about ten of us including an Engineer
and an Artsman (which considerably embarrassed a little lady who wanted
to go to the lavatory).
Further on, Olivia went to sleep and I read while the scene outside darkened.
We were in the last car, in the last seat, so the little observation platform
was directly behind us and two railway men sat and smiled at us from the
seat opposite. We were clicking along beside the lake until it was dark,
and some of the scenery is extremely pretty, with the lake coming almost
to the track sometimes and sometimes far below at the foot of a cliff. There
was a great deal of long stiff dead grass, forlorn looking. The sunset came
in wonderful colors, streaming purples and oranges and dusty reds. The track
rolling away behind us was two bright lines curving into a bit of brilliant
sky, and the lake-sky outside the window turned from violet to a violently
maroon shot with orange. Houses, trees, bits of grass, were reduced to silhoette.
And then it was dark enough so that we could see our faces reflected on
the landscape: we grinned at each other and it was extremely nice to have
a friend.
I've always felt slightly silly when I go into the sort of description
I've just finished, but now that I've told you that I realize it is a bit
sloppy I can go on unembarrassed: it is one thing to be unwittingly sloppy
and quite another to know you are being sloppy and to go ahead anyway. Sort
of a definate courage about it that way, a form of nobility, don't you think?
Well, all happily rationalized, I continue.
It was eight o'clock by the time we got back to the Kingston platform,
there were hordes of people and only three taxis. The pushier people got
these. But Olivia is an old hand at catching taxis, so under her directions
I ran one way and she ran another. As soon as a taxi appeared at the station,
we would grab the door handle and run along beside it until it stopped,
then scream "I have one!" It didn't work the first time because
a lot of ladies in furs pushed us out of the way and got in before we could
stop them. But after a few tries -
13 Feb
What a delightful letter from home this Thursday morning! Two pages from
Mother, sounding like herself again.
Just as an aside to you, sibling Judy, I was up until three last night
studying music, all fired up with coffee and inspired from looking over
last year's test papers. The reason (you are right on this point) that I
take so much glee in telling you about these imbecillic bedtime hours is
that I'm thrilled to find so much time tucked away, stored up for special
occasions and emergencies (snowfalls and due essays respectively).
You are entirely right, Mother: I am in danger of becoming a snob. It
is particularly easy, living in this community of intelligent, mostly attractive,
many wealthy, and generally self-assured young people, to forget
about REAL people and to think of them as objects rather than people with
real insides. I know very well that this danger is there, and I am glad
you remind me because I do want to keep some contact with the Outside and
its realities. (It must have been rather dismal for you to get such a miserable
comment ("indeed") when you thought you could trust me for a bit
of awareness.) Ban Righ Three would call that sort of remark a 'snarkie'
but it was an unintended snarkie so am I forgiven?
About all the pictures you have on order, it seems rather impossible
to oblige you especially as I haven't a flash on my camera yet - however,
we have got an arrangement on the way to have a photographer do a floor
picture of Ban Righ Three, and I'll send you my (groan) one dollar and fifty
cents copy. As for the yearbook, I'm not bothering with one this year, for
the Tricolor has a reputation (deserved) for displaying pictures mostly
of football games and formals and booze parties, and this is not a true
representation of Queen's at all so why squeeze out five dollars for it.
Although it is only Thursday, Cathy is taking a long weekend to go to
Waterloo (a rival university) to see her John. Janet, Olivia, Marlene and
I were saying goodbye to her - as she packed standing in the hall watching
her and singing "Auld Lang Sine," "She's a Jolly Good Fella",
grabbing her bags and following her in a long line down the staircase howling
"NO-oo-w is the 'Oo-Oour" in ghoulish two part harmoney, huddling
about her as she tried to sign out in the weekend book threatening to sell
all her clothes at a rummage sale in Ban Righ Common Room for the Salvation
Army, waving like madwomen. But she got away in the taxi. Got down to the
train station. Had to call back for someone to bring the money she had forgotten!
Reading through the Toronto supplement to this letter I saw that I'd
forgotten one of the more exciting parts of the weekend so you shall have
it now. Although Olivia was irritated dreadfully when her family talked
during a television show we were all watching, she and her father ("Papá"
with the accent on the last syllable) had no fights during the whole weekend.
But just as we were on our way out to the car - flooft! So Richard entertained
me while she and Papa argued about money in the living room and Mrs Howell
waited it out with a wry little smile. But the last thing I saw was her
hugging him and when Mrs Howell drove us to the station, what Oliver steamed
about most was the fact that he had been going to let her go off mad at
him, "and you don't know what can happen when people cross the ocean
- what if he'd gone to England still mad at me and something had happened
to him?" This is one of the things I particularly appreciate in Olivia:
her main moral creed is being straight with people. If she disapproves of
what they are doing she will say so, but no grudges. Say it all and then
sweep up the pieces and everything will be tidy again.
I think this is long enough to mail so I'll mail it on the way to the
libe for the afternoon and evening; oh, and there is a skittish snow flurry
out, very pretty.
February 14, Nite of the Levana Formal
Happy Valentines, hello, and thank you for your Valentine, the
bran-raisin muffins! They were the only one I got - and their arrival was
beautifully timed. The floor is in a tumult of course, with Marg, Sue and
especially Olivia getting ready for tonight. "Are my flowers here?
What if I don't get any? Look at my hair! What will I do with my face? Will
you do my hair? I finally got some gloves - Nancy had some. Good
thing, I was ready to cry. My dress is filthy but it looks okay so whattheheck."
And every once in a while Olivia will be struck by a seventh wave (they're
bigger you know) of excitement and hug me. Hope she has a good time. She'll
be out until five and then perhaps go out for breakfast at six. If she is
still sober. Which is doubtful because formals are a bit boozy.
I'm primping tonight too, but not for a formal (admission: the long dresses
and the decorations in Grant Hall and the excitement and the flowers do
appeal to me a little, though not excruciatingly). I'm going instead to
a seminar this weekend, CUCND sponsored, about military alliances present-future-and-past.
I'm hoping it will widen my political horizons a bit because I don't want
to become a specialist or head-stuck-in-the-pail psychologist. Jerry Dirks,
Tom Hathaway, and Don Carmichael will be there too, but raise not yourselves
o ye collective Epp eyebrows knowingly because I signed up before
I knew they were going. So. It promises to be good - there are thirty of
us, and about five speakers, with a session tonight, three tomorrow, and
one Sunday morning (which I'm rather sorry about because I've missed Padre
Laverty's sermons for the last few weeks).
I've spent all day today with John Stuart Mill the philosopher, and on
getting to know him a bit better, I find that he does make sense and I tend
to agree with him. I'm continually surprised when I get deep into a subject,
that I actually do enjoy studying so much. It's only when I'm slacking and
studying only in bits, superficially, that I get bored and restless.
My walk last night was memorable: it was after supper and dark, kids
were skating in the park, the houses were lit inside and grinning through
their parlour windows like jackolanterns, and the churches were leaning
up against a perfectly beautiful clear sky with bits of yellow and pink
washed into the dark. Kingston has the most beautiful churches I've seen,
and many of them.
16, Sunday night
It has been such a strange and exciting weekend that I'm not sure it
is Sunday night at all, but I'm told it is.
Just an outline - Friday evening: the first of the seminars - I've told
you about that. Then the fatal mistake of two cups of coffee: that killed
my sleep for the night and threw it into a pauper's grave. By five o'clock
when the caffeine was wearing off, in staggered the prom dolls to change
and rest and straighten up the wrecked hairstyles until they went out again
at six. And by six, there was no point at all in trying to go back to bed
so I wandered downstairs, exploring the kitchen which we are not allowed
inside, by the vague light of a faraway streetlamp and a doubtful moon.
And while I was padding guiltily about behind the ovens, click! A light.
It took all the six a.m. poise I could muster to saunter out of the shadows
and say good morning to the lady who'd come to begin breakfast. She was
a kind soul with a soft heart and a sympathy for the adventurous impulses
of youth, and she showed me the rest of the kitchen: a frothing longnecked
monster of a dishwasher, a complex revolving toaster that can handle about
40-50 slices of toast at one time, a freezer full of fat gallons of ice
cream.
Breakfast finally, and then the seminar beginning at 9. Two information
sessions (talks by our main speakers), question periods, and small-group
discussions in separate rooms. Lunch in the cafeteria, two more afternoon
sessions, dinner together, one evening session, a party until midnight,
back to Ban Righ with a pretty guest from the Toronto group billeted with
me, up by eight this morning with another session at 9:30, one at ll:30,
a long elaborate chicken dinner out at a hotel we had rented for the afternoon
(a room, not the whole thing) because the Union facilities were full up,
and then one more long evaluation-inspiration-criticism-restatement session.
Then a mad utterly unusual telephone call evening in which I have already
refused three dates and promised to run as a candidate for the International
House vice-presidency.
Now that you have the general background, some details: I've told you
a little about CUCND. Briefly, its tenets are that: we are opposed to atomic
testing; we oppose acquisition of bombs by countries now emerging as potential
nuclear powers; Canada to take initiative independent of US policy and reject
both nuclear arms and the stockpiling of always more weapons; mere bomb-banning
is not enough and must be supplemented by work toward social justice (eg
civil rights bills such as those coming up in the US now) and a decent standard
of living for everyone; the arms race, a propaganda device which has spent
its money only producing far more weapons than necessary for world annihilation
("overkill) is morally, economically and in every way WRONG; both Western
and Eastern blocs are to blame for the cold war situation, with the West
no less guilty than the East. This last policy, the one of non-alignment,
is one giving the group a reputation for leftist leanings, which simply
is not justified. We believe that only by stepping outside the squabble
will we be able to gain the healthy perspective that will enable us to use
our pressure methods to convince governments to some form of sanity. You'll
notice how naturally I am beginning to say 'we' in talking of this CUCND:
I am thinking of jointing the organization but I am going slowly because
I owe it both to the club and to my time to be intelligently and well-informedly
convinced before becoming a member.
Anyway, the seminar was specifically focused on the problem of whether
alliances have, do, and will aggravate arms stockpiling and cold war tension
- what position Canada should take in alliances such as those of NATO and
NORAD specifically, whether she will have more efficacy as a mediator inside
the alliance or outside, with the unaligned nations - all of this generalizing
to the problems of how CUCND can be effective in influencing the actual
international and national powers, things like non-resistance, civil disobedience,
demonstrations, peace research, informing the public, seminars and studies
as instruments for creative thinking; and then on even to the practical
problems of how to raise funds both for CUCND and the Canadian Peace Research
Institute and the United Nations as well.
The first session was led by Paul Simon, a Canadian journalist in Toronto
who has done some excellent study and writing on international politics
and the peace movements. He spoke well, like a journalist, with a sort of
pungency that is delightful after my Honorable English professor. We had
a question period afterwards and a chance to look around and meet everyone.
There were so many young people with life and intelligence raging in both
their conversations and their faces that I'm in despair of telling you about
them though I very much want to. So many and so intelligent and so enthusiastic!
Real intellectual whipping cream. (Foaming readily into discussion acuity
when whipped up by recognitions of something-is-wrong.)
Then we went pubbing. The idea was to move the discussion to more casual
surroundings, so we went to something called I think the Malt Room and they
sipped beer while continuing to argue in little knots. You mustn't worry
about this and me, because I do not drink at all, am not in the least tempted
to, but cannot holily censure people who do because to them it is a social
accessory as coffee is to Norwegians. I personally do not feel it is necessary
or desireable but in their context I cannot honestly judge it WRONG. But
anyway, someone fished up two bananas from a pocket and I nibbled them instead.
The other people in the Malt Room were interesting as well, for instance
a large but thin woman with a tight, tidy hairdo that looked painted-on
and a thin wide mouth like a disapproving red pencil line - careful, pruding
[*?], and well-corsetted - a thin but appealing smile over a beautiful big
glass of beer.
Then that long stint of reading until 5 a.m. Leaning out the window for
a while to watch the couples going by, the girls flickering and swishing
in their long skirts and everyone with a sort of unreality and dreamfulness
in the streetlights far below.
Sudden turquoise morning.
The first session with Paul Simon again. In my group was a person who
interested me, a reticent rather ugly man with wavy premature grey hair,
solemn eyes and a self-righteous pose: Ed Wiebe. In medicine here at Queen's,
from Saskatchewan, a small 'sticks' place not too far from Saskatoon (and
yes, he does know Mr Block slightly). He seems intelligent enough tho' there
seems strangely little personal charm about him. Jerry Dirks was in our
group as well: three Mennonites, and as far as I can tell, only three. Of
these, 33% are still with the Mennonite church, ie Wiebe.
After a coffee and cookies break, a talk by John Cowan of Toronto (a
researcher by profession, with an enormous interest in and dedication for
study on international war-peace problems, who has just published a book
on the subject called See No Evil) about NATO and our role in it.
- I've just pasted the Journal patch about the seminar onto a newssheet
for you, so shall not go on with the details. I do want to tell you about
some of the people tho'. In my discussion group was a girl whose terribly
intelligent comments attracted me to her. It happened that she is a social
worker with the Kingston child welfare department. Besides her enthusiasm
for her work, she is interested in the peace movement and in politics generally:
she was the constituency's NDP candidate in the last provincial convention!
Lavada Pindar is her name.
One of our speakers, a union man, was a young debonair workman-looking
fellow who was remarkable for his sitting habits chiefly: through the whole
of the seminar, he never once sat conventionally on a straight-backed chair.
Usually he took a cushion from one of the divans, plunked it on the floor,
and sat on it with his knees knotted under his chin like a Buddha with stomach
cramps.
The party on Saturday night at Alison [Gordon]'s appartment was memorable.
We walked into the front door of a very old Victorian barn-mansion to find
jazz roaring out of a back apartment in torrents. The main room is large
and square with a high ceiling and a ridge going around the room near the
ceiling: on this ridge, entirely around the room, were set empty wine bottles
of all shapes. In some of them, scattered randomly, were fresh daffodils.
One side of the room was hung with curtains in a rough red burlap. The floor
was wooden, with a threadbare Persian carpet in the middle. A solid and
stone-like wooden table stood in the middle of one side, balanced by a shabby
couch on the other. A magnificent parti-colored cat was fast asleep on top
of the bookcase, someone was digging through their piles of records, others
were perching on broken chairs with only one arm, smoke was settling slowly
to the floor by its own weight, people were drifting to and from the cooler
in the broomcloset-sized kitchen with fresh glasses of beer. I got out a
book, sat down on the register leaning against the burlap (the register
was hot and rather ridgy, the burlap masculinely scratchy!) and watched.
Refreshments were long crusty loaves of French bread and slabs of exotic
bread and a tin of slimy red fish called Coalfish, but actually looking
more like goldfish hacked carefully into bits and dyed red. We took knives
and hacked off chunks of each. And it was good! Gradually the people became
'happier.' There was a table at one end of the room decorated by five tall
candles and a slab of real gravestone with part of the inscription still
visible. When Tom Hathaway arrived after a while, he sat down on the table
leaning back against the gravestone with his ridiculously long legs dangling
and an out-to-lunch expression on his face. Someone walked by, lit a candle,
put it into his hand, and walked on - and Tom was left there with the candlelight
making a halo around his head and a most beautiful look of astonishment.
Someone came along and said to me, "By the way, you have an extremely
bright and attractive face." I said, "Oh, I'm glad that you like
it," and he drifted on. John Cowan, looking for an audience, sat and
told me rather piteously how maddening it was to talk to people who wouldn't
listen, then gave me an autographed copy of See No Evil and told
me what a nice girl I was. While I was digging through the closet looking
for my coat and Paul Simon was encouraging me vaguely by asking if it was
"this pussy cat" one or this "camel" one, Tom came over
and asked if he could protect me from that fresh man. Everyone was delightfully
friendly and rather loveable, wandering about looking forlorn and blissful
at the same time. Everybody sang "We Shall Overcome" (a popular
folksong) and a little later in the evening, "We Are Overcome."
It was the strangest party I ever saw and although I was there as a watcher,
not a participant, I enjoyed it THOROUGHLY.
I think I have called this seminar exciting several times. Perhaps I
should tell you why. 1. I met a large number of bright, attractive people,
some of whom are the people who seem to do and think most on this campus,
all of whom carry on real conversation about real things, not vacant gabble.
2. It gave me an appetizer-taste of things political. 3. It opened up new
ways of thinking about old subjects, several 'other sides' of common stories.
4. It showed me the way in which young people in Canada are going ahead
and thinking for themselves, organizing for themselves, going ahead with
all the enthusiasm and caniness they can produce to do something about things
which interest them. It makes me doubly glad to be part of my generation
in which things are moving so quickly and in which youth is doing so much
to bring about this change. 5. It reminded me to keep up and stay caught
up with things and ideas and people who are world-moving (I do not exaggerate
- young people are doing more than we realize) if I do not want to miss
the challenge and the excitement.
17 Monday morning
Olivia has had a frantic weekend too and came in for a while to tell
me about it last night. About eight o'clock last night I saw her blur past.
She called back to me "I'm invited to the Laverty's and I'm three minutes
late."
This is how she told me about it later: "I walked into the door,
they greeted me, I hung my coat upstairs and came downstairs. We watched
television in the living room, the Beatles. Then I looked round and I couldn't
seen anyone else so I said "Am I supposed to be here?" and they
said, 'Well, not really. Not until eight-thirty.' And then I got stuck with
a boy - I was tired out of my mind from this weekend and in no shape to
socialize. So I told him: 'I am not going to make conversation and you had
better not ask me what faculty I'm in. I'd rather sit here in dead silence
for the whole evening.' But after a while he started telling me about his
allergies. He's allergic to toothpaste, to soap, oh, everything. I knew
I was supposed to be sympathetic, but I thought it was terribly funny and
I sat there and roared. And then he told me he was colorblind and I told
him that if he had lived in Germany the Nazis would have killed him. And
then finally when we were going home, I said goodnight to Mr Laverty and
was halfway out the door when Mrs Laverty said "Good night, Olivia."
I was so embarrassed to have forgotten her that I practically threw my arms
around her and said, "Oh, Mrs Laverty, I'm so sorry. Thank you so much,
I loved the brownies." Which was terribly phony because they weren't
brownies to begin with, they were little brown cakes. And I didn't like
them at all. I only had one and she couldn't persuade me to have any more."
18 Feb Tuesday
Last night I came home from the library at nearly midnight, after working
on an essay. And there was Oliver, glowering at me from the top of the stairs.
"I am going to talk to you," she said coldly, and herded me to
my room. Well. It seems that there had been all sorts of accusations piling
up and she was bound to say them: so she did. We haven't been having a decent
conversation with each other since Toronto, brief duckings-in and duckings-out
of each other's rooms to say hi and run. And for the last two weekends we've
been wrapped up around opposite poles. Not only that, but unwittingly I
have been ignoring her or something. But anyway, she was angry and she told
me. Then I went to work and explained all of my side of the story, put in
the apologies that were due, and in a final desperation when she accused
me of thinking of her merely as an amusing anecdote to write home about,
let her read a letter-draft copied out in my journal after the Toronto weekend,
the bit where I think I told you about how valuable the fact that we are
friends is to me - well, all sorts of slop. And after that sober hanging-out
of our inner selveses to air, we both sat and roared with laughter and had
a great gab. Now, framily, if I have been talking as though she is merely
an amusing anecdote, you must revise your impression, because things like
last night especially remind me of what a particularly good person
she is: it takes a great deal of courage and trust to come right out and
tell another person that you are unhappy because they have been ignoring.
It seems to make you particularly vulnerable, and most of us find it very
difficult to do. This quality of being 'straight' with others is unspeakably
valuable I think in keeping really warm and good human relationships. Right?
21 Friday morning
To mop up any news that may be untold: my latest English essay was a
coup, another A. Olivia remarks nastily "They're just in the habit
of giving you A's. I bet they don't even read them."
Saw a CUCND film last night, a Russian exchange film called "Ballad
of a Soldier" about a nineteen year old Russian boy in the army. A
very tender sort of film, a good thing for foreign exchange because it certainly
spoke an international language. The only Russian I caught was an occaisonal
"spasseba." After the film Norm and I went for coffee with one
of his friends and his date - the girl was particularly interesting because
she is an honours English who is planning to go into some form of free-lancing
that involves as much travel and adventure as possible. Last year, just
out of high school, she and a friend spent about thirteen months in Europe,
working for a time in such places as the Canary Islands in jobs like teaching
little Spanish children English, all this on three hundred dollars and the
ticket across. I can't wait!
Am going to be campaigning at International House tonight. Babysitting
for my funny Aussies on Saturday.
Just spent fifteen dollars getting three teeth filled, and just in time
too. Nearly lost em. Olivia and I have found a place to stay next year.
part 7
- raw forming volume 1: september 1963 - april 1964
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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