4 Humours of the last frontier
The poor attract malicious fate. A few weeks after my recovery a neighbour suggested to my mother that she should rent an upstairs room to a widow who was seeking a modest shelter. When she arrived to inspect the room she brought a child whose pasty complexion struck my mother as unhealthy.
‘I hope your little girl isn’t unwell,’ she said to the woman. ‘I have a child who is just recovering from a serious illness, and have to be careful.’
‘Oh, there is nothing wrong with Lena but a touch of cold,’ the other said.
The cold was whooping-cough! Mother never forgave that lie, and promptly evicted the woman when the ugly truth came out. But the damage was done. I had contracted the worst of all ailments, under the circumstances—one which left me with a permanent bronchial weakness.
Thereafter I was the prey of every raging epidemic. Those who remember the institution of the Little White Hearse, which was a commonplace on the streets of old Winnipeg, know the frequency of those epidemics and their fatal virulence. Those were the good old days when every mother was warned against ‘the second summer’ for her baby. When old wives stood ready with such simple remedies as lime-water, flour steamed in cotton sacks, the powdered inside of the caked ball to be administered for dysentery. When camphor bags about the throat were believed to lessen the chances of contagion, and paregoric was thought to have beneficently soothing effects. When onion poultices, mustard baths, linseed packs, and various homeopathic remedies were the order of the hour, and most doctors were still very dubious about the possible effects of night air.
In these partially enlightened times the ‘second summer’ myth connotes sheer superstition, but there was ample justification for the belief in the days when milk was peddled in cans from door to door, and dished out in quart measures by indifferent delivery boys; when the water-supply came from wells in a low, flat plain, where sewers were undreamed of, and the height of sanitary arrangement was the swill wagon that nosed up and down the back street, like some prehistoric monster, intent upon slaking its thirst from innumerable barrels round which bluebottles sang an eternal dirge.
That wagon ought to have been preserved for posterity. It was a huge affair, with a long, canvas-covered rubber hose that swayed to and fro, like the trunk of an elephant, as it lurched up and down the rutted back lanes, drawn by a team of heavy percherons. You could hear its thunderous approach, punctuated by regular gurgles as it pursued its civic passage from barrel to barrel.
The actual process was a perpetual interest. The horses came to a stop, dropped their heads for a wink in the sun, and the driver leaped nimbly down from the wagon seat. Whistling cheerily, he removed the burlap cover from the reeking barrel, and, unhooking the trunk, inserted it into the boiling sour contents—and kept on whistling, while the monster glugglugged contentedly.
There were other back-yard conveyances, that moved in the night, to save the sensibilities of the citizen, which are better left to the imagination. But some idea may be gathered of the plague of flies that swarmed over lane and alley of whatsoever section of the town. On the outskirts, small dairies, and the thrifty individual of whom sentimentalists sing such praises to-day, added their unpleasant quota by way of chicken-runs, pig-sties, and the family cow. In town, it was little better. Almost every block had a livery barn, with its malodorous accumulation uncontested by civic authorities. It was indeed a fragrant time! Even the rich had no defence, other than stands of Manitoba elms or maples, that screened the rear of their Victorian houses from similar, unsightly manifestations of wealth outside the barn and coachhouse door.
In those good old days, which the reactionary likes to believe were an idyllic interlude of healthful, simple living, scarcely a day passed without the appearance of the Little White Hearse, with its smart span of grey horses, before some doorway flying a long white crêpe. And, if the peril of ‘second summer’ was successfully averted, the ever recurring epidemics of measles, chicken-pox, scarlet fever, and bronchial pneumonia waited, unseen and unpredictable enemies, to pounce upon the growing child.
Fortunately for most of us, the subconscious mind has its own beneficent defence mechanism, which enables us to inhibit and forget what would be intolerable to remember. In any case, those dreary years are a vague interval, where only an occasional event stands out from the grey panorama of seemingly unrelated happenings, and even these memorable bits are unrelated and refuse to appear in any sort of chronological order.
Sometimes these incidents had to do with little trips I made with my father to the Hudson Bay Company, where a chilling sort of dignity seemed to hover over the jumbled merchandise, and greasy squaws and incredibly wrinkled old men sat smoking on the curb before the door. On one such occasion, in early spring, when the Red River was dangerously high and the citizens were marking its angry progress with anxious eyes, father pointed out for me a tall, sardonic Indian who was strutting up and down the river bank.
‘That’s Laughing Joe,’ papa said. ‘No doubt he is waiting for a larger audience. When there are enough to make it worth while, you’ll hear the Red Man’s version of Paleface mirth.’
As papa said, when enough idlers had gathered to justify the performance, Old Joe threw down his hat, with a horrible leer which was doubtless intended as polite persuasion, and certainly brought results. ‘The old wretch looks capable of murder,’ said a man, as he tossed a coin into the tattered hat. Other coins followed in a fleet silver shower. When satisfied his talent was sufficiently rewarded, Old Joe threw back his unkempt head, opened his mouth in a hippopotamus yawn, and was off on a round of laughter that rocked his whole body and made his listeners instinctively draw closer to one another, however broadly they grinned.
As for me, I clung to my father’s coat tails, waiting for the thunder to cease. A little later, when papa and I sat under a red willow bush, watching the muddy waters coiling by, I said:
‘That wasn’t happy laughter, was it, papa?’
‘No, child,’ papa smiled, patting my hand. ‘Old Joe hasn’t much to be happy about—least of all, when he imitates the white man’s cruel laughter.’
‘Why is it cruel, papa?’ I wanted to know.
‘Because it is always cruel to laugh in the face of misery,’ said papa. ‘But that is something conquerors never trouble to know.’
Another time, we went to the immigrant sheds to meet some Icelanders who were arriving from ‘home,’ and had neither relatives nor friends in this country. It was not unusual for such people to write to my father, for he was known through his writings in the Icelandic periodicals, and he seemed to take it for granted that he should help these strangers through the ordeal of endless questionings, medical inspection, customs ritual, and, finally, steer them to some sort of temporary quarters.
It was Sunday, on this occasion. In one respect, this was a happy circumstance, for it meant no loss of time from his work at the saddlery, where he eked out a meagre living under the time-honoured piecework system beloved of all sweatshop autocrats. On the other hand, it meant precious hours away from his hobby, from the one thing that kept him alive—his cherished writing.
‘Six days, I may be a slave,’ papa used to say. ‘On Sunday, I am my own man, and live to please myself.’
It was quite a ritual. Breakfast coffee over, he shined his shoes, washed, put on his white shirt, dark trousers, and a rusty old Prince Albert, and when he was sure not a hair was out of place, his moustache neatly trimmed and his tie perfectly straight, he pocketed his silver snuff-box, and, cane in hand, set out for a little walk. Sometimes he went to church—preferably to the Unitarian Meeting House, where ideas, not emotions, were exploited. Sometimes he called on a sick friend. But, invariably, when he came back, and dinner was over and done, he retired to his barren room to write for the rest of the day, perfectly contented, and unconscious of what went on in the rest of the house.
Now, however, he had to visit the immigrant sheds. It was a warm summer’s day, with not a cloud in the sky, or a murmur of wind. The air would do me good, he told mamma, a little defiantly. That was another bone of contention between them. Papa maintained I should run about more freely, but my poor mother, always terrified that I might go the way of her other babies, would have wrapped me in mothballs and locked me in a glass case if she could. This time, the perfect weather and a patchwork quilt she was eager to finish spoke in our favour. So there I was, dressed in a clean pinafore, with ruffles on the shoulders that stood out like wings, and my pigtails neat, yellow ropes bobbing from under a little straw hat, walking sedately beside papa, who had faithfully promised to keep a slow pace, so that I should not get a fit of coughing from breathlessness.
There was really no danger of excessive haste. Papa knew his own weakness, and had set off in ample time. A few houses down the street a stout woman was picking marigolds in her patch of garden. She was puffing and blowing, and red as a beet, and her mouse-coloured hair straggled down from a hard knot at the back of her neck. Papa stopped, leaning on his cane.
‘How fine you look, Marta,’ said he, with a hint of flattering surprise. ‘My, my, what flowers! It is easy to see you have the touch a lovely garden needs.’
Marta stifled a gasp, as she straightened her cricked back, mopping a wet brow, and smiled at papa.
‘I’m not so bad, thank God,’ said she. ‘But those devils of cutworms come up in droves after the rain—and that was quite a shower we had last night. Three or four o’clock it was, I know, for I hadn’t shut an eye, what with my bad leg, and Benjamin a snorer.’
‘Those are beautiful flowers,’ papa interrupted an impending deluge, pointing to a bed of sweet-william and verbena.
‘Brightish, kind of,’ Marta agreed. ‘If I didn’t see you are visiting-bent, I’d give you some, and welcome—maybe the little one would like a posy any way.’
‘Your heart is as good as your garden, Marta,’ papa rejoined. ‘I’d be glad of a few flowers, if you can spare them. We are off to the immigrant sheds—you know how it is for the stranger.’
‘What a thoughtful soul you are!’ exclaimed Marta, and set to work selecting her choicest flowers for a fragrant offering. With these in my arms, we continued our leisurely way.
Safely out of earshot, I said: ‘Papa, did you really want these—for the strangers?’
‘Perhaps not, Lala,’ papa smiled at me. ‘Perhaps I wanted the old woman to be happy. It makes people happy, to share beautiful things.’
Our next stop was a corner store, where papa bought a little round carton of snuff, and a red apple for me. The storekeeper limped with sciatica, and papa recommended ‘cupping,’ and a bitter. In Dakota, papa had had a pain in the back, and a cupping had drawn off the fever. ‘Sure, I believe you,’ said the storekeeper, but where in Winnipeg was a good ‘cupper’ to be found? No one cultivated the old healing arts in this country. Why, you couldn’t even get your ears pierced to draw off the soreness from watery eyes!
A street or two farther on, a big man with a ruddy complexion and Dundreary whiskers met us at an intersection. ‘Ha! Ha! Lars Gudman! Why aren’t you at the meeting-house?’ he demanded truculently, and glowering.
‘I wanted to keep the peace,’ said papa. ‘It’s a pleasant pastime. I’d recommend it even to a man of God.’
‘You’re a saucy fellow,’ the big man retorted. Then, a grin spreading over his face, he added: ‘None the less, I wish you’d recommend it to my daughters—the baggages are quite out of hand. Inga won’t get married like a sensible girl, and Sofie wants to start a bake-shop!’
‘My, my! Little Inga is in a bad way,’ papa twinkled. ‘But the shop seems a womanly venture.’
‘Baggages! Baggages!’ roared the big man. ‘If they were boys, I’d birch them. But you can’t beat a woman, and they know it! Where are you going, may I ask?’
‘To the immigrant sheds. Perhaps you’d like to come?’
‘Not I! I’ve no heart to greet a parcel of fools. Why don’t they stay home? They’ll end up in the harvest fields and the ditches! Well, if you can’t find a roof for all of them, there is a bed in my attic,’ the big man concluded, tweeked my ear gently, and trod away, frowning.
At last we neared the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, and saw, down on the bank, the long, low structure that was the immigrant shed. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was a grimy, forbidding place, with dirty windows and battered doors. We stepped out of the brilliant prairie sunshine into a grey gloom, and exchanged the sweet summer air for a stale, indescribable smell, which haunts me to this day. It was a sickening compound of rancid oils and animal odours that seemed to be carried on every faintest current of breeze from the room which gave off the small information office wherein we stood.
Papa coughed, took out his snuff-box, hastily inhaled a pinch of the pungent powder, coughed again, and hurried to the information desk. Yes, the Icelanders had arrived, the clerk informed him. They were waiting in the second room to the right. Papa glanced dubiously towards the doorway whence the evil smells drifted.
‘Go ahead,’ the man told him. ‘Just a bunch of Doukabors in there. There’s nothing to stop you.’
No, there was nothing to stop us, except a hundred human forms stretched out upon the dirty floor, close-packed as locusts in a year of plague. Strange, human bundles, which, to my terrified glance, seemed more like animals, than men, for they were all wrapped in greyish, woolly, skin garments, that reeked with horrible odour. That they were human beings I realized, however, as we picked our way, stepping over a sprawling leg or outflung arm or an entire inert form. Sometimes, a heavy head would lift from its sheepskin collar, and eyes like coals stare at us out of a thicket of matted hair and beard. Sometimes, a beardless face turned on us, vacantly, blinked empty eyes, and dropped back to the comfort of a sheepskin sleeve, or the hill of a smaller bundle, which may have been a child, or a tightly rolled feather tick.
To my excited fancy, they seemed a race of hairy monsters, stewing in their own reek, like the animals in a circus. I could not skip through them fast enough. That is how I came to trip, sprawling on a huge fellow who lay spilled out in peace just inside the door I was so eager to reach. Of course, I lost my Marta’s gift of flowers, and if I didn’t scream, it was because the fright was shocked out of me when the huge bolster jacked-up like a spring, and the big, bearded face stared at me, crinkled with smiles. What was more, the surprising creature retrieved the bouquet of flowers, which had fallen behind him. Before he could hand them back, however, as was his evident intention, a woman beside him snatched them from his hand, and buried her hot, grimy face in their sweet petals.
‘Come child,’ papa’s voice called me.
‘But, papa, my flowers—’
Then I saw that papa was smiling in a queer way at the woman, who seemed to be seeing nothing but the little bunch of flowers from a prairie garden.
‘Come, my dear,’ he repeated, softly.
