131.
1929:
Bobcaygeon, Ont. November 22,
1929
My dear A.L.P.,
Well, we are cheery. We are amusing ourselves with looking
for places where we'd like to build a house which I thought
about for 20 yrs previous to discussing it with Tie for another
sixteen. The plans are all ready. We even bid on a piece
of land here and there: only people laugh at our bids. But,
it's all a joke anyway. We live from day to day. This afternoon
I intend to go to Lindsay and hunt the liquor store.
No, my dears: no more teaching for Tie: I'd consider it
if there were an opening. No return to the west, either.
Even you don't realize what a scourge has driven us out of
it. Yes, we've been at the cottage repeatedly - though most
of our wanderings have, so far, been work of Pigeon Lake
where I've struck up a few friendships with curious, gnarled
types of farmers: peasant types, in spite of flivvers and
deep radios. I am amazed to find rural Ontario - around Port
Hope, around Since, London , and Bobcaygeon so "pleasantly":
western farmers are lords and dukes compared with the William
Mores, the Russell Macintoshes, the Bert Wilmot's of this
district. Last night, after a ramble along the shore line
of your corner of St. L., we drove up to the highlands south
of Pigeon Lake; and, J. sitting in the car, I had a ramble
with Bert Wilmot through the dusk in the bush, with a blizzard
blowing enjoying the sharp air and the landscape, half veiled
by the flying snow. But what a waste of the country's heritage
in the cutting down of the hardwoods! It resulted in so prosaic
a thing as my buying a cord of maple wood at $8.50. Well,
well. Yet we may suddenly take flight to Europe ; for, frankly,
I am scared about the Daily Bread. But if somebody would
loan me $8000, I'd build me a house here.
Eayrs? He lured me down with a promise and then broke it. "Nothing
doing." I am once more offering 3 books: "Abe Spalding", "Adolescence", "Tales
from the Margin" for a total of $2000, flat. No bidders:
in spite of the fact that Our Daily Bread sold in slightly
over 6000 copies (in 3 countries).
Here I sit, trying to write "In Praise of Poverty", sans
books to refer to. Down there at Cauton, Currelly has a cottage
lacking little. Here we sit, in a house little better than
a summer cottage. Down there, at Cauton, Currelly has a 15-roomed
house, built of hollow tile, with stucco veneer (value ca
20 000) standing vacant; and he is my friend. Strange thoughts
come to one about the birds and the beasts and the "Son of
Man" who has no place where to lay his head. But I wouldn't
exchange. I may run up a sort of thing that I can sell for
a garage and live in it for awhile. We have all sorts of
crazy fits of planning. Work? How, under such conditions
can one work? But should one? A certain person at Ottawa
asked me for a copy of certain poems; on my telling him I
had burned them, he wrote me a long letter (received this
morning) about my having committed "a great wrong towards
posterity." What a farce! As if posterity cared or mattered!
A publisher writes me, "My faith in you is implicit and deeply
sincere" - and in the next sentence he regrets but he can't
do a thing. Well, there is this to be said, I stand in the
last trench, the "Hindenburg Line", as the Germans expressed
it in 1918, I believe. When I abandon it, I shall hop away
over open and shell swept country to the rabbit-hole.
But I suppose it will please you to think that this last
touch is called Bobcaygeon.
As ever,
F.P.G.
