Hundreds and Thousands Read Free Page A

there. The talk was largely art and books.
    I feel as if I have met the “worthwhiles” on this trip, people who really count and are shaping a nation. They are all so big and broad, so kind to the younger struggling ones, so proud of the bigness of their country, so anxious to probe its soul and understand it. Lawren Harris’s work is still in my mind. Always, something in it speaks to me, something in his big tranquil spaces filled with light and serenity. I feel as though I could get right into them, the spirit of me not the body. There is a holiness about them, something you can’t describe but just feel.
DECEMBER 5TH
    The exhibition has opened, and I might almost say opened and closed again. It was horrid. Up to the very night of the affair, Mr. Barbeau was so full of enthusiasm and hope, so gay. He opened a bottle of wine for supper and we drank a health. He purred over the programmes and was pleased with them. “There will be a great jam,” he said at supper, “it’s the best show we’ve had, and it is always packed.” I saw his wife was anxious. She asked me several times just what Brown had said about it being “quite informal.” She hesitated when I asked if we wore gloves and said she’d take them anyway and see.
    We got there in a cab. I thought we were the first but there were a few others. Not many came after us. It was a dead, dismal failure. The big rooms with the pictures hanging in the soft, pleasant light were almost empty. The grand old totems with their grave stern faces gazed tensely ahead alongside Kihn’s gay-blanketed Indians with their blind eyes. I was glad they were blind. They could not see the humiliation. The Browns were there, a trifle too forced in their gay humour. A great many of the few present were introduced to me. They were all enthusiastic in their praise. Maybe it was honest, maybe not. Mrs. Barbeau’s eyes were flashing angrily. Her body was tense. It was as though she could slay the Browns. “Look at my husband,” her eyes seemed to say. “They’ve wounded him and humbled him and hurt him.” What could I say? Mr. Barbeau never said a word. His face was set and hard and all the light and enthusiasm had gone from it.
    A little past 10 o’clock we went to the Browns’ and had coffee and met some dull people. Mr. Brown tried to be gay and asked us facetiously how we liked it and wasn’t it splendid? No one answered except one small, hysterical, stupid little woman who raved over everything. We came home tired and quiet. I could have cried for Mr. Barbeau. He had worked so hard to make it a success, old Brown leading him on and making him believe it was a big affair. “Usually there were 2,000 invitations, such a crush you couldn’t move, and a great feed of refreshments.” No invitations were sent out except to a few artists and those in the building. Others were angry at getting no cards or notices except the eleventh hour general invitation that came too late to be taken. All Mr. Barbeau said was, “Well that’s over. Now we’ll go on to the next job.”
    And down in the basement, turned face to the wall, are four beautiful canvases, far better than anything upstairs, rejected, hidden away, scorned — beautiful thoughts of fine men picturing beautiful Canada. Canada and her sons cry out for a hearing but the people are blind and deaf. Their souls are dead. Dominated by dead England and English traditions, they are decorating their tombstones while living things clamour to be fed. For me, half of the things they had me send are in the basement too. For myself I do not mind as much as I do for the others. Mine are not so good in workmanship. Only one point I give to mine. I loved the country and the people more than the others who have painted her. It was my own country, part of the West and me.
    It is humiliating to have nothing to tell them of the opening at home, to admit it was a fizzle. No one will come now. If the people are not caught up in the first