WOODCARVING.
_Making things out...._
“Making things out of wood” seems to be a “gift” with the Quebecquois.
But wood-carving is not confined to Quebec, although possibly it occurs
more generally in that Province than in any other.
All Canada sponsors “woodcarving” in her sons, because of the generous
supply of wood everywhere, with the exception of the Prairie Provinces.
And even these may easily obtain it from their generous sister Provinces
East and West.
Down Nova Scotia way a man seems to concentrate better if he has a bit
of wood in hand to whittle. And as his thoughts are concerned more or
less with the sea; almost without thinking the bit of wood in his hand
becomes a little model of a boat or a schooner, an oar, or a miniature
mast. The wooden-ship was cradled in the fingers of these old-timers.
Her spars may have been contributed by British Columbia, but what of
that. Is not British Columbia, Canada’s Maritimer, too? So it is, from
coast to coast.
Quebec’s carving is of a more domestic nature. M’sieu builds a house, a
little maison with “lines”, _mais oui_. In his conception and execution,
there is a certain deftness purely French. He carves some original
design in the piece of wood over window and door-frame, pointing and
panelling it to fancy, and afterwards painting it some pretty
colour--strong reds, blues and yellows--striking a bizarre harmony,
attractive enough; especially when Madame puts a piece of Royal-blue
wall-paper, sprinkled with gold fleur-de-lys inside the windows as
shade.
Down the north shore of the Saint Lawrence one meets little girls
hugging in their arms long sticks of firewood, which ingenious grandpere
has carved into “dolls”, life-size; and to which he has nailed shapely
arms, terminating in rather wooden hands.
The face has been made more life-like with a touch of paint, carried out
in the hands too, if there happened to be enough to go round. There are
no elbow-joints, but the arms turn at the shoulders most ingeniously on
the old nail. And the child who possesses such as one among dolls,
always wears a happy smile on the little, frank, French face of her, as
she totes the heavy stick across the grain-field-path, the waving ears
almost higher than her head and she the envy of every other child in the
village.
For the boy, there is the toy-boat, or the miniature warship, from the
same source--the rough log from the woodpile.... When M’sieu throws the
axe over his shoulder and goes off into the woods to cut firewood
invariably he returns with some old root that has struck his fancy and
in which he sees a latent “figure” of some sort. So, up on the highland
road to Murray Bay one happens on many a farmer who whittles pipe-bowls
from the _little_ roots; and on the Lowland road before it becomes
highland the big root resembling a moose’s head, is the prop of many a
stack of firewood.
Everywhere there is the universal, homemade, wooden Cross and the
handcarved symbol of the Crucifixion standing by all roads.
Every graveyard in Quebec, whether it be in the Laurentides section,
clear against the sky with the Saint Lawrence a panorama at its feet, or
whether it be some Indian graveyard, boasts its handcarved wooden
head-and-foot pieces and, of course, the big central wooden cross.
These wooden memorials of the graveyard are frequently very artistic.
The figure of an Angel in silhouette and life-size, with shoes and
stockings, encountered in one cemetery, appears especially adapted to
the _Paradis_ it would have the passing world remember. Somewhere in
that district there lives a man with the instinct of the sculptor; yet
he works in wood. And the pity of wood is that it is so very perishable.
In a year or two at most, the elements take these wooden memorials in
hand to their destruction, and that is the reason stone is now almost
universally taking the place of these old-timers.
But to return to the houses! Much of the furniture of the farmhouse is
handmade. Tables, with sliding tops, which allow the table to be
converted into a comfortable chair, are the pride of many a habitant
housewife. And, of course, there are the loom and the spinning-wheel,
with its accompanying shuttles and bobbins, all handmade.
But this woodcarving is an art that, though so common in Quebec,
recognizes no Provincial limitations; and so for the climax of profane
carving as against the religious subjects, say, of Monsieur Jobin, we
must go down into New Brunswick and interview Rogerson the master
Figure-head carver of Saint John.
Rogerson is a Scotchman. As you look into his keen blue eyes it is
difficult to realize that eighty-three years have intervened since
[Illustration:
CALL OF THE SEA.]
[Illustration:
THE FIGURE ON THE BOW.]
he first saw the light of day. He came to Canada in one of the old
sailing ships that held the Atlantic passenger trade ’tween-decks
seventy years ago. One of the sweetest word-pictures ever listened to,
Rogerson sketched, of his old mother cooking their meals on deck in the
brick fire-place included in the culinary appointments of the Atlantic
trip in those days. Soon after his arrival in Canada his father died,
and he was apprenticed to an uncle, a master figurehead carver of Saint
John, about 1850. Figuring it out, it would seem that for a hundred
years at least, there have been figurehead carvers of this one family in
the old city of Saint John, that, with Halifax, is Canada’s Twin-Gate to
the Atlantic.
When Rogerson had completed his time as an apprentice and worked awhile
with his uncle, “he felt”, to use his own words, “that he was repeating
himself.” So he gathered up his tools and went off with them over his
shoulder to Boston, much as any ambitious art-student, whatever his
chosen medium, hies him to Paris. Boston, in those days, was the centre
of the sailing-ship trade in America. “Out o’ Boston” sailed the
“clippers” in the China trade. Rogerson tells how at evening, after his
day’s work was done, he used to go along the docks from ship to ship
studying “The Figure on the Bow.” And he tells, too, how he worked for
first one leading firm and then another of the master figurehead carvers
of old Boston till he himself presently stood in the first ranks, able
to turn out any figure on demand in red-hot time. “Skippers couldn’t
wait in those days”, he adds. And even as he talks you see that his
memory has reverted to the time when “sails” must need _jump_ when winds
and tide beckoned. Then having learned all that he could in Boston, he
returned with high hopes and the skill and confidence of the
“Master-Carver” in his fingers, to the business-opening he recognized in
Saint John, with all the new ships a-building on Bay of Fundy “ways”, at
Parrsboro, Windsor, Hantsport and, who knows how many more of the old
bay’s outports.
And now he follows with such a list of Figureheads, as seems incredible,
until one recalls Rogerson’s long span of life, and that he worked “in
red-hot time.” Among those standing to the credit of this Saint John
carver “The Highland Laddie”, “The British Lion”, “Ingomar”, “Governor
Tilley”, “The Sailor Boy”, “Honolulu”, and “Lalla Rookh,” held high
place. About each, Rogerson relates some interesting legend. Of his
“Sailor Boy” he tells how a man came into his shop some years after it
was carved and told him he had a rival carver somewhere--that “there was
a ship out in the harbour with the finest figurehead on it he had ever
seen!” This haunted him so, that next day he closed the shop, got a boat
and rowed out to the vessel. On coming round her bow, there, above the
waves and himself, stood his _own_ figurehead!
Of “The British Lion”, he says, “It was a rouser!”
The ship that bore Governor Tilley at the bow had a long and successful
career, but was at last wrecked on the Norwegian coast. Through one of
those mysterious channels of Marine Intelligence, that sailors on the
waterfront know, Mr. Rogerson learned that though the ship was a total
wreck the figurehead was salvaged, and that his “Governor Tilley” now
stands in a Museum in Norway; and Rogerson thinks that it should be
brought back to Saint John.
The “Lalla Rookh” he had not seen since it left his hand to sail forth
upon the high seas till we showed him a photograph of it obtained while
the ship, at whose bow it stood, loaded deal at West Bay, near
Parrsboro, for the trenches of France. To think it was so near and yet
this old carver did not see it! Yet it pleased his old heart to know
that “she” was still afloat and carrying-on in the hazardous runs across
the Atlantic, with only sails and the courageous spirit symbolized by
the figure on the bow to aid her against enemy submarines--submarines,
the last word in sea-craft. It was on the “Lalla Rookh” that Frank T.
Bullen served his apprenticeship as sailor.
Of the “Ingomar” Rogerson says: “I always think it was my finest piece
of work. Strange to say,” he continues “I have no photograph or even
rough sketch of it. It was to be, I suppose, for the ship that bore it
was wrecked near here in the Bay. I went out to see the figurehead and
found it had escaped damage and I made every arrangement to return and
take it off; but the very next day a gale of wind came up and when the
gale abated not a vestige of my figurehead remained.”
“Old-timers among ship-owners had fads for names”, Rogerson says.
“Sometimes it ran to Indians, sometimes to mythological figures,
sometimes to reigning sovereigns; at other times to their own wives or
daughters, or to some popular man about town, or to a popular governor,
etc.” Among his Indian figureheads he recalled “The Indian Chief”, “The
Indian Queen”, “Pocahontas”, “Hiawatha”.
When fancy ran to the name of the ship-owner’s wife or to those of
well-known persons, the figurehead carver worked from a favourite
photograph, so that some old figureheads of this type are in fact
sculptured figures of the people themselves, people who in most
instances have long since passed away. The “Governor Tilley” figurehead
is a case in point and Rogerson is right in saying it belongs to New
Brunswick rather than to Norway.
Rogerson’s last piece of work was a labour of love. Not many years ago
he took a trip to Scotland to see the place of his birth and to revisit
the scenes of his early childhood. While in Scotland he collected, here
and there, a number of pieces of fine woods from old historic buildings,
etc., and these he brought back to Saint John, where in his leisure
moments he designed and carved therefrom a beautiful chair, which he
presented to the Saint Andrew’s Society, in whose assembly-rooms it now
stands.