Emily Carr


Herman Voaden

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Published online: October 2001

About the print version    EMILY CARR

   All direct speech has been represented by quotation entity references.

Library of Congress Subject Headings: October 2001 subject heading goes here

Emily Carr

A Stage Biography With Pictures

 

   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

   The play is based chiefly on five books written by Emily Carr: Growing Pains, The Book of Small, Klee Wyck, The House of All Sorts, and The Heart of a Peacock; and on Emily Carr, Her Paintings and Sketches. These are published by Oxford University Press. Other sources are an article, "The Genius We Laughed At" by J.K. Nesbitt, in Maclean's magazine, January 1, 1951, and two articles by Ira Dilworth appearing in Toronto Saturday Night, November 1 and 8, 1941.

   Mr. Nesbitt, Dr. Dilworth and Mr. Lawren Harris have been most helpful, and have given me permission to use the material they have written about Emily Carr in the above books and periodicals. Particularly valuable have been the introductory biographical and critical statements in Emily Carr, Her Paintings and Sketches by Dr. Dilworth and Mr. Harris.

   Miss Flora Burns and Mrs. Kate Mather have revealed aspects of Emily Carr's life and character only hinted at in her books. I am indebted to them, and to Miss Dorothy Somerset, Mr. Willard Ireland, Mr. Robert M. Hume, Miss Elspeth Chisholm, Mrs. Stuart Harper and many others for advice, information and assistance.

   A NOTE ON THE ACCURACY OF THE PLAY

   Characters and incidents in the play are based on the sources listed in "Acknowledgements"; of these, the five books written by Emily Carr are the chief. I have taken certain liberties with time and place in compressing the events of Emily's life into eight scenes. Characters like Emily's sister, Lizzie, have been dropped in the interests of dramatic economy. Edith, Emily's older sister, died some years before 1927, when she makes her last appearance in the play. Rather than introduce two new characters, I have Eric Brown play Eric Newton's role in 1937, and take the place of Dr. Ira Dilworth at Emily Carr's birthday party. Mr. Brown died in 1939.

   Relationships between characters, notably those between Martyn and Emily, have been developed imaginatively. But this development has been based on the characterization and incidents in the source books. Research has revealed many facts concerning Emily Carr's romantic life. I have decided, however, to present this aspect of her experience as she reveals it in Growing Pains and her other books. In Growing Pains (p. 103) she says: "I gave my love where it was not wanted; almost simultaneously an immense love was offered to me which I could neither accept nor return." I have made only the briefest references to the first of these two men, for the second I have used the name Martyn, which Emily uses in Growing Pains, and have drawn from the chapter entitled "Martyn" and from other references (presumably to him) in Growing Pains, p. 13, in The Heart of a Peacock, pp. 48-54 and in Mr. Nesbitt's article.

   The two doctors who attended Emily during her final illnesses were active in Victoria at the time the play was written. I have used one only; I have given him a fictitious name, and have based the characterization on Emily's portrait in Growing Pains. Mamie Westover is a fictitious character, drawn from the President of the Vancouver Ladies' Art Club, as she appears in Growing Pains.

   Emily was not completely accurate about dates -- such dates as the death of her mother and father. It has suited my dramatic purpose, however, to follow her chronology.

   Emily's sharp greeting to Eric Brown was suggested by a similar experience recounted by Mrs. Mather in the C.B.C. broadcast about Emily Carr, "A Portrait in Memory", on April 9, 1958.

   SOME COMMENTS ON EMILY CARR

   The play is constructed in the image of a storm, violent at first, and spending itself at last. It moves from darkness into vision and light. This emotional pattern -- the movement toward spiritual resolution and fulfilment -- is apparent in Emily Carr's painting.

   Although the play follows Victoria Regina and The Lady With a Lamp in moving forward through the years from youth to old age, I have tried to create tension and a counter movement in time by withholding till the last scene the secret of the core and central experience of her life -- her picnic as a child with her mother in the lily field. When I wrote the play I though of enhancing the moments when this experience is hinted at -- and the final revelation -- by colour and light (scrims, etc.) and music. This could be done more easily in a television than a stage performance. However, in the Queen's production the final scene engaged the audience deeply and completely as played with extreme simplicity, without benefit of special light effects or music.

   The play is a stage biography, not a documentary. From the sources listed on the acknowledgements page -- chiefly the five books -- I have drawn the nine characters, settings, incidents and ideas. Where they were suitable I have used Emily's own words to give greater authenticity. I have reshaped all this material imaginatively for my dramatic purposes. There is only one lengthy quotation. It is the "White Currants" passage near the close of Act II, Scene I. Other chapters, largely in A Book of Small, such as "Time" and "The Orange Lily", and (in Growing Pains) "Epping Forest", have been condensed to a few sentences.

   I recognize that there is a problem with Martyn, the suitor, particularly with younger members of the audience. They are unfamiliar with the long courtships and engagements that were common before the First World War. Actually it was a courtship broken by periods of separation. Martyn (this was not his real name) was one of her suitors in the years before she went to London to study. After she had been there a year he visited her for a ten-week period. Four and a half years later, on her return to Vancouver, I have written the scene in which she finally rejects him.

   It is chiefly in writing this scene that I have "invented". But the references here and in the closing scene to his continuing love for Emily are justified by her sister Alice's remark to J.K. Nesbitt, quoted in his article in Maclean's, that a week before her death Emily had a letter from a suitor who had loved her for forty years and who was still in love with her.

   Martyn's importunity, his humble devotion, are likewise alien to young people today. But as I have stated in the note on the accuracy of the play, my portrait of him is drawn honestly from Emily's own account of him and of their experiences together. She based her autobiography (and her other books) on diaries which she kept throughout her life, in which she faithfully recorded her experiences, impressions and feelings. She says that he asked her to marry him five times a week; she reveals her great love for him in the chapter "Epping Forest"; he is still in love with her when he leaves her in London.

   Jean Sorel was suggested by the French artist mentioned in Growing Pains, p. 104. Here also I have "invented"; I have made him a sympathetic character. In the Queen's production his name was anglicized to John Sorrell.

   At Queen's University, the play was presented realistically. It might be staged, however, in the more frankly presentational, or platform type of performances, in which settings, furniture, costumes and make-up are simplified and formalized. If necessary, the cast could be reduced in number, and the players could double as they did in the Canadian Players production of Saint Joan. The presentational approach could be carried further to the formal platform reading-with-some-acting presentation of which we have seen so many examples, such as O'Casey's Pictures in the Hallway, produced by Robert Gill, and The Hollow Crown.

   In this type of production, there would be no problem in projecting the paintings, since there is no attempt at realism in the settings. They could be thrown whenever necessary on a sufficiently large screen to make their contribution to the story.

   Two paragraphs in Robert Fulford's review of the Kingston production offer valuable comment on the play:

   "The legend of Emily Carr, a story loved by all Canadian art enthusiasts, is centred on her desperate personal battles: against family environment, against Victorian stuffiness, against frequent sickness, and most of all against her own raging, restless temperament."

   "...he (the author) reminds us, usefully, that the artist's revolt against family and conventional society is not always the light-hearted beatnik game that is now so familiar. Sometimes, as in Emily Carr's life, it is a course of anguish, bewilderment and lasting bitterness on both sides."

   (Toronto Daily Star, August 8, 1960)

   MUSIC AND PICTURES

Music

   The original script called for an occasional use of back-ground music, particularly underlying the lily field sequence. In the Kingston production Miss Hall did not want to speak above music of any kind, no matter how soft. So none was used. I do not think that the production lost on this account. Dr. Angus pre-taped suitable music to open and close each scene.   

Pictures

   The stage in Convocation Hall at Queen's University was too small to have the slides projected from upstage. Instead they were thrown from the balcony on the wall adjoining the proscenium, stage right. This was distracting and unsatisfactory.

   The ideal arrangement is to disguise a "scrim" in a permanent section of the upstage wall of the set, with a projector with short lens attachment ten to fifteen feet upstage of it. Art galleries usually have such projectors. A particularly powerful one was used in the production of Les Nouveaux-Dieux at the Dominion Drama Festival in Brockville in 1965. It was a Trans-Lux rear projector, using 5,000 watts. It produced brilliantly clear and vivid pictures on a ten by twelve foot scrim of the kind used in television productions.

   When Emily is looking at a canvas, or talking about it, stage lights should drop a little and this portion of the wall should come alive with the picture. This should not be abrupt; there should be rheostat control. The Trans-Lux projector was provided with auto transformer.

   Basya Hunter of Toronto suggested that a stage convention should be established, and that when the pictures appear the actors should look at the upstage screen, rather than the actual drawing or canvas.    

Further Suggestions About Projecting the Paintings

   If the stage is too small to project the slides from a projector placed upstage of the rear wall of the set, they can be thrown from a projection unit concealed behind the front curtains, down right or left stage, or masked by a piece of furniture in either of these areas. This masking furniture might bear some relation to the easel on which the pictures are placed. Thus the actors would look at the picture, and from this source the enlarged image would appear on the stage wall-screen for the audience to see it.

   The Brechtian pattern is of course to use such a device boldly; to interrupt the action and throw the projection, perhaps from the balcony, on as large a screen or stage wall areas as possible, and to deliberately court audience "alienation".

   The production of Les Nouveau-Dieux suggested another fascinating possibility: to play the entire play behind a tightly-stretched scrim. With a strong projector (500 watts) in the projection booth, the pictures could cover perhaps the entire proscenium area, and would be enormously effective. They would appear as the lights dimmed on stage; the characters could talk about them in the dark. Then the stage lights would come up as the projections disappeared.

Emily Carr

A Stage Biography With Pictures

 

Characters:

EMILY CARR
ALICE CARR
EDITH CARR
FRANK PIDDINGTON
AMEDEE JOULLIN
MARTYN (MAYO) PADDON
MAMIE WESTOVER, President, Vancouver Ladies' Art Club
ERIC BROWN
DR. BENTLEY


 ACT I
Scene 1 -- A sea-side cottage near Victoria, B.C., 1889.
Scene 2 -- The loft studio, Victoria, 1894.

ACT II
Scene 1 -- Emily's flat in London, England, 1901.
Scene 2 -- Emily's Vancouver studio, 1905.

ACT III
Scene 1 -- The studio in the House of All Sorts, 1927.
Scene 2 -- Emily's cottage, 1937.
Scene 3 -- A drawing room, Victoria, 1941.
Scene 4 -- Alice's cottage, 1945 (a week before Emily's death).

ACT I SCENE 1

(The setting suggests a room in the sea-side cottage near Victoria rented by the Carrs in the summer of 1889. An angry EMILY, 18 years old, is standing by the window. ALICE, two years older, enters hurriedly. The canary, Dick, is in his cage.)

Alice:
   Here's Edith. She's coming now Millie.

Emily:
   Stay with me, Alice. (We hear EDITH's footsteps outside; then she enters. She is eighteen years older than EMILY)

Edith:
   Millie, is this true -- what Mr. Piddington has just told me? I thought I had finally thrashed manners into you last week. You had better leave us, Alice.

Emily:
   No!

Edith:
   Alice! (ALICE goes, with a look at EMILY. EDITH goes to the door and calls FRANK PIDDINGTON) Frank, will you come in, please. (FRANK enters)
    (Quietly) Well, Frank?

Frank:
   I'm sorry now if I made her sea-sick. But she had it coming to her. She was laughing at me -- said I looked like a pirate last week with my seven-days' beard. And she needn't have said that my wife's hair streamed down -- like bull-rushes. And all because that Crock, her confounded crow, had stolen my razor and my wife's curling tongs. I decided to teach her a lesson.

Emily:
   The sea was too rough for me, and I asked to be put ashore. He grinned and said, "We'll make the kid sea-sick." He knows it makes me furious for him to call me "kid". Then he rocked the boat back and forth till I was sick. I was shamed before all the boys and girls, and I called him a sponger and a bully -- (turning on him) and you are a sponger and a bully.

Edith:
   Millie! Frank, that was cruel. And I hate cruelty.

Emily:
    (Fiercely, almost laughing) You did look like a pirate, and your wife's hair was like bull-rushes. Oh Dede, think of how he set the hornets on poor Crock last Saturday. (Turning on him again) When Crock flew to me, I heard you sniggering in the bushes, Mr. Piddington. I saw you, your hands filled with stones. You're a coward! A mean-natured nobody! (Her words overlap EDITH's) Prating of your ancestors! Why, you're not even a common gentleman!

Edith:
   Emily, I whipped you last week for talking like that!

Emily:
   Dede, it can't go on. I can't stand it. I won't stay here, if they do. He's always been cruel to Crock. And it's not Crock's fault. Crock's like that. He just likes to tease.

Frank:
   He's just a carrion crow. Why do you make all the fuss about him? And think of what I've had to put up with! He stole my small tools and nails all summer, while I was building the boat.

Emily:
   The crow belongs here. You don't.

Edith:
   Millie!

Emily:
   You're lazy and stuck up. (Wildly, in one of her rages) It's beneath your dignity to earn, but it's not beneath your dignity to take what we Canadians are willing to hand out to you.

Edith:
    (EMILY's next speech overlaps this) Enough, Millie!

Emily:
   Six months they've sat on us. Whose home is this?

Edith:
   That's enough! Frank, you had better go.

Frank:
   Vixen! The next time your Crock steals anything of mine I'll wring his neck!

Emily:
   Bully, loafer, coward!

Edith:
   Go, Frank, this minute. (He goes. After a pause) Well! This is the worst yet. What am I going to do with you? Millie, for your own good you've got to learn to control yourself, and these mad rages. You must try to see this from my point of view. They're my friends. They're lonely, here. I want to help them. I can't have you insulting them. If he goes too far, it's because you anger him.

Emily:
   I hate the Piddingtons. I'll never forgive him for the cruel things he's done to Crock. (Her voice grows more shrill as her anger mounts) I hate cruelty, especially to animals that can't defend themselves. I'll never forgive you for selling my pet rooster, my Lorum. Without letting me know, you could sell him to that Chinaman to be eaten!

Edith:
   He was old, Millie. It was time. Chickens are kept to be eaten.

Emily:
    (Brief pause) He used to run to meet me, wings spread, so glad.... Sometimes I almost hate you.

Edith:
   Millie, you are wicked.

Emily:
   It's you who are wicked, cruel, cruel!

Edith:
   Don't screech like that. Our neighbours will hear you.

Emily:
   I don't care a bean about the neighbours. We pretend that we're a nest of doves, with our kissing and love and devotion to one another. I hate sham. Father left the house as a home for all of us. Because it's in your name you think it belongs to you and you treat us younger ones as if we held no rights at all. You're a tyrant, like father. And he wasn't only a tyrant. He was cruel, evil.

Edith:
   You mustn't talk like that about father. God forgive you, you have a wicked tongue. I know you are easily hurt, but there is no one who can hurt like you.

Emily:
   I mean to.

Edith:
   As long as I can remember, you've been a troublesome child. Always you've angered and upset people.

Emily:
   It's the respectable, goody-goodies I can't stand, the mean and vulgar and cruel people, like this bully. Others I love, as I loved Mother, love Alice -- and creatures like Lorum and Crock who need my love. Nurse Randal told me there was a storm blowing the night I was born. It's still blowing in me, always will, I guess. I'll always be crazy-happy, or mad, or in tears. Mother understood me.

Edith:
   Millie, we all try to understand you. But I have a job to do. I'm going to finish it. When father died two years ago he left the house to me and the responsibility of bringing you younger ones up as good children. I'm going to do that, no matter how much I have to punish you and whip manners into you. Last week when you insulted Frank Piddington, I gave you the worst thrashing you've had yet.

Emily:
    (Intensely) Yes, till I fainted. But I haven't apologized to him, and I won't. I've made up my mind. If you thrash me again, I shall strike back. (A long pause) And as soon as my guardian will let me, I'll leave home.

Edith:
   Where will you go?

Emily:
   Somewhere. I won't tell you. (Pause)

Edith:
   There is something you should know. Something that Mother told me before she died. She was happy about her other children, knowing she could trust them to behave. You were different. She said she was worried about leaving you.

Emily:
    (Incredulous, on the verge of tears) I don't believe it! Mother loved me. She understood me. I don't believe it.

Edith:
    (Quietly) You'd better think about that the next time you fly into a rage and insult my guests.
(She goes. EMILY drops on the chair or couch and buries her head in her arms, her body shaking with sobs. After a moment ALICE comes in)

Alice:
   Millie! (Suddenly concerned) What's the matter?

Emily:
   Something terrible. She said something terrible.

Alice:
   What was it?

Emily:
   I can't tell you. It's too awful.

Alice:
   Tell me. Dear Small. Please!

Emily:
   No, never! (She sobs) Oh! (A pause) That settles it. I've got to get away from here. I'll go and see our guardian. I'll tell him that no one is allowed to grow up in this house.

Alice:
   Where will you go?

Emily:
   There's an art school in San Francisco.

Alice:
   But it's so far away.

Emily:
   Good! I'll be away from her, and all this praying and sham and cruelty. And I'll be doing what I want to do more than anything else in the world -- draw and paint.

Alice:
   It's a wicked city.

Emily:
   I'm not afraid. (Pause) Where's Crock?

Alice:
   In the willow trees with the other crows. (She nods in the direction of the other side of the cottage) Don't go, Millie. I'd miss you. We've always been together.

Emily:
   I've got to go.

Alice:
   Dede didn't want me to tell you this. She's angry at Frank Piddington for mistreating Crock. She's told them they'll have to go when we return to town. Just two weeks more. It'll be better from then on.

Emily:
    (Thoughtfully) Yes, I suppose. But Dede and I'll never get along. She's too overbearing for me.

Alice:
   She's not so bad as you think. I believe she likes Crock. She's put up with a lot from him. We all have.

Emily:
   Mustn't it be grand to make folks scalding mad!

Alice:
   You have a queer sense of humour, Millie.

Emily:
   What a summer he's given us! Stealing the flowers and feathers from the ladies' hats, raiding the larder, pinching the cats' tails, torturing poor Dick! (She is laughing how her finger goes into Dick's cage for him to peck at it. Then she rubs her eyes with the back of her hand) What a sight I must look with my eyes teary and swollen like this. (Sounds of gun shots are heard from the opposite side of the cottage)

Emily:
   Those boys are shooting again. (She races through the door. ALICE follows her to the door, watching) Hey, you! (Pause) Oh! It's Crock! (Long pause. She returns to the room) Dede's bringing him in her apron. (Pause) I hope he's only just hurt. (EMILY and ALICE are watching as EDITH enters) Is he hurt badly?

Edith:
   He's dead, Millie. (She stands a moment, holding her apron with its burden. EMILY chokes back a low sob, turns and walks unsteadily to the sofa, burying her head in the cushions)

Alice:
    (Going to EMILY) I'm sorry, Millie.

Edith:
   This shooting must stop. The rest flew away, but Crocker was tame and had no fear. He was an easy mark. Bad luck it should be he. (There is a pause, broken only by MILLIE's crying)

Alice:
   My watch didn't break when he threw it out the window.

Edith:
   I didn't really mind his mischief. (After a pause, EDITH unties the apron strings from about her waist and folds the apron around the dead bird, making a neat little parcel. As EMILY watches, her face is suddenly contorted with pain)

Emily:
   Dede, there's a red spot oozing through the apron. (Frightened and sobbing, she stumbles to ALICE and buries her face on her shoulders)

Alice:
   Millie!

(There is no reply. MILLIE's body is shaken with sobs)

(Curtain or Blackout)




ACT I SCENE 2

(The setting is EMILY's studio in the loft of the old cow barn behind the family house on Carr Street. The slide of the studio appears on the scene. It is the summer after EMILY's return from San Francisco; the year is 1894. Emily is 23 years old. Scenery might include EMILY's "throne" for her models; her easel; a couch and chairs. EMILY enters, followed by a young man she has met at a nearby tennis reception.)

Emily:
   This is my studio. (Pointing to the water colour "Indian Canoes in a Harbour" which appears briefly on the screen) I painted this at Lytton.

Young Man:
   It's all right. But no pictures could be more beautiful than you are, with your dark brown hair and big grey eyes. They are expecting me. I must go. (He takes her in his arms, kisses her, and leaves. EMILY sinks into a chair, and cries, mortally hurt. After a moment, ALICE enters)

Alice:
   I saw him follow you up. Why are you crying?

Emily:
   He kissed me. I belong to him now. I love him, but he doesn't love me.

Alice:
   Emily! You're just infatuated with him. The kiss is nothing to him. He just felt like kissing you. It's spring. You don't belong to him.

Emily:
   But I'm so hurt. And I still love him.

Alice:
   You'll forget about him in time.

Emily:
   Never! (There is a knock on the door)

Alice:
   This will be M. Joullin. (She goes to the door and opens it.) How do you do, M. Joullin.

Joullin:
    (He is a French artist visiting in Victoria) Miss Alice. And Miss Emily. (They reply to the greeting)

Alice:
   I know Emily is anxious to show you her work. I'll leave you together. Mayo is coming; he and I will be back in a while and we can have tea. (She goes)

Joullin:
   Yes, indeed, I should like to see some of your work.

Emily:
   Unfortunately, I have only a couple of things to show you. I came home at Christmas after studying for three years at the California School of Design in San Francisco. I brought home only this self portrait. (The slide of small, "Self Portrait," appears on the screen)

Joullin:
   It doesn't flatter you, does it! It has a thoughtful, intense quality... almost... mystical... and yet not quite pleasant.

Emily:
   I'm not a very pleasant person, most of the time. This is the second one I have to show you -- a water colour of "Indian Canoes in a Harbour". I did it last month at Lytton. (The water colour which she showed to the young man is shown on the screen)

Joullin:
   Good! Your colour sense you have the makings of an artist is excellent. I shall be happy to give you lessons while my wife and I are visiting here.

Emily:
   That's wonderful. For a whole year now -- since I came back from San Francisco -- I've missed my daily instruction. There's no one in Victoria to study with and I want to learn -- so much! Imagine studying with such a well-known Paris painter! I can hardly wait till Tuesday.

Joullin:
   Your work is pleasant, honest. But you do not yet consider what is under the surfaces, or what is inside yourself. But there is promise here. Great promise! You should go to London or Paris to study. Only there can you learn to paint.

Emily:
   That's what my French professor in San Francisco told me. Oh how I should love to go! Yes, I think I shall. It would have to be London. (Gaily) I'm sure my family wouldn't want me to go to naughty Paris. One thing I shall certainly do; I shall take life classes.

Joullin:
   You have not yet?

Emily:
   No. No wonder you smile. It's our family background. We were brought up to be so modest we almost wore a bathing suit when we bathed in a dark room.

Joullin:
    (After a smile) A pity. Life drawing teaches your hand and eye tenderness and -- subtlety.

Emily:
   I know. Right now I'm interested in landscape painting most, as you've seen. It's wonderful being out of doors -- half looking, half dreaming toward what you're painting -- waiting for it to come to you -- to meet you half way.

Joullin:
   Yes.

Emily:
   Woods stir me deeper than anything. Especially the wilderness forests. I've been trying to sketch them for the last five weeks at the Ucluelet, where I stayed with the missionaries. I had a wonderful time there. Those forests! No boundaries, no beginning, no end, one continual shove of growing. (She gestures to him to sit beside her) I remember the nights so clearly! When we blew out our candles the ceiling blackened down to our noses. Then the square of window lightened to luminous greys, folding away, mystery upon mystery. The boles of the trees streaked down the dark forest like gigantic rain streaks pouring, pouring. The surge of growth from the forest's floor boiled up to meet it.

Joullin:
   How well you describe it! Like a writer! And how clearly you have seen!

Emily:
   But forests like that are unpaintable. I just worked away at boats and houses -- clear things on the edge of the mystery I have so much to learn! (She rises restlessly) To be able to paint the great forests! These wild western things excite me tremendously. I'll go to the old country to learn how to paint. But it's this land I want to see, and know.

Joullin:
   You are full of enthusiasm, and a kind of love of everything -- especially for your new land -- and wonder.

Emily:
   That's what I do more than anything else -- wonder. When I was young, all my family were wiser than me -- especially mother. She knew about God. But I was always wondering and wondering. I still am.

Joullin:
   Yes.

Emily:
   There are some things that I'll never stop wondering about. I wonder always about God. And I wonder about death. I had a very dear friend at the Art School at San Francisco -- Ishbel Dane. She was rich and did things that most people disapproved of. But she was my friend, my trust. On New Year's Day I had a letter saying she had died. Here it was snowing, but I went off by myself in the bitter weather. My tears were bitter, too. (Pause) I wonder about death, always.

Joullin:
   You feel too deeply. It is so with a true artist. He suffers for everyone.

Emily:
   And I wonder about love. Love is half joy, half pain. More pain, I think.

Joullin:
   You love the young man, Mayo Padden, who is often here with you?

Emily:
   He loves me, and I'm fond of him. He's the purser in the Willipa, the steamer that calls at the Indian villages. I met him when I was returning from Ucluelet. I like to be with him; he's good company. My sisters like him too; he's a frequent guest at our house. He is as religious as I am; I attend his church. We go for long walks together in Beacon Hill Park and along the Dallas Road Cliffs. But I can't accept his love, or return it. (Bitterly) No. I've given my love where it is not wanted. Why do I talk to you, like this? (Pause)

Joullin:
    (Quietly) I'm sorry.

Emily:
   I shouldn't have told you that. Please forget it. (She turns away, choking back her tears)

Mayo and Alice:
    (Their voices are heard from below) Hello!

Emily:
   It's Mayo and Alice. Look after them for a moment, will you please? (She races off stage. ALICE and MAYO enter. MAYO is young, English and likeable. He carries a bunch of violets)

Alice:
   Hello, Joullin.

Mayo:
   Hello, sir.

Joullin:
   Good afternoon, Miss Alice, Mayo.

Mayo:
   Where's Millie?

Emily:
    (From behind a screened-in portion of the loft) I'm here. Hello Mayo, Alice. I'll be there in a minute.

Mayo:
   Won't you take the throne seat, M. Joullin. It is reserved for important people.

Alice:
   And lovers.

Emily:
   Yes. I let some of my special friends sit there with their sweethearts.

Joullin:
   Thank you. Miss Millie has shown me two of her sketches. She will be a fine artist, if she works hard.

Mayo:
   I think she is the only serious artist here. (Calling over his shoulder to her) I'm proud of her.

Emily:
    (Calling from behind the screen) Thank you, Mayo.

Alice:
   She's the only one teaching art in Victoria.

Emily:
    (Appearing and taking the violets that MAYO hands her) Oh thank you, dear. At first I held my classes in our dining room. But the room got messed up, there was trouble with Dede. So finally I asked her for this loft of our old cow barn, and we fixed it up.

Joullin:
   It is a good studio, and pleasant.

Emily:
   I love it. It's as cosy as anything, perched right in the middle of the elements -- rain drumming, wind whistling, sun warming. Everybody's happy here -- pupils, me, Mayo -- even the cow and chickens below. And such contented smells: hay and apples, new sawed wood, Monday washings, earthy garden tools.

Joullin:
    (With a twinkle in his eye) And the cow? I think I smell her too, do I not?

Emily:
    (Laughing) I know.

Alice:
   Emily used to have lots of rats and mice --

Mayo:
    -- until she brought home a poor, half-drowned kitten from the beach.

Alice:
   She's not a kitten any longer! (She goes to get the cat) Mary Anne!

Emily:
    (ALICE returns with the cat) And just guess who tried to drown her! Mayo! There's the villain!

Mayo:
   What's a bachelor to do when he picks up a stray kitten and his landlady will have none of it? Mary Anne followed me everywhere. I tried to lose her. I tried to give her away. (Acting the role of the villain) Finally, one rainy night, I tied her in a sack and threw her from a bluff into the sea. Imagine my embarrassment, later, when I came calling on Millie, to find Mary Anne here!

Alice:
   You didn't tie the sack well enough. Millie heard her yowling on the beach and brought her home.

Joullin:
   And where is the peacock I've heard about?

Alice:
   He'll be back soon. He spends most of his time on the roof there, strutting before the dormer window, which he uses as a mirror.

Emily:
   At first I was disgusted by his conceit. But soon I sensed his loneliness and came to like him. Now each morning I screech out our greeting, and he comes running to me.

Joullin:
   You have a great affection for creatures; I'm surprised you haven't a dog.

Alice:
    (Quietly) She had one. When she came back from San Francisco, Dede was anxious to keep her home, and had Laddie there in the yard for her.

Joullin:
   What happened to him?

Emily:
   Dede said he was vicious, and insisted that I keep him chained. Then while I was away a few weeks ago recuperating from an accident they killed him.

Joullin:
   I am sorry.

Emily:
   For six weeks I haven't spoken to Dede.

Mayo:
   He had to be killed, Millie.

Alice:
   Yes.

Emily:
   If I had been home it would have been all right. He just needed my love.

Edith:
    (Her voice heard below) Millie!

Mayo:
   It's Dede now.

Joullin:
   I really must go. I have overstayed my time. But it has been pleasant.

Edith:
    (Appearing graciously) Hello, M. Joullin, Mayo.

Joullin:
   Good afternoon, Miss Edith. I have seen your sister's work. It is promising.
     (He returns to EMILY) Goodbye, Miss Millie. Keep working. Some day, perhaps, you may paint the wild forests that are in your heart. On Tuesday -- your first lesson? Here?

Emily:
   Yes, at three o'clock. Goodbye.

Edith:
   We shall see you and Madame Joullin at dinner on Saturday.

Joullin:
   Delighted. Yes.

Mayo:
   I'll go along with you, M. Joullin.

Edith:
   Thank you, Mayo; I want to talk to Millie.

Joullin:
   Au revoir!

Emily:
   Goodbye. (They go) Alice, will you take Mary Anne to the kitchen for her milk?

Alice:
   All right. (She takes the cat and goes)

Edith:
    (Suspicious and worried) Millie, do you think it is wise for you to have lessons here, alone, with M. Joullin?

Emily:
    (Blazing) That's my affair, not yours! It's my studio!

Edith:
   We've always had a good name in this community. You're spoiling it. Your loft is the talk of the town. The things that go on here!

Emily:
   If some of my friends want to sit here for an hour in the evening with their sweethearts, what's wrong with it?

Edith:
   You know perfectly well that it can be very wrong.

Emily:
   It's your mind that's wrong. It's warped. And the minds of your friends, and of most of the folk in this stuffy old town. Except I was born here, and it's my home, and I love it, I'd pack up tomorrow and go to Vancouver.

Edith:
   How you've changed since you came back from San Francisco! You were stubborn and difficult before, but now you've become a complete rebel -- and worst of all -- ungodly.

Emily:
   No. I'm not ungodly. You force your religion on me in large, furious helpings. Everyone thinks highly of you and your piety. But I'm not like you, or the rest of the family. I have my own religion. (Pause) Why did you come here today?

Edith:
   Our friends are beginning to talk about our quarrel. Millie, don't be so bitter and angry. Let's be reasonable! (She puts a hand on MILLIE)

Emily:
    (Overlapping the previous sentence) I loathe your hands; they make me sick.

Edith:
    (Flaring up) I didn't kill the vicious brute. The police shot him.

Emily:
   I'll never be able to look at your hands again.

Edith:
   I'll get you another dog.

Emily:
   No. I'll not have another till I have a home completely my own.

Edith:
   You have unsettled the family ever since you came home. Always you have stirred up trouble. You defied father from the time you were a little girl.

Emily:
   You know why. He wasn't as kind to mother as he should have been, when she was ill most of the time -- never going up to see her till he'd eaten a good dinner, sitting beside her bed almost in silence, and then going downstairs to read his paper.

Edith:
   He was severe, but he was always just. And mother loved him. He loved you, too. You were his favourite.

Emily:
   Yes. Like a bone to a dog I was flung to him to quiet his tantrums. But when I disobeyed him, he turned and was harder on me than on any of the rest of you. Sometimes he was cruel to me. (Quietly) And once he was brutal, horrible! And you're like him, with your good works and praying. You too think you are as important as God.

Edith:
    (Staring hard at her) There's something I want to tell you. You were mother's chief worry when she came to die. She was happy about the rest of us. She wasn't sure about you. And I'm not either. I'm not sure you're growing up to be a good person.

Emily:
    (Desperate) Go away. Leave me alone. I didn't ask you to come here.

Edith:
    (Quietly) I'm going. (She leaves)

Emily:
    (Shouting after her)  There's something you don't know about mother and me. Something no one knows. Our secret! (She dissolves into tears, her body shaken with sobbing. The lilies theme is heard briefly as she speaks of her mother and their secret. MAYO enters)

Mayo:
   What's wrong, Millie? Why are you crying? (He turns her to him. She weeps on his shoulder)

Emily:
   I can't tell you.

Mayo:
   Please. What is it?

Emily:
   It's the most terrible thing anyone ever said to me.

Mayo:
   Dede?

Emily:
   Yes.

Mayo:
   Tell me.

Emily:
   No.

Mayo:
   Please.

Emily:
   Promise you won't tell, ever? It's just between us?

Mayo:
   Yes, I promise.

Emily:
   She said that I worried mother. That mother was afraid to leave me when she came to die, because I was obstinate and naughty -- not like the others.

Mayo:
   But if you were the naughtiest, don't you know your mother would love you a tiny bit the best? That's the way mothers are.

Emily:
   Oh Mayo. Do you think that's true?

Mayo:
   Of course.

Emily:
   Yes. I suppose it is. Yes, that's why she -- (The lily theme is heard again)

Mayo:
   Why she what?

Emily:
   Nothing. (Pause. In a changed voice) I'm relieved.

Mayo:
   Millie!

Emily:
   Dear Mayo! (She kisses him) I could almost love you now. You're so sweet and patient and understanding.

Mayo:
   Almost! (Pause, while he holds her tightly) There's someone else, isn't there?

Emily:
   Yes. But he doesn't love me, Mayo.

Mayo:
   I love you, Millie. I've loved you from the day we first met on the steamer coming home from Ucluelet. I want you to be my wife.

Emily:
   You were handsome in your purser's uniform. Oh Mayo, I'm so miserable, hurting you like this -- saying no, and again saying no. Between hurting and being hurt, life has gone crooked.

Mayo:
   Darling, there's no hurry. You'll come to love me.

Emily:
   Never, I'm afraid. It's not in my heart to love you as you want me to.

Mayo:
   Wait and see.

Emily:
   I'm afraid you'll have to wait a long, long time. M. Joullin told me I should go to London or Paris to finish my studies. So I'm starting to save for London.

Mayo:
   I'll follow you there.

Emily:
   Dear Mayo! I'm not the girl for you, really. I'm not a comfortable person. I should never make you happy. You know I've always been the bad girl of the family. I make enemies where ever I go among smug, respectable people.

Mayo:
   You make friends, too, who love you.

Emily:
   Often the wrong friends. At least my family think so. And there's something else you should know about me. Something I discovered about myself in San Francisco -- I need discomfort and goading to get the best out of me. The harder I work, the better for me. It's the storm blowing in me. Oh Mayo, your big warm comfortable love is not for me. I know it. Forget me; or rather, be my friend -- my harbour from the storm.

Mayo:
   I will, sweetheart. I'll be patient. And I want you as you are; not changed in any way.

Emily:
   Dear Mayo. If it weren't for faraway London, and my work; my wanting to paint this land! I can't be true to these things and to you.

Mayo:
   But to someone else you could? (There is no answer) Do you want to tell me who he is?

Emily:
   No! Never!

Mayo:
   It isn't the chap at the tennis party, who came up to see your canvases?

Emily:
    (Bewildered and desperate) No! No. No. And it's all over now. It was just an infatuation. (Bitterly) He doesn't love me. Time will cure it. Time, time! (She turns from him, all her guard gone, weeping hopelessly. He goes to her, turns her to him) Oh Mayo, if only I loved you!

Mayo:
   Hush, darling, hush.

Emily:
   You're so gentle, and good. I wish I loved you!

Mayo:
   You will, sweetheart. Don't cry now, please, please.

(Curtain or Blackout)




ACT II SCENE 1

(The scene is the sitting room of the suite which EMILY has engaged in the centre of sightseeing London. The year is 1901. EMILY is 29 years old. It is an autumn Sunday afternoon. When the lights come up EMILY is resting in a comfortable chair with foot stool. MAYO sits beside her. EMILY is wearing the violets he has given her.)

Mayo:
   My first day in London! And last night, the theatre! Just think, we have two months ahead of us!

Emily:
   We must have walked five miles seeing sights yesterday.

Mayo:
   I'm sorry if it was too much for you.

Emily:
   I ache with the overcrowded space. I'll never be well in the murk and dullness of London.

Mayo:
   Poor Millie!

Emily:
    (Yawning) I'm so tired! We talked too late last night.

Mayo:
   Emily, why don't you come home, and marry me, and give up this art?

Emily:
   Never!

Mayo:
   I love you.

Emily:
   I know you do but I'm not going to marry you, not for a while at least.

Mayo:
   What about Clifton Piddington? He liked you when he came to Victoria to visit his brother.

Emily:
   A dreadful afternoon! Madame Tussaud's -- the Chamber of Horrors. Then Euston Station. He loves engines! Thank God I'll never set eyes on him again.

Mayo:
   And the ship's doctor you met on the trip over?

Emily:
   He didn't look nearly so nice in plain clothes. On the bench in St. James Park he edged so close that I fell off. Exit doctor.

Mayo:
   And this Ed Denny?

Emily:
   He knows I'm not in love with him. None of them can hold a candle to you.

Mayo:
   You have said you like me. Will you ever meet anyone you'll like better? Is it a prince charming you wait for?

Emily:
   I wait for no one; I came to London to study.

Mayo:
   But you are ruining your health. We're all worried about you. Are you making any progress?

Emily:
   No one at home cares what progress I make. Even you are not interested in what I'm doing. You don't care in the least about the one thing that means most to me!

Mayo:
   You needn't be so bitter.

Emily:
   From now on I'm going to make myself into an envelope into which I can thrust my work deep, and seal it from everybody.

Mayo:
    (Pause) Thank you for showing me the sights of London. And what are the plans?

Emily:
   We walked too far yesterday.

Mayo:
    (Pause) You don't look well. You work too hard. (Pause) You do not allow yourself time for normal friendships. I don't think you've called on one of the many people you were supposed to see over here. (Pause) All your friends who went to the trouble of giving you letters of introduction are terribly disappointed in you. It's not the right thing to do, Emily. And it doesn't reflect well on your family.

Emily:
   I did see one of them. I paid a snob-visit to a loathsome Mrs. Scott in Upper Norwood. She stared at me with her boiled-gooseberry eyes and claimed I didn't look a bit like my sisters -- Godfearing, fine women.

Mayo:
    (Laughing) I like that!

Emily:
   At tea she brought me to tears by stabbing at me, "Are you saved?" I said, "I don't know!" And she said, "Then you're not!" and down she went on her knees to tell God mean things about me. What an experience! No more visiting for me!

Mayo:
   She couldn't be so dreadful as you make her out to be, Emily. You always exaggerate.

Emily:
   I don't!

Mayo:
   Yes you do. And you have a chip on your shoulder with most people nearly all the time. You're not willing to try to get along with them.

Emily:
   I must work, work. I've come a long way to get what London has to give. I must learn all I can, to take back to Canada. But I'm so tired. Sometimes London is beastly. I'm homesick for my pine trees, and beaches. And my Indian friends. I should love to see some of them again! Old chief Hipi, for one -- and the fellow who threw the tombstone into the sea.

Mayo:
   Why did he do that?

Emily:
   The missionaries said you must have a tombstone for the dead. And his brother had drowned there. So he paddled to the very spot and threw a tombstone overboard. (They laugh)

Mayo:
   I'm happy to be here with you -- in London. It's old, and has such a wonderful history.

Emily:
   London's history bores me.

Mayo:
   I know. I wish I'd been here last year. You told me that you saw Queen Victoria's funeral.

Emily:
   Saw it? I saw only a corner of the bier. But little Kindle, my neighbour at the boarding house, saw the Kaiser William's furious mustachios. I did a sketch of it. Want to see it?

Mayo:
   Yes!
(EMILY gets the sketch from a drawer, and it grows on the screen. 21a)

Emily:
   See little Kindle standing on her toes.

Mayo:
   Yes. (The picture on the screen dims out) How I should love to have been there! (Pause) We're going to have good times together. I like riding on a bus top.

Emily:
   We'll take one to the Abbey this afternoon, and watch the crowds jostling below. (Pause) I've puzzled often about the difference between a London crowd and our forests at home. They both overwhelm you with their size. But the one is roaring confusion, and the other is silence, silence. Oh, to have just a day in one of our forests! (Pause) You'll be going back, and I must stay on here. However, it's what I want, at heart.

Mayo:
   A year in England hasn't changed you at all, dear. You're as unhappy and mixed up and rebellious and hearty and prejudiced as ever.    Only more so! More of a Canadian, too.

Emily:
   True. I am. The ship's doctor did that for me when he came to London. He told me I was becoming more English and I swore to myself then that I would go home to Canada as Canadian as I had left her.

Mayo:
   Good for you! Did you tell me about him? I forget. (Mischievously) And the ship's doctor?

Emily:
   You know I did.

Mayo:
    (Airily) I remember. You mentioned him in your letters. Let me see. (He counts on his fingers) That makes Mayo, Clifton Piddington, Fred Raddcliffe, the ship's doctor, Ed Denny -- not to mention those at San Francisco and at the Art School here whom she had not told us about, and others who shall not be mentioned.

Emily:
    (Amused, but sharp) Mayo!
     (Quiet, kind) My patient, faithful Mayo. Always waiting, always hoping. Like a big kindly dog.... You know I like dogs more than most humans. I was cross with you last night at the play. Whenever I took my eyes off the stage I met yours, staring at me. What's the good of buying tickets, silly, when you can see my face for nothing any day.

Mayo:
   I like to watch your eyes while you follow the players, so eagerly. It's better than watching the play, to me. I can't help it. I'm sorry. Darling, I'm so deep in love with you. Please come home and marry me.

Emily:
   Five times a week you've asked me to marry you. Ever since you came here. I hate your asking days. I hope this isn't going to be another.

Mayo:
   Yes, it is. I'm asking you now, again, to be my wife. It's your work and health and life that are at stake. For weeks I've watched you going downhill, working yourself into your grave. Emily, I'm afraid to leave you here alone. Give up your studies here, and come home with me.

Emily:
    (Blazing) Give up my work! That's what you all say. You're all against me. I'm alone. But I'll show you yet.

Mayo:
   Of course you will. You've done good work already.

Emily:
   You're kind about my painting, because you're in love with me. But you're not really interested in what I'm doing. You never would be, if we married.

Mayo:
   That's not true. I'm proud of what you are doing. You can still go on painting after we marry. But why give your whole life to painting? What chances have you got? This is a new century, I agree, and women are making their mark in some fields as the equals of men. But who ever heard of a great woman painter?

Emily:
   No one. Not yet. But why shouldn't there be one? This proves it. You don't really believe in me as an artist.

Mayo:
   Nonsense. (Sharply) I'm asking you to marry me. Perhaps for the last time.

Emily:
   No. You upset me, Mayo. Don't ask me again. Perhaps it would be better if you took an earlier boat home.

Mayo:
   And when I've gone you'll have Ed Denny to squire you.

Emily:
    (Angrily) Yes.

Mayo:
   And if it isn't Ed Denny, it will be someone else, one of your student friends, or artists, who understands you. And then others, and still others.

Emily:
    (Wildly) Yes, yes, yes! (Then, as she breaks into a storm of tears) No! (MAYO goes to her) There's no one else. Only you. And what I want to do. And the terrible, final choice. And I can't make it.

Mayo:
   Emily!

Emily:
   I've never known you so sharp and angry. Never. You... frightened me.

Mayo:
   Darling, I'm sorry.

Emily:
   It wasn't true, what you made me say about Ed Denny. I've told him that I had no intention of marrying him. It's what I should have told you from the first. But I was too fond of you. For years, I've kept you waiting. And now we're both older, and I'm changing.

Mayo:
   I'm not. I'm still in love with you.

Emily:
   I didn't want you to come, you know. But when you met me at Euston Station ten weeks ago I was glad! For a year I had seen no one from home. You were like a bit of British Columbia, big, and strong -- and handsome.

Mayo:
   I'll give you time. Finish your studies here, and come home, to me. The violets make your eyes shine -- dark and lovely -- full of mystery and promise.

Emily:
   I don't know what to do, Mayo.

Mayo:
   There's no one like you, anywhere. No one lovelier than you are now.

Emily:
   Dear Mayo.

Mayo:
   What wonderful weeks we've had together.

Emily:
   Do you remember our day in Epping Forest?

Mayo:
   Yes.

Emily:
   One of the happiest days of my life.

Mayo:
   The happiest, for me.

Emily:
   Running down those grassy paths till we were out of breath, laughing and kissing. We were like children in a strange forest, freed from the grown-up sorrows of our lives.

Mayo:
   Moments like this are best, when you forget your work and dreams.

Emily:
   Oh Mayo: some of the dreams are more real to me than anything that happens. I wonder if I should tell you -- if I could tell you.

Mayo:
   What?

Emily:
   It's difficult. Yes, now is the time, if ever. Mayo, there's one special dream, about someone else.

Mayo:
   Who is it?

Emily:
   Will you listen to me? (MAYO nods. Suddenly) It has never been easy to love you, because of the white boy I used to go riding with.

Mayo:
   I don't understand.

Emily:
   From childhood, I've had a favourite spot in the garden. When I go back home, I'll go to it, especially in the early summer, when the white currants are almost ripe, hoping he'll be there to ride with me.

Mayo:
   You are a strange girl.

Emily:
    (Angrily, desperately) Mayo, listen! Now I've started, you must hear me out; you must believe me.

Mayo:
   Yes, Emily.

Emily:
   There's only one white currant bush. When they're almost ripe, you can see the tiny veins in their skins and the seeds and the juice. I always thought, if they were a little bit clearer, I could see them living, inside. Each currant hangs like a secret which has almost been told. And beside the bush grows, half-wild, a mauvy-pink flower.

Mayo:
   I know the spot.

Emily:
   Thousands of white butterflies flicker among them. The sun dazzles their wings and calls the smell out of the flowers and the hum of bees never stops. Everything trembles. I tremble too. One summer day many years ago -- the wonderful thing happened. A boy was suddenly there on a white horse, with another one for me.

Mayo:
   What was he like?

Emily:
   I've never seen him. He was different from other boys. You didn't have to see him. That was why I liked him. Mayo, you mustn't laugh! This is a real part of me -- perhaps the deepest and truest part of all.

Mayo:
   I wasn't laughing Millie -- far from it.

Emily:
   We went in and out, round and round. Some of the pink flowers were above our heads with bits of blue sky peeping through, and below us was a mass of pink. None of the flowers seemed quite joined to the earth. Everything went so fast -- the butterflies' wings, the pink flowers, the hum and the smell, that they stopped being four separate things and became one most lovely thing. And the boy and the white horses and I were in the middle of it, like the seeds that I saw dimly inside the white currants, like their big splendid secret getting clearer and clearer every moment.

Mayo:
   And then?

Emily:
   And then a grown-up broke the spell. Every year after that when the white currants were ripe I went there. But I never quite came to the heart of the secret. No one does. If you did you would know God. (Pause) It's a kind of light I'm seeking, Mayo -- what the saints died for. Dede says I'm not religious. I am, in my own special way -- perhaps more than she is. The world is like a dream, with depths and reaches all about me. And inside me is this big excitement, bigger sometimes than I can contain. And it will come out of me -- it has to -- in my painting -- perhaps in writing too. It has to come out -- the strangeness, the colours, the fear, the laughter. The seeds inside the white currants will get clearer and clearer, and with them the sounds and smells and the white horses riding -- swirling forms -- circles of light within light. (She pauses a moment, caught up in her seeing. Then she turns toward him and continues in a more natural tone) You see, Mayo, what a strange person I am. I'd be difficult to get along with. Dreams like this would always stand between us. The white boy will always be closer to me, in his way, than you could be. I wish I had told you about him before.

Mayo:
   Do you have many of these dreams?

Emily:
   No so many as when I was a child, but some in Epping Forest with you, that perfect day.

Mayo:
   Yes. I've never known you so happy as you were that day.

Emily:
   My most wonderful moment was in the lily field. Do you remember our lily field?

Mayo:
   Yes.

Emily:
   Oh how I'd love to be there now!

Mayo:
   But they're not in blossom.

Emily:
   It doesn't matter. To me they are always in the field. They do something to the back of my eyes which keeps them there, and something to my nose, so that I smell them whenever I think of them. Do you remember how white they are, sprinkled everywhere, with gold in their hearts and brown eyes staring into the earth? And how each lily has five sharp white petals rolling back and pointing to the tree-tops, like millions and millions of tiny quivering fingers. And the smell, so fresh and earthy! In all my thinkings I can picture nothing more beautiful than our lily field. (Quietly and intently, as if approaching the secret. The theme music of the play, based on the old hymn "Consider the Lilies of the Field", is heard quietly while EMILY remembers the happiness she has known in the lily field and hints at "the most wonderful moment of her life". It dims out with EMILY's words "We should know what to do") And it was there it happened -- the experience I treasure most -- even more than my happiest hours with you -- the most wonderful moment of my life. And it was true -- not just a dream. I can't tell you about it, because of someone else. Oh, to be there, now! To lie on the sweet grass, under the tall thin pine trees. Come with me.

Mayo:
    (Deeply moved) Yes, you come with me.

Emily:
   No. But surely everything would be clear there. We should know what to do.

Mayo:
   I'll wait for you. You'll be home in a year. Promise me not to close the door. To think of me.

Emily:
   Yes, yes! And don't worry about Denny or any of the others. I'll be too busy working. There's only you.

Mayo:
   And then, when you're home, perhaps --

Emily:
   Yes, perhaps. Perhaps, dear, dear Mayo. If only the storm would calm. If only I could reach to silence inside me -- to some peace.

(Curtain or Blackout)




ALTERNATE ACT II SCENE I

(The scene is the sitting room of the suite which EMILY has engaged in the centre of sightseeing London for the two months when ALICE is visiting her. The year is 1901. EMILY is twenty-nine years old. It is an autumn Sunday afternoon. When the lights come up ALICE is writing her diary at the table. EMILY is resting in a comfortable chair with foot stool.)

Alice:
   There! Just finished my diary for yesterday. (She jumps up) My first day in London! And last night, the theatre! Oh Millie, just think, we have two months ahead of us! (Laughs) I'll never survive it. Talking all night. Up with the birds.

Emily:
   We must have walked five miles seeing sights yesterday.

Alice:
   I'm sorry if it was too much for you.

Emily:
   I've been a year here! I ache with the overcrowded space. I'll never be well in the murk and dullness of London.

Alice:
   Poor Millie!

Emily:
   Are you going to spend the afternoon at the Abbey?

Alice:
   Yes. I just have to put on my cloak and hat. Don't be alarmed, silly. I'll leave the moment Martyn comes.

Emily:
   Who's being silly now. Don't you dare. You don't mind if we don't go with you?

Alice:
   No!

Emily:
   We'll meet you there at four. Front entrance.

Alice:
   Right.

Emily:
    (Yawning) I'm so tired! We talked too late last night.

Alice:
   Emily, why don't you come home, and marry Martyn, and give up this art?

Emily:
   Never!

Alice:
   Martyn loves you. He's come all the way to London, just to see you.

Emily:
   I know. Lugging that great love which I can't return. I'm not going to marry him, not for a while at least.

Alice:
   What about Clifton Piddington? He liked you when he came to Victoria to visit his brother.

Emily:
   A dreadful afternoon! Madame Tussaud's -- the Chamber of Horrors. Then Euston Station. He loves engines! Thank God I'll never set eyes on him again.

Alice:
   And the ship's doctor you met on the trip over?

Emily:
   He didn't look nearly so nice in plain clothes. On the bench in St. James Park he edged so close that I fell off. Exit doctor.

Alice:
   And this Ed Denny?

Emily:
   He knows I'm not in love with him. None of them can hold a candle to Martyn.

Alice:
   Does Martyn know about them?

Emily:
   We got it all straight, the day he arrived.

Alice:
   He worships you, Emily. I must tell you. Last night before we went to the theatre I surprised him on his knees before the fire warming your cloak. He was patting the fur collar as if it were a live kitten. So romantic! Knight of the Cloak!

Emily:
   He's a silly goat!

Alice:
   Don't be a fool, Emily. You'll never meet anyone you like better. Is it a prince charming you wait for?

Emily:
   I wait for no one; I came to London to study.

Alice:
   But you are ruining your health. We're all worried about you. Are you making any progress?

Emily:
   No one at home cares what progress I make. Even you are not interested in what I'm doing. You write pages in your diary about every little thing you see, but you don't care in the least about the one thing that means most to me! I pinned some of my best sketches on the walls of your room, thinking you would want to see them.

Alice:
   You needn't be so bitter. I'm sorry. I just didn't think about them. Let's go and look at them now.

Emily:
   No! From now on I'm going to make myself into an envelope into which I can thrust my work deep, and seal it from everybody. (There is a knock on the door. ALICE rushes to answer it. MARTYN greets her; he carries violets.)

Martyn:
   Good afternoon, Alice.

Alice:
   Hello, Martyn.

Martyn:
   How do you like London today?

Alice:
   I still love it! (He goes to EMILY and gives her the violets).

Emily:
   Violets! Oh! Thank you dear! (She kisses him.)

Martyn:
   I remembered how you used to wear them -- when I first knew you.

Emily:
   They're lovely. (Pinning them on)

Martyn:
   And what are the plans?

Alice:
   We walked too far for Emily yesterday; so I'm going to the Abbey by myself, and you two will meet me there at four and we'll go to tea.

Martyn:
   Right. You don't look well, Emily. You work too hard.

Alice:
   She doesn't allow herself time for normal friendships. I don't think you've called on one of the many people you were supposed to see over here.

Emily:
   Oh, Alice!

Alice:
   All our friends who went to the trouble of giving you letters of introduction are terribly disappointed in you. It's not the right thing to do, Emily. And it doesn't reflect well on our family.

Emily:
   I did see one of them. I paid a snob-visit to a loathsome Mrs. Scott in Upper Norwood. She stared at me with her boiled-gooseberry eyes and claimed I didn't look a bit like my sisters -- Godfearing, fine women.

Alice:
    (Laughing merrily) I like that!

Emily:
   At tea she brought me to tears by stabbing at me, "Are you saved?" I said, "I can't know!" And she said, "Then you're not!" and down she went on her knees to tell God mean things about me. What an experience! No more visiting for me!

Alice:
   She couldn't be so dreadful as you make her out to be, Emily. You always exaggerate.

Emily:
   I don't!

Alice:
   Yes you do. And you have a chip on your shoulder with most people nearly all the time. You're not willing to try to get along with them.

Emily:
   I must work, work. I've come a long way to get what London has to give. I must learn all I can, to take back to Canada. But I'm so tired. Sometimes London is beastly. I'm homesick for my pine trees, and beaches. And my Indian friends. I should love to see some of them again! Old Chief Hipi, for one -- and the fellow who threw the tombstone into the sea.

Martyn:
   I remember.... The missionaries said he must have a tombstone for the dead. And his brother had drowned there. So he paddled to the very spot and threw a tombstone overboard. (They laugh)

Alice:
   Emily dear. You must promise to take better care of yourself and not work quite so hard.

Emily:
   That's not easy; but I'll try. (To Martyn) How I'm going to be mothered, these coming weeks! She's a born mother, as you know. She used to say she would marry and have a hundred children.

Alice:
   Emily! Really!

Emily:
    (To Martyn) She's my favourite sister. How I wish the rest were like her.

Alice:
   Emily, you mustn't say things like that.

Emily:
   She's stood beside me in all my scrapes and troubles. And I've always been in trouble, haven't I?

Alice:
   You certainly have! (She gives Emily a quick hug and bounces over to the window. Bubbling over) Oh I'm so happy to be here with you -- in London. It's old, and has such a wonderful history.

Emily:
   London's history bores me.

Alice:
   I know. I wish I'd been here last year instead of you. Did she tell you that she saw Queen Victoria's funeral, Martyn?

Martyn:
   Yes.

Emily:
   Saw it? I saw only a corner of the bier. But little Kindle, my neighbour at the boarding house, saw the Kaiser William's furious mustachios. I did a sketch of it. Want to see it?

Alice and Martyn:
   Yes! (EMILY gets the sketch from a drawer, and it grows on the screen)

Emily:
   See little Kindle standing in her toes?

Alice and Martyn:
   Yes. (The picture on the screen dims out)

Alice:
   How I should love to have been there!

Martyn:
   We're going to have such good times together. You must ride on a bus top, Alice. Take one to the Abbey this afternoon, and watch the crowds jostling below.

Emily:
   I've puzzled often about the difference between a London crowd and our forests at home. They both overwhelm you with their size. But the one is roaring confusion, and the other is silence, silence. Oh, to have just a day in one of our forests! (Pause) You'll be going back, both of you, and I must stay on here. However, it's what I want, at heart.

Alice:
   A year in England hasn't changed you at all, dear. Has it Martyn? You're as unhappy and mixed up and rebellious and hearty and prejudiced as ever.

Martyn:
   Only more so! More of a Canadian too.

Emily:
   True. I am. The ship's doctor did that for me when he came to London. He told me I was becoming more English and I swore to myself then that I would go home to Canada as Canadian as I had left her.

Martyn:
   Good for you!

Alice:
    (Mischievously) You remember the ship's doctor?

Martyn:
   Did you tell me about him? I forgot.

Emily:
   You know I did.

Alice:
    (Airily) I remember. She mentioned him in her letters. Let me see. (She counts on her fingers) That makes Martyn, Clifton Piddington, Fred Radcliffe, the ship's doctor, Ed Denny, those at San Francisco and the Art School here whom she has not told us about, and others who shall not be mentioned.

Emily:
    (Amused, but sharp) Alice! I think you had better be on your way.

Alice:
   I'm off. (MARTYN helps her with her cloak) Goodbye dear. The Abbey at four. (As she goes out the door) Goodbye Martyn. Knight of the Cloak!

Emily:
   Alice! (She has gone)

Martyn:
   So, she told you about the cloak.

Emily:
   Yes. (Pause) I was cross with you last night at the play. Whenever I took my eyes off the stage I met yours, staring at me. What's the good of buying tickets, silly, when you can see my face for nothing any day.

Martyn:
   I like to watch your eyes while you follow the players, so eagerly. It's better than watching the play, to me. I can't help it. I'm sorry. Darling, I'm so deep in love with you. Please come home and marry me.

Emily:
   Five times a week you've asked me to marry you. Ever since you came here. I hate your asking days. I hope this isn't going to be another.

Martyn:
   Yes, it is. I'm asking you now, again, to be my wife. It's your life that's at stake. Emily, I'm afraid to leave you here alone. Give up your studies here, and come home with me.

Emily:
    (Blazing) Give up my work! That's what you all say. You're all against me. I'm alone. But I'll show you yet.

Martyn:
   Emily, I'm proud of what you are doing. You can still go on painting after we marry. But why give your whole life to it? This is a new century, I agree, and women are making their mark in some fields as the equals of men. But who ever heard of a great woman painter?

Emily:
   No one. Not yet. But why shouldn't there be one? This proves it. You don't really believe in me as an artist.

Martyn:
   Nonsense. (Sharply) I'm asking you to marry me. Perhaps for the last time.

Emily:
   No. You upset me, Martyn. Don't ask me again. Perhaps it would be better if you took an earlier boat home.

Martyn:
   And when I've gone you'll have Ed Denny to squire you.

Emily:
    (Angrily) Yes.

Martyn:
   And if it isn't Ed Denny, it will be someone else, one of your student friends, or artists, who understands you. And then others, and still others.

Emily:
    (Wildly) Yes, yes, yes! (Then, as she breaks into a storm of tears) No! (MARTYN goes to her) There's no one else. Only you. And what I want to do. And the terrible, final choice. And I can't make it.

Martyn:
   Emily!

Emily:
   I didn't want you to come, you know. I'd never have let you if you'd given me enough warning. But when you met me at Euston Station ten weeks ago I was glad! For a year I had seen no one from home. You were like a bit of British Columbia, big, and strong -- and handsome.

Martyn:
   I'll give you time. Finish your studies here, and come home, to me. The violets make your eyes shine -- dark and lovely. There's no one like you, anywhere. No one lovelier than you are now.

Emily:
   Dear Martyn!

Martyn:
   What wonderful weeks we've had together.

Emily:
   Do you remember our day in Epping Forest?

Martyn:
   Yes.

Emily:
   One of the happiest days of my life.

Martyn:
   The happiest, for me.

Emily:
   Running down those grassy paths till we were out of breath, laughing and kissing. We were like children in a strange forest, freed from the grown-up sorrows of our lives.

Martyn:
   Moments like this are best, when you forget your work and dreams.

Emily:
   Oh Martyn, some of the dreams are more real to me than anything that happens. I wonder if I should tell you -- if I could tell you.

Martyn:
   What?

Emily:
   It's difficult. Yes, now is the time, if ever. Martyn, there's one special dream, about someone else.

Martyn:
   Who is it?

Emily:
   Will you listen to me? (MARTYN nods. Suddenly) It has never been easy to love you, because of the white boy I used to go riding with.

Martyn:
   I don't understand.

Emily:
   From childhood, I've had a favourite spot in the garden. When I go back home, I'll go to it, especially in the early summer, when the white currants are almost ripe, hoping he'll be there to ride with me.

Martyn:
   You are a strange girl.

Emily:
    (Angrily, desperately) Martyn, listen! Now I've started, you must hear me out; you must believe me.

Martyn:
   Yes, Emily.

Emily:
   There's only one white currant bush. When they're almost ripe, you can see the tiny veins in their skins and the seeds and the juice. I always thought, if they were a little bit clearer, I could see them living, inside. Each currant hangs like a secret which has almost been told. And beside the bush grows, half-wild, a mauvy-pink flower.

Martyn:
   I know the spot.

Emily:
   Thousands of white butterflies flicker among them. The sun dazzles their wings and calls the smell out of the flowers and the hum of bees never stops. Everything trembles. I tremble too. One summer day many years ago -- the wonderful thing happened. A boy was suddenly there on a white horse, with another one for me.

Martyn:
   What was he like?

Emily:
   I've never seen him. He was different from other boys. You didn't have to see him. That was why I liked him. Martyn, you mustn't laugh! This is a real part of me -- perhaps the deepest and truest part of all.

Martyn:
   I wasn't laughing Millie -- far from it.

Emily:
   We went in and out, round and round. Some of the pink flowers were above our heads with bits of blue sky peeping through, and below us was a mass of pink. None of the flowers seemed quite joined to the earth. Everything went so fast -- the butterflies' wings, the pink flowers, the hum and the smell, that they stopped being four separate things and became one most lovely thing. And the boy and the white horses and I were in the middle of it, like the seeds that I saw dimly inside the white currants, like their big splendid secret getting clearer and clearer every moment.

Martyn:
   And then?

Emily:
   And then a grown-up broke the spell. Every year after that when the white currants were ripe I went there. But I never quite came to the heart of the secret. No one does. If you did you would know God. (Pause) It's a kind of light I'm seeking, Martyn -- what the saints died for. Dede says I'm not religious. I am, in my own special way -- perhaps more than she is. The world is like a dream, with depths and reaches all about me. And inside me is this big excitement, bigger sometimes than I can contain. And it will come out of me -- it has to -- in my painting -- perhaps in writing too. It has to come out -- the strangeness, the colours, the fear, the laughter. The seeds inside the white currants will get clearer and clearer, and with them the sounds and smells and the white horses riding -- swirling forms -- circles of light within light. (She pauses a moment, caught up in her seeing. Then she turns toward him and continues in a more natural tone) You see, Martyn, what a strange person I am. I'd be difficult to get along with. Dreams like this would always stand between us. The white boy will always be closer to me, in his way, than you could be. I wish I had told you about him before.

Martyn:
   Do you have many of these dreams?

Emily:
   Some. In Epping Forest with you, that perfect day.

Martyn:
   Yes. I've never known you so happy as you were then.

Emily:
   Do you remember the lily field?

Martyn:
   Yes.

Emily:
   Oh how I'd love to be there now!

Martyn:
   But they're not in blossom.

Emily:
   It doesn't matter. To me they are always in the field. They do something to the back of my eyes which keeps them there, and something to my nose, so that I smell them whenever I think of them. Do you remember how white they are, sprinkled everywhere, with gold in their hearts and brown eyes staring into the earth? And how each lily has five sharp white petals rolling back and pointing to the tree-tops, like millions and millions of tiny quivering fingers. And the smell, so fresh and earthy! In all my thinkings I can picture nothing more beautiful than our lily field. (Quietly and intently, as if approaching the secret) And it was there it happened -- the experience I treasure most -- even more than my happiest hours with you -- the most wonderful moment of my life. And it was true -- not just a dream. I can't tell you about it, because of someone else. Oh, to be there, now! To lie on the sweet grass, under the tall thin pine trees. Come with me.

Martyn:
    (Deeply moved) Yes, come with me.

Emily:
   Surely everything would be clear there. We should know what to do.

Martyn:
   I'll wait for you. You'll be home in a year. Promise me not to close the door. To think of me.

Emily:
   Yes, yes! And don't worry about Denny or any of the others. I'll be too busy working. There's only you.

Martyn:
   And then, when you're home, perhaps --

Emily:
   Yes, perhaps. Perhaps, dear, dear Martyn. If only the storm would calm. If only I could reach to silence inside me -- to some peace.

(Curtain or blackout)




ACT II SCENE 2

(The scene is EMILY's Vancouver studio. It is the late summer of 1905, the year after EMILY's return from England. She is 33 years old. The setting need consist only of the simplest, most significant elements -- some chairs, a sofa or day bed, an easel and some canvases. When the lights come up, MARTYN is alone in the studio. He is looking at the sketches and paintings which are later mentioned. As he studies them they may appear on the screen. EMILY enters, followed by ALICE and EDITH. They are carrying bags and suitcases. EMILY has her sketch case and paraphernalia)

Emily:
   Martyn! What a wonderful surprise! (She drops her load and runs to him) Look who's here.

Martyn:
   Emily. It's good to see you again.

Alice:
   Hello, hello Martyn! (She gives him a hug)

Martyn:
   Alice! And Miss Edith.

Edith:
   Delighted to see you, Martyn.

Martyn:
   My train just arrived, or I should have met you at the boat. Did you enjoy the cruise?

Emily:
   Yes.

Alice:
   We went all the way to Skagway. Then to Sitka; then down the coast, stopping at Indian villages.

Emily:
   Something exciting happened to me at Sitka, Martyn. I've a new idea. A big plan. I'll tell you about it later.

Alice:
   Yes. Dede and I have some shopping to do, haven't we Dede? (She gives EDITH a sign; EDITH nods her head)

Emily:
   So kind of my charming sisters! Sit down and let's talk to Martyn. Sit down, Martyn. So you like living in Montreal?

Martyn:
   Yes, but the west is in my blood. You haven't changed much.

Emily:
   In four years?

Alice:
   She's fatter.

Martyn:
   It's becoming.

Emily:
    (Sharply: a new Emily) It's not, and you know it. We're both older.

Alice:
   Well!! Don't mind her, Martyn.

Martyn:
   When did you return home?

Emily:
   Last summer, a short time after I left the sanatorium. I stopped off with friends in the Caribou for three months and reached Victoria last November. Oh, Martyn, after five and a half hopeless years, it was exciting to come home! You have to live in another country to realize how big and wonderful this one is. It's made me love it deeply, fiercely. I dreaded the homecoming -- yet I was full of longing, too. Our forests have never looked so solemn, our mountains so high, our drift-laden beaches so vast.

Alice:
   And did you hear about the wonderful thing that happened?

Martyn:
   No.

Alice:
   Emily climbed the stair of her old barn studio, flung the window open, and who should come hurrying to her but her peacock. He had not been up there on the studio roof for five years.

Martyn:
   How did he know?

Emily:
   It's his secret.

Edith:
   You're happiest in Victoria, Millie. I do wish you would come back. We would be all together again, like old times.

Emily:
   I'd love to come back, Dede. But my pupils are here.

Edith:
   You could have Lady, and ride as much as you wish.

Emily:
    (Hooting) And ride cross-saddle again! Oh Martyn, I've changed. I've become very fast. I rode astride, and shocked Victoria's solid citizens no end!

Edith:
   No woman had ridden cross-saddle in Victoria before. But our friends are getting used to Millie being -- different.

Emily:
   They sent me to England, Martyn, to gentle me into an English miss with nice ways. And I've come back more me than ever -- just pure me.

Martyn:
   But where did you learn to ride cross-saddle?

Emily:
   From a half-breed girl in the Caribou. Oh Martyn, I was happy there. Such freedom! Loping over the whole country, riding, riding to nowhere. That land has the breath and westerness that was born in me, the thing I couldn't find in the old world. It was there I regained my strength. (She goes to the hall table for her purse and returns offering MARTYN a cigarette) Have a cigarette, Martyn.

Martyn:
   Thank you. (He lights both, watching her curiously)

Edith:
    (Angrily) Millie! You know how much I disapprove of smoking.

Alice:
   Please, Millie!

Emily:
    (Puffing happily) My sisters believe, Martyn -- in fact everyone in Victoria believes -- that women who smoke in this year 1905 are fast, bad.

Martyn:
    (Amused) Oh?

Alice:
   We know you're not, but --

Emily:
   Dede and I had a terrific scene about it last spring. The house is hers, and she made me smoke in the barn with the cow. If I come back, may I smoke in the house?

Edith:
   No Millie. No lady who has any self-respect smokes.

Emily:
   I'm not a heavy smoker, but under the circumstances I prefer to stay in Vancouver where I have my own studio and can do as I damn well please. (MARTYN rises and moves away, a little disturbed)

Alice:
   Millie!

Edith:
   Such language!

Emily:
    (She takes her cigarette case back to the hall table) That's another vice, Martyn; I swear! You'll want nothing to do with me after all this.

Martyn:
   Certainly not!

Emily:
    (Putting out her cigarette) And you haven't heard the worst yet. I make drawings from nude models.

Martyn:
    (With mock seriousness) You do?

Emily:
   Foolishly I exhibited some of them in Victoria.

Edith:
   They're indecent. The whole town's shocked by them.

Alice:
   Goodness knows, I saw enough nudes in London. But they just don't seem right at home.

Emily:
   And to make the story complete, Martyn, Dede disapproves of my paintings as well as of my nude studies. The kind of painting she likes is the antiquated sort the society women of the Vancouver Ladies' Art Club like to do. And because I didn't encourage them, they dismissed me -- but I think it was worth it. (She smiles, thinking of Mamie Westover)

Edith:
    (With dignity) Don't get so excited, Millie. I think you're wrong about your studio, but there's nothing I can do about it. Come Alice; it's time we were going.

Alice:
   Goodbye, both. We'll be back. (They exit)

Emily:
   Well, Sir Martyn, Knight of the Cloak! We're alone at last. Now let me show you some of my work. Look, here is a water colour I painted in Stanley Park this spring. (She finds the painting, plate no. 1, "Wood Interior", Emily Carr, Her Paintings and Sketches. Although dated 1908, it should be used, unless an earlier one, equally suitable, is available)

Martyn:
   I like that. Your style has changed. It's more exciting. You've caught the bigness of the woods.

Emily:
   Thank you. Here's a canvas I did two weeks ago at Sitka. (She unpacks a canvas from the sketches she has entered with. A canvas of the pre-Paris period with totems appears on the screen, such as "Alert Bay", dated 1910, no. 109 in the Emily Carr Trust collection in the Vancouver Art Gallery)

Martyn:
   That totem is striking.

Emily:
   The most exciting thing happened while I was doing this. An American artist came by. You know how I squirm when people look over my shoulder. He was twice my age and had vastly more experience. He said: "I wish I had painted that. It has the true Indian flavour." He liked especially the way I had done the totem.

Martyn:
   I don't wonder.

Emily:
   It's hard to catch their strong talk.

Martyn:
   Strong talk?

Emily:
   Yes. Humans, animals, monsters, all bragging, all being themselves powerfully. I think that the American heard this strong talk in my totem. So I have a wonderful idea. I've made up my mind to picture totem poles in their village settings, as complete a collection as I can make.

Martyn:
   That won't be easy.

Emily:
   I know. The best material lies off the beaten track. I'll go north every summer, with my dog for company. I'll travel by canoe, gas-boat, anything that floats in water.

Martyn:
   Where will you sleep?

Emily:
   In missions, Indian houses, toolsheds, perhaps my own tent. Isn't it an exciting venture?

Martyn:
   Yes. I suppose it is!

Emily:
   The old Indian way of life is changing, and the totems are rotting, or being taken away, or repainted outrageously for the tourists. I want to record this while there is still time. (She goes to get another sketch)

Martyn:
   Emily, why didn't you answer my letters?

Emily:
   I wasn't sure, at first. And I expected to be home, soon. Then I was sick.

Martyn:
   I'm sorry about the san. I wrote you there, too. (He offers her his armchair, and moves to get another for himself. He sits at her left)

Emily:
   I know. It was nice to hear from you. But I couldn't write you. I wanted to talk to you, face to face -- to make you see that it can't be. (He protests) No, listen, Martyn. I'm not so attractive as I used to be. I'm fatter, as Alice says. Sickness and worry have taken their toll, and I'm no longer the sweet young thing you were in love with. The changes aren't the surface things I try to shock Dede with -- the smoking and swearing. There's something deeper -- a nastiness.

Martyn:
   That's nothing to be worried about. I've never wanted an angel.

Emily:
   I was horrid to some of the nurses and patients at the san.

Martyn:
   That isn't what I heard. What about your verses, you cartoons, and your birds? I heard you cheered everyone up.

Emily:
   I like some people, and of course I love creatures, very much. But I'm more and more impatient with most folk. I can't be bothered with them. (Pause) You can't imagine how deeply the san experience embittered me.

Martyn:
   I think I can.

Emily:
   No, you can't. I was wildly rebellious. They didn't want you even to think. When I had been there over a year my friends who hadn't died had all gone home. I knew no one expected I should ever go home. I doubted it, myself. Often I prayed I would die.

Martyn:
   I should have gone to you!

Emily:
   After I left the san I had no desire to work, no strength. I was always crying, couldn't stop. A sloppy old coward.

Martyn:
   I was afraid to leave you in England. I was afraid that something might happen to you.

Emily:
   Oh I know now I'm not the failure I thought I was when I came home. I'm on even keel, again, but I'm not what I was. When I said goodbye to London I said goodbye to my youth. It's only four years since we parted, but I feel ten years older.

Martyn:
   What made you come to Vancouver?

Emily:
   To teach the Ladies' Art Club. And this was an experience to add another ten years to one's life! Really a slap in the face! They snubbed me viciously. They would say, "You may look at my work if you wish to, but I want no criticism from you." The president, this Mamie Westover, was the leader in it. At the end of the first month they dismissed me. I'm boiling still, with the shame of it.

Martyn:
   I'm sorry it's been so difficult.

Emily:
   Perhaps it was what I needed to starch me, to stiffen my pride, to crisp my energy. And so, I'm older. I've changed, soured. And I've grown even more determined -- to give all my time to my work. I have another plan. Paris. I still don't know how to say what I feel about the woods and totems. The new approach in Paris, the new way of seeing, is perhaps what I need. So I'm going to save for Paris.

Martyn:
   When?

Emily:
   Four or five years.

Martyn:
   What if you get sick again? Who'll bring you home?

Emily:
   Not you, darling. Not you, I'm afraid.

Martyn:
   You can still do all this and be my wife. I can support you well.

Emily:
   I know you can support me. It's not money.

Martyn:
   I can wait. I've waited before. You go ahead for two or three years. Make big strides with your work. Then I'll move back to Vancouver and we'll get married. You can still go on with your summer trips. I may go with you, for as much time as I can spare. And we'll go to Paris together.

Emily:
   And children? And looking after the house, and you, when I should be painting?

Martyn:
   I can afford help for you. If you love me, we can manage the children somehow, and everything.

Emily:
   That's part of the trouble. Perhaps I love only myself, and what I'm doing. It's my work I want. Nothing else matters. I won't be half painter, half wife and mother, with a tug-or-war always between them, and one or both suffering. It must be painting, full time. It must be.

Martyn:
   Let me come back again next summer.

Emily:
   I'm sorry, dear. No, no, no! It's goodbye for good, this time. And don't fear about anyone else. There'll be no one, after you. No more pretence for me. I'm on the middle road. No more silliness. (He regards her helplessly) Twelve years you have wanted me. It's time to stop wanting, isn't it?

Martyn:
   I never minded the waiting, or your work. I wanted to be part of it. I even felt I was needed -- your harbour from the storm.

Emily:
    (She touches him gently) Leave me, Martyn. It's time.

Martyn:
   I'll find no one else. I've begun to grow old, loving you.

Emily:
   I'm sorry. There just aren't words to say how sorry I am.

Martyn:
   Emily, perhaps in time....

Emily:
    (Fiercely, anguished) No, dear. This is the end for us. Now, now!

Martyn:
    (Bewildered) I'll leave tonight. I won't see Dede and Alice. Say goodbye to them for me, will you?

Emily:
   Yes. Goodbye, Martyn.

Martyn:
    (A last dumb question) Millie?

Emily:
   Martyn. Go now. Please go, before I start to cry. Go, go!

Martyn:
   Goodbye. (He goes. She drops into a chair, trying to keep from crying. After a moment there is a knock at the door)

Emily:
   Who is it?

Mrs. W.:
   Mamie Westover.

Emily:
    (A pause. Then with grim pleasure) Come in. (MAMIE WESTOVER enters. She is well-dressed, confident, and quietly aggressive)

Mrs. W.:
   How do you do, Miss Carr. I found out from Mrs. Smith that you were expected home this afternoon. Did you enjoy your trip?

Emily:
    (Quietly; waiting) Thank you, yes.

Mrs. W.:
   I'm sorry to trouble you on your first afternoon back in the city, but I've come about an urgent matter. We're having some difficulties with our club -- financial difficulties. Some of our members have left the city, and it's not easy to keep up our rental payments for the studio. We have thought that we would like to give it up and come and share yours with you. It would be easier for both of us. Would you like to do so?

Emily:
   No.

Mrs. W.:
   You would of course have the prestige of our club behind you and your classes.

Emily:
    (Slowly, in measured tones) I don't want the prestige of your club behind me or my classes. I don't want your club in my studio at all.

Mrs. W.:
   That's not being very pleasant.

Emily:
   You didn't bother being pleasant to me. You did all you could to humiliate me!

Mrs. W.:
   That's not true.

Emily:
    (Topping MRS. W's words) You floated into class an hour or more late, ignored me entirely, changed the model's pose, and painted the background an entirely different colour to the one I had arranged.

Mrs. W.:
   You're exaggerating. I've had considerable art training and, if I may say so, more success than you have had as a painter. You couldn't expect me to say "Yes Miss!" to a young girl, following her every whim. Naturally I have my own ideas.

Emily:
   I don't like your ideas, or your training, or the way you paint. All you want of me, the whole lot of you, was for me to butter you up, and repaint your daubs so you could exhibit.

Mrs. W.:
   That's most unfair. But all this is beside the point. You have a studio, and we should like to share it.

Emily:
    (Intensely, viciously, building to a furious climax) I'm glad you're in trouble. I'd rather starve than have you and your amateur friends in my studio. Drinking your tea and jabbering your art jargon. You're all snobs. Vulgar, lazy old beasts! I hate your kind.

Mrs. W.:
   Really. Never in my life --

Emily:
    (Topping her words) I won't share my studio with you. I won't, won't, won't! (ALICE and DEDE appear, bewildered, at this climax of wild shouting)

Mrs. W.:
    (To DEDE, as she hurries away) She's impossible, mad!

Edith:
    (After a pause) Emily! You've told her you won't share the studio?

Emily:
   Yes.

Edith:
   Why do you have to shout at her -- like a mad woman?

Emily:
   She infuriates me.

Edith:
   I'm appalled. I'm just sick about it. Sick at heart. You don't try to control yourself any more. You might think what it does to us, and our good family name. Tomorrow the story will be all over Victoria.

Emily:
   She says she's a better painter than I am. I'll show her. I'll show them all. Nothing else matters from now on. I'm off every summer to remote Indian villages.

Edith:
   By yourself?

Emily:
   I'll take my dog.

Edith:
   I never heard of such a thing. It's neither safe nor proper.

Emily:
   Don't be so prim and old-fashioned. This is the twentieth century.

Alice:
   But what about Martyn?

Emily:
   Martyn and I are through.

Alice:
   Oh!

Emily:
   He's leaving tonight. He asked me to say goodbye to you.

Alice:
   Why, Millie, why?

Emily:
   I can't marry him and be a painter. And I'm not sure I love him. Those are two reasons.

Edith:
   This is the last straw. Emily, how silly, how wrong can you be?

Emily:
   It's my life, Dede, not yours. Please not to interfere. I'm going home to Victoria this weekend. I'll bring back my sheep dog, and my squirrels and chipmunks. And I may get some white rats.

Edith:
   Millie, people will begin to think you are more queer than you are.

Emily:
   I don't care.

Edith:
   I'm afraid you may start looking queer, too. You're getting plumper every year.

Alice:
    (Gently) She'll lead her life her own way, Dede. There's nothing we can do about it.

Emily:
   Thank you, Alice. I'll be free. I'll have company, with my creatures, and a few friends. And I'll have my work -- and enough money to thumb my nose at the Mamie Westovers and Ladies' Art Clubs. I'll live my own life, my own way.

Alice:
   I always liked Martyn. (Pause) Why were boys never so interested in me as they were in you, Millie?

Emily:
   I don't know, dear.

Edith:
   If you would still like to give up your studio and come home, Millie, we'd be glad to have you. Your studio is there waiting for you.

Emily:
   Thank you. No, Dede.

Edith:
   I guess, as Alice says, it's your own life, and you'll live it as you want to live it.

Emily:
   From now on, I think, time will go slow for us. Do you remember our family picnic at Mill Stream?

Alice and Edith:
   Yes.

Emily:
   All week long, waiting for it, time went so slowly. But after lunch, Father said we had till five o'clock. Then time went swiftly. We went up the stream; with each turn it sang a different tune. There were maiden-hair ferns and mosses, and the pines and cedars smelled juicy. It was all so quiet it was like the stillness of a bird you hold in your hand. Then you came calling us, Dede, and I wondered what time was, that it could play such tricks on us.... By the stream that day I picked up a great golden-brown toad, put him in a tin, and took him into the bus. But Auntie made you throw the tin, golden toad and all, out the window.

Edith:
   Yes, I remember.

Emily:
   Do you think my golden toad ever found his way back, down the long dusty road, to the lovely stream where there was no time?

Alice:
   I don't know. (Pause) I'm sorry about Martyn.

Emily:
   How do you think I feel? For God's sake, don't talk about him!

Alice:
    (Brokenly) Millie!

(Curtain or blackout)





ACT III SCENE 1

(The scene is EMILY's studio in The House of All Sorts. It is the autumn of 1927. Twenty-two years have passed; EMILY is 56 years old. This is the familiar EMILY, somewhat younger than the artist of the photograph by H. Mortimer Lamb which appears in Growing Pains, p. 322. The setting might represent a corner of the studio, with the couch reserved for visitors. One of the big windows might be indicated. We might see a portion of one wall, with some of the 1912 totem pictures on it or stacked against it. The studio is described in The House of All Sorts, pp. 122-23. When the lights come up, EMILY is pacing the floor. EDITH and ALICE, both greatly changed with the years, are watching her with worried expressions. The old bobtail sheep-dog might be in the room, lying quietly on the floor, if one is available. Otherwise, EMILY can point to the bobtails in the yard from her window. The more pets, the better; but they are not essential. Parrots in a cage; cats; chipmunks in a cage would help. By this time EMILY had stopped raising bobtails and had griffons instead. The liberty with the facts is taken for a reason that will be apparent as the scene proceeds.)

Emily:
   So then Mrs. Fox brought her complaint to me, and I had to run down the long stair, round the house, to your friend Mamie Westover, trot back with the retort to Mrs. Fox, and then return her ultimatum, upping and downing till I was tired. Sometimes I think it's all a fix-up. From my window I see them smiling, whispering, and nodding in the direction of my flat. I'd prefer an honest pig-sow grunting right in my face.

Edith:
   Emily, how unrefined!

Emily:
   And you side with them. You take their part.

Edith:
   Mamie's my friend.

Emily:
   I'm sorry your brought her here.

Edith:
   I was only trying to help you. She was looking for a place to stay when her husband died.

Emily:
    (She looks out the window, angrily) That Dave Ransom has left his socks to dry from the window again. I warned him. Wait till I see him!

Edith:
   Let's not have another quarrel! Until you have some other way to make your living you'll have to be pleasant to your tenants and guests.

Emily:
   I know that. But I smart like a hen with hornets under its wing. A boarding house keeper for ten lady boarders.... I've struck rock bottom!

Edith:
   Millie, please don't call it a boarding house. It's a guest house.

Emily:
   To me it's a boarding house. Women at their worst! (MAMIE WESTOVER enters. From her, too, the twenty-two years have taken toll)

Mrs. W.:
   I'm ready, Edith. Hello, Miss Alice. Oh, Miss Emily, could I ask a favour of you?

Emily:
    (Quizzically) Yes?

Mrs. W.:
   If you don't mind I should like to sit on the other side of the table. The totems in those pictures disturb me so much. I find that I -- don't enjoy my meals. You don't mind, do you?

Emily:
    (Her landlady smile) No. It can be arranged.

Mrs. W.:
   I'm really afraid to come into the room after dark. The stare of those monsters!

Emily:
    (Quietly) I'm sorry you don't like them. To me they're not monsters.

Edith:
   I liked your pictures much better before you went to Paris, Millie. Everybody did. Why don't you start painting again in earnest, and paint as you used to.

Emily:
   I'd rather starve. (As she walks about restlessly she glances out the window and sees Dave Ransom. She calls out the open window) Mr. Ransom. One moment please. I want to see you. (To them) I'll settle him!

Edith:
    (As she goes) Millie, please!

Emily:
    (Her shrieks are clearly heard) Those socks! You take them away, or take yourself away from my house. I told you I won't have it -- or you.

Mrs. W.:
   Look at her -- shaking her fist in his face! Oh!

Man's Voice:
   You've knocked my glasses down. They're broken. You'll have to pay for them.

Emily:
   I'll show you. Here, get out!

Mrs. W.:
   She's going to turn the hose on him. (Sounds of EMILY's running steps; then the hose stream)

Emily:
    (With a wild cry) There!

Man's Voice:
   You're a mad woman. You should be locked up. (The door bangs as he races into his apartment)

Mrs. W.:
   Shall we go, Edith?

Edith:
   Yes. (They go. ALICE waits, unhappily. After a moment EMILY appears. She is breathing heavily. She stands a moment, not looking at her sister. ALICE says nothing)

Emily:
   I'll pay for the glasses. You had better go.

Alice:
   Millie, Millie! (She looks at her a moment, then goes. EMILY angrily climbs the stairs to her attic room. ERIC BROWN appears. For a moment he stares at the canvases, obviously deeply impressed. Then he hears a sound from upstairs)

Brown:
   Hello! Anyone there?

Emily:
    (Calling out sharply to him) Who's there? Who are you?

Brown:
   I'm very sorry. I knocked and there was no answer, but the door was open. (EMILY appears) I'm Eric Brown, Director of the National Gallery. I telephoned an hour ago for an appointment.

Emily:
    (Gruffly) I'd forgotten.

Brown:
   Marius Barbeau, Director of the National Museum, is greatly impressed with your work. These are some of your canvases?

Emily:
    (Still surly) Yes. (We see the canvas "Skidgate", plate no. 6 in Emily Carr, Her Paintings and Sketches, on the screen)

Brown:
   I've been admiring them. I've never seen anything like them. Very strong. When did you do this one?

Emily:
   Fifteen years ago. 1912. At Skidgate. (EMILY moves over the next canvas. It is plate no. 5 in the catalogue, "House Front -- Gold Harbour". If this and other canvases mentioned are not available, but equally acceptable ones of the same period are, these can be used, with Emily's descriptions changed)

Brown:
   And this?

Emily:
   That's outside an Indian house at Gold Harbour.

Brown:
   Colourful pattern; interesting subject matter. Painted?

Emily:
    (Warming to him) 1912. That was my big year. I painted a hundred and fifty canvases that year from sketches I had made in the summer.

Brown:
   Where did you learn to paint this way?

Emily:
   In Paris in 1910 and 1911. I had two canvases in the Salon D'Automne in 1911.

Brown:
   And what have you painted since "your big year"? (MAMIE enters)

Mrs. W.:
   Excuse me, Miss Emily. (To BROWN) Excuse me. I forgot to tell you that I shan't be here for dinner tonight.

Emily:
    (Sharply) All right. (MAMIE leaves. Sullen again) I haven't painted for fifteen years. I'm not an artist any more. I'm a landlady, a boarding house keeper.

Brown:
   But these are remarkable canvases. Original and striking.

Emily:
   Vancouver and Victoria didn't think so. When I exhibited them they jeered at me. Called it children's work. They couldn't have hurt me more if they had thrown stones. The schools where I had taught refused to give me work. Most of my pupils left. There was nothing to do but come back here, to Victoria.

Brown:
   I don't wonder that they didn't understand this kind of painting then. Even in the east it wouldn't have been generally appreciated at that time.

Emily:
   I was determined to go on painting. I built this four-suite apartment to provide income. But rents dropped, costs rose, and I've had to be caretaker as well as landlady. To eke out a living I've hooked rugs and made pottery. And I raise sheep-dogs.

Brown:
   But surely there are some here who appreciate these paintings.

Emily:
   Very few. Victorians still see things the way their forebears did in England. They don't want to change. They're smug, high-nosed. They don't believe that art means anything to you personally.

Brown:
   I know the kind. Art is a lady-like accomplishment. How out of place you are here!

Emily:
   People object to me as well as to my painting. I'm odd because of my animals and because I love the Indians. I hear them laughing at me after I've gone by... because I won't conform, in life or art. (Savagely, almost proudly) It's something to have a whole community against you, isn't it! I shan't ever escape from the shadow these years have thrown across my life, or from the dread of what's ahead.

Brown:
   You should paint again.

Emily:
   That's what my pictures say to me. They're always whispering to me to quit this, to come back to my own job. But I can't quit. I must squeeze out a living from somewhere. The art part of me aches, but I know, deep down, that I'm finished as a painter. I go out sketching a little, just to keep from feeling too lonely and useless. But I'm through.

Brown:
   I don't believe you're through. I think you're just beginning. You have something to say about this west country. You must say it.

Emily:
    (Only half believing) It's good to hear you say that.

Brown:
   Barbeau was impressed with your work -- most enthusiastic. I must confess I came with some misgivings. But the moment I saw them I liked them very much. Barbeau told you we are having an exhibition?

Emily:
   He said something.... But I didn't think anything would ever come of it. (ALICE enters) Mr. Brown, this is my sister Alice. Mr. Brown is the Director of the National Gallery.

Alice:
   How do you do, Mr. Brown.

Brown:
   I'm pleased to meet you. (Continuing) It's an exhibition of west coast Indian art, sponsored jointly by the National Museum and the National Gallery. There will be totem poles, carvings, baskets, canoes -- and interpretations of Indian life by other artists. But your work should form the backbone of the paintings shown. Yes, we could use thirty of your canvases. We'll pay all transportation charges, of course.

Emily:
    (Looking at her sister) Alice!

Brown:
   I hope to persuade the trustees to buy at least one of them. Barbeau said he went over your canvases with you and picked out sixty of them.

Emily:
   Yes. Most of them are in the attic.

Brown:
   May I come back tomorrow? We'll go through them carefully and choose thirty.

Emily:
   I'll have them ready. But are you sure that people down east will want to see them?

Brown:
   Yes! During these fifteen years, while you have been losing your battle here, others have been winning. There are new forces at work. The most important is a nationalist movement in art, led by the Group of Seven. Have you heard of them?

Emily:
   I must have read of them.

Brown:
   They have revolutionized our painting. It's all very exciting and important. Here's a book about them -- just out -- by Fred Housser. A Canadian Art Movement. (While they turn the pages, ALICE watching over their shoulders, some of the paintings illustrated in the book appear on the screen, including two by Lawren Harris. Brown identifies the painters of the pictures that are shown) Tom Thompson. A.Y. Jackson. Arthur Lismer.

Emily:
   I like that. Who's the artist?

Brown:
   Lawren Harris.

Emily:
   There's another one by him.

Brown:
   "North Shore, Lake Superior".

Emily:
   Oh, this is thrilling!

Brown:
   You must come east to see your paintings in the show -- hear how people there like your work. Barbeau say's he'll be able to get a pass for you from the C.N.R. and I'll arrange for you to meet these men.

Emily:
   Me -- go east?

Alice:
   Yes, why not, Millie?

Emily:
   But I couldn't get away; the house, the dogs.... (EDITH bursts in)

Edith:
   I have a present, a surprise for you, Millie.... Oh, I....

Emily:
   Edith, this is Mr. Brown, the Director of the National Gallery. My sister, Miss Edith Carr.

Edith:
   How do you do, Mr. Brown.

Brown:
   I'm delighted to meet you, Miss Carr.

Alice:
    (Excitedly) There's to be an exhibition in Ottawa, Dede, and Mr. Brown likes Millie's paintings, and he wants thirty of them to show. He'll get her a pass on the railway, and he wants her to go east and see it all. We can look after the house, can't we?

Edith:
    (Eagerly) Of course we can. You must go, dear.

Emily:
   I'm fifty-six. This comes too late.

Brown:
   Nonsense. You're just starting your career as a painter. I do hope you'll come. But we've interrupted your sister.

Edith:
   It's nothing, really. Emily keeps English bobtails.

Brown:
   Yes, I know.

Emily:
   You can see them, there, from that window. (He gets up; she points to them)

Edith:
   She has twenty-four pups in the basement, and she helps the mothers by bottle-feeding them. I'm getting rid of some of the furniture in our old house around the corner, and so I brought her a chair to sit on while she feeds them.

Emily:
   Not the praying chair?

Edith:
   Yes!

Emily:
   Oh Dede, how lovely of you! (She runs to DEDE and kisses her. DEDE is surprised and deeply moved)

Edith:
   Millie! We're not usually such a demonstrative family, Mr. Brown.

Alice:
    (Radiant) Let me tell Mr. Brown, Millie. When we were young, Millie -- Small, we called her -- always wanted a puppy.

Emily:
   I wanted one, from the beginning of my world. The bigger I got the harder I wanted.

Alice:
   Father wouldn't hear of a puppy in his garden. But Small thought of a way. If hens get ducks, then Tibby, our cat, could get a puppy. She and Tibby would pray together to God for a puppy. It was father's wicker praying chair, and we girls thought that it creaked "Amen" when he finished. So Small took Tibby, poked her under it, with her tail sticking out. Then she prayed and when she finished she pinched Tibby's tail and they said "Amen" together. When it didn't work she scolded Tibby and told her that if she had really wanted she could have had pups. (BROWN chuckles with amusement)

Emily:
    (Happily)
You're so kind to think of the praying chair, Dede. When I sit on it to feed the puppies I know it will creak "Amen". (Pause. She smiles at BROWN) I think I shall come east, Mr. Brown. But I'll let you know definitely tomorrow.

Brown:
    (Rising) I do hope you will be able to make the arrangements. Would you like to keep the book? I should be happy to give it to you.

Emily:
   Oh yes! Thank you so much!

Brown:
    (To the others) Goodbye, Miss Edith, Miss Alice. It has been a pleasure meeting you.

Edith and Alice:
   Goodbye.

Brown:
    (To EMILY) Till tomorrow then. Three o'clock?

Emily:
   Yes. Thank you. Goodbye. (He goes)

Edith:
   You will go, Millie?

Emily:
   Are you sure you can manage?

Edith and Alice:
   Of course, yes.

Emily:
   All right, then. Oh, what's happening to me? I can't believe it. Look at this picture again. This one by Lawren Harris. (Again, "North Shore, Lake Superior" appears on the screen, as they study it) I may see this very picture, and meet the artist. I won't be working alone any more. And I'll start to paint again. Oh Alice, Dede!

Edith:
   You know we're proud of you, Millie, even if we don't always understand you and what you are doing.

Emily:
   Yes, Dede, I know. Please forgive me for the things I've said -- the way I've treated you, all these years. I'm ashamed when I think of it.

Edith:
   Of course, dear.

Emily:
   To paint again! The house will never chain me now! I'm on my way. I must go and use the praying chair. (She races off happily, humming the lily song as she goes, in her lively and near-tuneless fashion)

(Curtain or blackout)




ACT III SCENE 2

(The scene is EMILY's bedroom in her cottage at 316 Beckley Street. It is early in January, 1937; almost ten years have elapsed. EMILY's pets are in the adjoining studio or in the back yard. We may hear the cries of parrots, or the barking of dogs. One cage of budgies may hang in the bedroom, and one griffon may be on the bed or beside it on the floor or on a chair. In addition to the bed, furniture should include chairs and a table beside the bed. The portrait of Sophie, EMILY's Indian friend, might hang at the head of her bed. When the lights come up DR. BENTLEY is finishing his examination of EMILY. He is a comfortable looking man, quick in his movements, yet never excited. He is well-read, has a dry sense of humour, and is a student of men and life.)

Doctor:
   Well Emily, you're much better now than you were this morning. We'll have you in the hospital later this afternoon. We'll see what a good long rest there will do for your heart.

Emily:
   How long shall I be there?

Doctor:
    (A professional shrug) Some weeks. Perhaps longer.

Emily:
   And then?

Doctor:
   You can come home, but you'll have to spend most of your time in bed. You've been overdoing, and your heart has objected. After all, ladies approaching seventy can't expect to work like girls of seventeen. It is unreasonable.

Emily:
   But what am I to do?

Doctor:
   Very little over-exertion will bring the trouble back. And it might be serious, this time. I'm afraid your animals and birds will have to go. Livestock entails work.

Emily:
   And my painting?

Doctor:
   We'll see. Perhaps a little at home. But no more outdoor sketching; certainly no more trips alone.

Emily:
   I never could paint with others around me. No thank you. I'll stay at home. Oh! What shall I do with my life?

Doctor:
   Go easily for a change. Things will work out all right. You should be proud of what you have done.

Emily:
   Not half what I want to do, Doctor.

Doctor:
   You promise not to get excited when Mr. Brown comes.

Emily:
   I promise.

Doctor:
   He couldn't come tomorrow?

Alice:
   No, he leaves for Ottawa tonight.

Doctor:
   And he won't be long?

Alice:
   Just a little while. The critic of the Manchester Guardian has made a selection and Emily has them all ready there for him. Mr. Brown thinks he has buyers for them, Doctor.

Emily:
   Isn't it a godsend. I'll need the fat cheques, with my hospital bills.... And just when I'm getting into my stride, I've got to stop. Useless. Bedridden. Damn it! (A knock on the outer door. She turns away, distressed. ALICE goes to the door)

Doctor:
   There, there, you'll be painting again.

Emily:
   No, no. (Voices are heard in the hall)

Alice:
    (Off) Mr. Brown! How do you do.

Brown:
    (Off) I'm happy to see you again, Miss Alice. How is Emily?

Alice:
    (Off) She's resting more easily now. (They enter the bedroom) Mr. Brown, this is Dr. Bentley.

Brown:
   How do you do.

Doctor:
   I'm pleased to meet you, sir. (BROWN comes to EMILY, who has turned and is now watching him)

Emily:
   Hello, Mr. Brown.

Brown:
   Well, Emily, I'm very, very sorry. (He sits in the chair by the bed) You must get better quickly. (He folds his hands over hers) As I drove over the Island Highway I saw Emily Carr pictures in the woods no matter in which direction I looked. You have caught the western spirit. Get better. These hands are too clever to lie idle.

Emily:
   What good is getting better if I can never roam my woods again. (She chokes back her sobs)

Doctor:
    (Goes to her) You mustn't lose heart, Emily. You were always the sturdy one of the Carrs. You have long good years ahead of you. You just have to learn to be patient, to go slowly. Promise me you'll try to get well.

Emily:
    (With a faint smile) All right Doctor, I'll try.

Doctor:
   Goodbye now.

Emily:
   Goodbye.

Doctor:
   I'm pleased to have met you, Mr. Brown. It is good to know that in the east Emily's work is being appreciated -- as it should be. I'm afraid Victoria has been most unkind to her. Goodbye, Miss Alice.

Brown and Alice:
   Goodbye. (He goes)

Brown:
   I like your house.

Emily:
   It's a funny old one, isn't it? I've been happy here, until this happened.

Brown:
   What a relief to be done with the apartment house!

Emily:
   It's been a joy. No more tenants. No more boarders! (Pause) This will be hard on Alice. She's had trouble with her eyes lately, too.

Alice:
    (Independent as always) I'll be all right. Just you learn to be patient and take care of yourself, as the Doctor says.

Emily:
   Imagine me going slow. A meek old lady! Let's hope I'll have some energy left.

Brown:
   You will. I mustn't stay long, and tire you. Shall we look at the canvases? (He goes to the pile and turns out the first one)

Alice:
   Will you excuse me? I have to look after Millie's creatures. What a winter I'm going to have, Mr. Brown! A monkey, parrot, five dogs, chickens, canaries, chipmunks, squirrels, and that disgusting white rat! (She goes. The canvas, "Skidgate", plate no. 11 in the catalogue, or "Kispia Village", appears on the screen as they look at it)

Brown:
   I remember this one. I like it. (Looking) It's dated 1928.

Emily:
   Yes. The year after I came back from seeing the Group of Seven.

Brown:
   What a difference between this and your 1912 painting!

Emily:
   It was the trip east that did it -- seeing the pictures of the Group. They tore me. They woke something in me that I had thought quite killed, the passionate desire to say what I felt about Canada. And meeting them all! Especially Lawren Harris. My whole life changed from that moment on.

Brown:
    (As he brings out the next canvas) Good. Here's the "Indian Church". It's a powerful and beautiful thing.

Emily:
   Lawren Harris liked it too much for my taste. He didn't think I would ever do anything better. I flew into a rage, wrote him I was sick of the old church. I've lost many friends through being impatient and sharp like that. Fortunately, Lawren was big enough to pass it off with good humour, and kept on writing to me. If he had stopped writing I would have broken.

Brown:
    (Bringing out the next painting, plate no. 13 in the catalogue) "Blunden Harbour". This is one of my favourites -- if I may have a favourite?

Emily:
    (Laughing) You may.

Brown:
   I hope the National Gallery will buy this one. I am recommending it.

Emily:
   I'm sorry about the angry letters I wrote your gallery.

Brown:
   They were angry letters.

Emily:
   I had trouble paying the taxes on the apartment house. I worried about pictures being away, and people not paying me, nor answering my letters. (With a sigh) It's all part of the despair, the gloom, that I plunge into, for days and weeks on end.

Brown:
   I understand.

Emily:
   Lawren Harris wrote me that every creative person knows this rhythm of elation and despair -- that there is no realization, only momentum toward it. He encouraged me to search ever deeper. "There is only one way" -- he wrote -- "keep on." So, I kept on. (BROWN places another picture on the easel) And now I fear I shall never say what I want to say about my dear earth -- her volume, her shapes, her juice, the throb, the wonderful power and promise of her growing, the promise of her calm loveliness. Something I was catching in my last canvas. (BROWN turns to the picture "Old and New Forests", plate no. 19 in the catalogue)

Brown:
    (Reading) "Old and New Forests"?

Emily:
   Yes. The little pines are fluffed out, ready to dance. I've been reading Whitman: "Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune." In my painting I've just begun to work my way out of the darkness. And now the darkness is closing in. (She turns to the wall again. The picture fades from the screen as BROWN puts it away with the others and goes to the window -- staring out. There is a long pause)

Brown:
   I have an idea. Why not write? (EMILY turns to him, startled) One approach is cut off. Try another. Say what you want to say in words, instead of in paint.

Emily:
   How strange that you should say that, when that very thought has been going through my head, too.

Brown:
   You've had such an interesting life: San Francisco, London, Paris, living with the Indians -- and always such a desperate, uphill struggle, against ill health, against coldness and indifference, rejected by your own people. The dark days of the boarding house. It's an exciting story. Why not write it -- the story of an artist's struggle in an unfriendly land -- turning for comfort to the Indians and to your creatures who accept you? Of the search to find a way to express this land that you love so much.

Emily:
   Yes. I could write! I'm sure Dr. Bentley would let me. It would be fun. I'd go back so vividly, I'd forget being sick.

Brown:
   Good. Just the thing!

Emily:
   I love to write. I've always scribbled, kept diaries. I kept a diary in the san in England. So I'm ready to write about those things which have moved me deeply -- things that will heal my heart.

Brown:
   Wouldn't it be strange if you became more successful as a writer than as a painter!

Emily:
   No danger of that! My writing would never sell. But it will help me. "Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune."

Brown:
   You're right. Oh Emily, I'm pleased; happier than words can say. (He turns to pick up his hat. ALICE enters) Alice -- we have a plan.

Alice:
   A plan!

Brown:
   She'll tell you about it. (To EMILY) Keep courage.

Emily:
   Yes. Thank you so much. Goodbye.

Alice and Brown:
   Goodbye.

Emily:
    (Eagerly) I'm going to write! I'll take my diaries and notebooks to the hospital. Perhaps my typewriter, when I'm feeling better.

Alice:
   Will Dr. Bentley allow it?

Emily:
   I'm sure he will. It will be much better than fretting, lying idle. I'll write about the Indian villages where I used to sketch, years ago; then some of our happy childhood memories.

Alice:
   You're so restless. I guess it's a good thing for you to keep busy with something.

Emily:
   I'm going to write my life story, too. But I won't have it published until after my toes are sticking up. I won't let anyone read it; not even you.

Alice:
   I won't be able to read by that time. I can hardly read now.

Emily:
   I know dear. I'm sorry. But there's one part I will read to you, when I know my time is almost up. It's the part about the secret I've kept from you so long -- the secret of what happened in the lily field.

Alice:
    (Smiling) Your secret, at last! Dear Small.

Emily:
   I feel strangely content. I mustn't be too sorry about painting. I've had loads of fun in my beloved woods. And now there's a new challenge -- to make something of my writing. I think it's going to be all right, after all. (The lights fade or the curtains close as the lily theme is heard serenely.)

(Curtain or blackout)




ACT III SCENE 3

(On stage we see only a recessed corner or alcove of Mrs. Young's drawing room. It is the Saturday afternoon, December 13, 1941, when EMILY is being fêted by her fellow Victorians on her 70th birthday. EMILY, DR. BENTLEY and ALICE [now almost completely blind] sit on a pink sofa under a stand lamp. There may be two or three extras also on stage, standing behind the sofa, or sitting, their backs partly to the audience. The big crowd is off stage. ERIC BROWN, the master of ceremonies, is between EMILY and the crowd.)

Brown:
    (A sheaf of telegrams and letters in his hand)  And this last telegram is from D.E. Smith, head of the Department of Indian Affairs. "Please accept sincere congratulations on behalf of myself and west coast Indians on winning the Governor General's Award for non-fiction with Klee Wyck. Good wishes for yourself on your seventieth birthday and for Klee Wyck." (Applause) Now we shall hear from our noted guest, Miss Emily Carr. We shall not allow her to stand, however. We know that this is the first time she has been out since her illness, and we mustn't tire her too much. Miss Carr. (Applause)

Emily:
   If you please, I will stand. It makes my head giddy to hear all these kind messages. I shall look forward to reading them over again to my sister Alice at our leisure. Thank you, everyone, for giving me such a splendid, happy birthday party, and for being so kind to Klee Wyck. I would rather have the good will and kind wishes of my home town than the praise of the whole world. It would have been nice to have had some of this praise fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years ago, when I was lonely and discouraged. They say hard knocks are good for an artist, but I've had a few too many. My life is full now, towards the end, and I'm happy in your good will. Yet I know I've strained my friendship with some of you. There's so much I want to do, that the little strength I have must go to writing and painting. As visitors you mean well, but you always come in the good painting light, and there isn't much of it, these winter days. So if I seem not to want to see you, put it down to my being an odd old girl who has something she'd rather do than keep friends. I haven't much time left. But even with the angina and the strokes and the rheumatism and the spectacles it's good to be alive. The way things keep pushing up, growing, growing, gives me hope. I may seem crusty on top, but deep down I'm more at peace with life. As I look back the big thing has been work and more work. Especially in my old caravan trailer where I sat self-contained with dogs, monkey and work -- Walt Whitman on the shelf -- writing in the long, dark evenings after painting, loving everything, terrifically. Thank you again for your kindness and praise this afternoon. But remember that the important thing to me is the doing -- which I'm still at. Don't pickle me away as a "done". (Applause)

(Curtain or blackout)




ACT III SCENE 4

(The scene is EMILY's studio in ALICE's cottage. It is a late February afternoon in 1945, a week before her death. EMILY, a rug about her, sits reading the last page of the Growing Pains manuscript aloud to her blind sister, who sits opposite her. There might be another chair or a couch, and a table beside EMILY with her papers and some of her favourite books on it. We may also see some of the canvases and oil-on-paper sketches which EMILY has been preparing for her solo Vancouver show. As the curtains open, "The Clearing" [frontispiece, Growing Pains] appears on the screen. It fades away after the first few sentences. As EMILY reads, the blind ALICE falls asleep.)

Emily:
   Today the clearing was not sun-dazzled, rather it was illumined with spring, every leaf was as yet unfurled and held light and spilled some. As I watched the flight of wild geese a new wonderment came to me. What of the old or the maimed goose who could not rise and go with the flock? Did despair tear his heart? No. When the flock were away, he would nibble here and nibble there quietly accepting. Old age has me grounded too. Am I accepting? God give me the brave unquestioning trust of the wild goose! Walt Whitman's words come ringing -- We but level this lift to pass and continue beyond. (She looks up, deeply moved by what she has been reading, and is suddenly angry when she sees that ALICE is asleep) Alice. (She shouts. Alice wakes) How long have you been asleep?

Alice:
   I heard most of the chapter. I liked it.

Emily:
   You don't really care about anything I do. (She throws the manuscript on the table)

Alice:
   That's not true.

Emily:
   I read you the last chapter; one of the best in all my books. And that's what you think of it. (A twinge of pain crosses her face; she is suddenly quiet)

Alice:
    (Rises and comes to her) What's wrong, Millie?

Emily:
   Just my old heart again. I can't afford to indulge my temper. (Wryly) And that's hard on me.

Alice:
   It's almost time for Dr. Bentley to call.

Emily:
   Yes. I'm suddenly very tired.

Alice:
   I knew you were overdoing it. You were told to stay in bed, but you would get up every day for a while to work over those oil sketches and mount them. The old exhibition is not worth it.

Emily:
   They're done now. All thirty-five of them. Ready to be shipped to Vancouver. And my autobiography is finished.

Alice:
   And you're to be given an LL.D degree at the spring convocation of the university. Imagine: Dr. Emily Carr! When you were Small you wanted to join a circus and ride a white horse through hoops of fire.

Emily:
   And you wanted to have a hundred children.

Alice:
   Our dreams didn't come true.

Emily:
   Yours did. You've had hundreds of children in your school, down the years. (Pause)

Alice:
   You should have married Martyn. His last letter sounded as if he loves you still.

Emily:
   Yes, he does. (Pause) I'm sorry about him. He was loyal and understanding, and kind.

Alice:
   More than fifty years ago. I remember when he first came courting.

Emily:
    (Fiercely) It wouldn't have done. All my books and paintings would never have been.

Alice:
   I know one man you would have married, if he had proposed to you.

Emily:
   Yes. But he never proposed.

Alice:
   You were so stubborn that when you couldn't have him you'd have none of the others.

Emily:
   I've wanted so much from life. All these things I've longed for are like the orange lily our neighbour wouldn't give me when I was Small. Though I couldn't have it, it burned itself in my heart -- soundless, formless, white. I hug it there still. (Pause) I wonder how much longer I have. Eight years is almost enough to be bedridden.

Alice:
   Millie, it's not like you to give up.

Emily:
   I'm not. Mother was sick a long time, too. Yet she was happy and contented. Once I heard her tell the bishop, "My heart is always singing." I worshipped her.

Alice:
   I know, dear.

Emily:
   I thought, if you liked, I would tell you now.

Alice:
   Your secret? (She moves her chair closer to Emily)

Emily:
   Yes. It happened because of father: the bitter thoughts I had against him -- almost the blind hatred, at times. I told mother that he thought he was as important as God.

Alice:
   Oh Millie!

Emily:
    (Nodding) She was as troubled as a hen that has hatched a duck. She said: "Shall you and I have a picnic?" She knew that above all things I loved a picnic.

Alice:
   She took you alone? On a picnic?

Emily:
   Yes. None of you ever knew. It was an afternoon when you were all away, and she was supposed to be in bed. She dressed and we went through our garden, our cow yard and pasture, and came to the lily field. It was wild lily time. We sat under the mock-orange bush. I made daisy chains and mother sewed. And there, all before us, were millions and millions of white lilies spangled over the green field.

Alice:
   I remember.

Emily:
   In all my world, I've known nothing lovelier than our lily field, as it was that afternoon. (Pause) What a happy time! The happiest, sweetest of all my life. I was for once mother's oldest, youngest, her companion-child. The sunshine and silence were spread all around, and the glory of the wild lilies. At last, when the glint of the sun had gone quiet, we came home. (Pause) It was a secret, we promised each other, just between ourselves. And I've kept it till now.

Alice:
    (Gently) I'm glad for you, Millie.

Emily:
   These years have been hard on you, putting up with grumpy me. Without your help I couldn't have stayed at home and continued my work.

Alice:
   I'm proud of you, overjoyed that you're successful at last.

Emily:
   And Dede gave me the praying chair; all the sharpness gone there.

Alice:
   I'm glad that happened, before she left us.

Emily:
   The storm that has been blowing in me throughout my life has spent itself. I'm too old to be bitter anymore -- even toward father. And that's what mother wanted most of all -- that I should love him, as she did. I almost feel as if I can, now. (Pause) I first began to feel this way the day I painted "The Clearing". It was then I became reconciled to dying. ("The Clearing" may appear briefly on the screen) Let me read you what Lawren Harris has written me about it. (She reaches for the letter, on the table) "It has the quality both of water-colour and of oil. It is lyrical, saturated in a mood of restrained joyousness. It shows that you are moving into another way of seeing and feeling. It pre-figures a new vision." (She puts the letter back. "The Clearing" fades, the theme becomes more clear and serene) It's hard to tell you what the vision is. But it's as if I go back, back into time... each day... more and more... becoming like Small... more and more. The softness and wonder of my childhood tide over me, deluging me with waves of light and sound -- the spangling light of a million lilies, the sound of the cathedral bells ringing, from the hill-top on Sunday morning. The white horses are riding, riding. There are swirling forms, circles of light within light. And at the heart of it, a joy, pure and deep -- I've never known before.

Alice:
   Yes dear. (Pause)

Emily:
   I think I'd like to sleep. Will you wake me when the Doctor comes?

Alice:
    (With great tenderness) Yes dear. (Slowly) Small, dear.

(Curtain or blackout)