Too Much
When the World is Midling Fair
Emily (centre) could always sketch and draw cartoons that made light of even her darkest moments.
It had been arranged in Canada that Emily would be the paying guest (this was a polite name for “boarder”) with her British aunt, Amelia Green. Aunt Amelia met her at Euston station in the middle of a blazing hot London summer. Emily had never seen such a huge city and was amazed by the “writhe of humanity… as indifferent to each other as trees in the forest.” Both trees and crowds made her feel insignificant and she immediately ached with homesickness; London’s overcrowding and its stale, smelly air were hateful to her. She begged Aunt Amelia to help her.
“Miss Green, is there any place one can go to breathe?”
“There are London’s lovely parks.”
“Just as crammed – just as hot as everywhere else!”
Miss Green was a little surprised. Her idea of a nice time was to go stand on a street corner and watch lords and ladies passing by. If you were very, very lucky, you might even catch a glimpse of Queen Victoria.
“Dear me!” Miss Green exclaimed. “You Canadians demand a world apiece. I have offered to take you to Hyde Park, show you our titled people riding and driving, but no, you Canadians have no veneration for titles.”
No. Emily wanted only quiet, outdoor space. When she persisted, Aunt Amelia finally suggested London’s Kew Gardens, the largest botanical gardens in the world. Here, there were trees and plants from almost every part of the globe.
When she arrived, Emily was at first put off by all the “Thou shalt not …” signs: “No person may carry a bag, parcel, or basket into the gardens,” they said. “You must not walk upon the grass, or run or sing or shout.” Emily strode along the paths, deeper and deeper into the Gardens. What had those signs said again? Oh yes: no bags, no singing. Defiant as ever, she clutched her bag, and sang her very loudest.
When she found a small grove of Canadian pines and cedars, she was delighted. Their needles, when she rubbed them between her fingers, smelled like home.
She registered at the Westminster School of Art, located just behind Westminster Abbey in the heart of London. Emily probably chose England over France for her art studies because there was no language problem and because her sisters would be less resistant to her going to the “old country” familiar from their parents’ stories, than to the “foreignness” of France. But it was not a happy choice. In San Francisco, Emily’s status as British (as the Americans then saw Canadians), had made her feel somewhat equal to her American friends, but in class-conscious London, she was reduced to being a mere colonial, and a shabby one at that. It increased Emily’s feelings of being unwelcome and uncomfortable in this huge city.
Also, English art was traditional and conservative. The newest ideas were happening on the continent, and though the Westminster school had once been England’s best art school, it wasn’t any longer. The instruction Emily got here was to be no better than in San Francisco – and that hadn’t been good. Her unhappiness with the City of London quickly deepened to loathing, and she was further depressed when she heard of the death of her brother, Dick, from tuberculosis.
In spite of homesickness, Emily made some friends at school, but her best friend was Mrs. Redden, the aunt of Canadian friends. Marion Redden was a kind, practical Scot who had spent her married life in Canada and now lived in London with her son. She was as strong-willed and outspoken as Emily, and they often fought, but Emily soon began to spend most of her Sundays with the Redden family.
At the beginning of her second year, Mayo Paddon, her Canadian suitor, came to visit. When Emily arranged to meet him at church one day with Mrs. Redden, Mayo and Mrs. Redden liked each other immediately, and the older woman, with many “dear me’s!” and twinkling eyes, arranged to let the two Canadians walk home together without her.
After Mrs. Redden caught him one night on his knees in front of the fire, warming Emily’s cloak and patting the collar as if it were a kitten, she called him “The Knight of the Cloak” and liked him more than ever.
Not Emily. Five times a week Mayo asked her to marry him, and five times a week she said “no.” As he got sadder, Emily got crosser. It made her even more angry that Mrs. Redden continually urged Mayo not to give up, and urged Emily to say “yes.”
One of Emily’s favourite places in London, and one she must have shown Mayo, was the zoo in Kew Gardens. Here she would sit for hours watching the animals. Once they grew used to people, she thought, perhaps they did not really mind being kept in cages. Most of them seemed “merry” and all of them were “well tended.”
Emily knew what it was like to feel caged. Since childhood she had paced, eager to escape the bars of her family and her narrow Victorian culture. She had had a taste of freedom in California, but here the cage was subtle and enticing and right in front of her: small things like changing her accent to sound less colonial, larger things like the pressure to choose marriage over art, to yield to traditional values and to be – in the end – “well tended” if not exactly “merry.”
Mayo Paddon offered her security, companionship, and family. She truly liked him, and she was now nearly twenty-nine years old – almost an old maid. But her choice was all or nothing. If she said “yes” to Mayo, her life would be spent looking after husband and children and house, and only if she had spare time would there be a place for art.
Emily hated London but she would not marry Mayo and let him take her away. She had come here to study painting. Finally she told him to, “Go away, Mayo; please go away!”
And he did.
Years after she refused Mayo’s offer of marriage, Emily mourned about “that poor love I deliberately set out to kill.” She thought it was a “dreadful thing to do,” but she didn’t regret it. “I did it in self-defence,” she said, “because it was killing me, sapping the life from me.” Once and for all she had said “no” to what was supposed to be a woman’s highest calling: marriage and family. Emily chose art, and now she committed herself to study, day and night, more intensely than ever.
But an old injury to her toe was making it harder to walk and causing her terrible pain. At first Mrs. Redden scolded her for whining – “You homesick baby! Stop that hullabaloo! Crying over a corn or two!” – but when she saw it was serious, Mrs. Redden called in her surgeon-cousin to examine the ailing foot.
The toe was fractured and had to be amputated, and it was very, very slow to heal. For the rest of her life Emily would carry a camp stool with her when she sketched because she couldn’t paint standing up.
This time it was Alice who followed her from Victoria for a visit. At first Emily was excited. She pinned her best artwork on the walls of their rooms and waited eagerly for her sister to comment. But Alice didn’t even look. She didn’t ask about Emily’s work, either. Finally
