We arrived in New York towards the end of October, coming straight
from five months in the Canadian backwoods. Before that, to mention
myself first, there had been a year in Canada, where, even before
the age of twenty-one, I had made a living of sorts by teaching the
violin, French, German, and shorthand. Showing no special talent for
any profession in particular, and having no tastes that could be
held to indicate a definite career, I had come to Canada three years
before for a few weeks’ trip. My father, in an official capacity, had
passes from Liverpool to Vancouver, and we crossed in the _Etruria_, a
Cunarder which my mother had launched. He was much fêted and banqueted,
and the C.P.R. bigwigs, from Lord Strathcona and Sir William van Horne
downwards, showed him all attention, placing an observation car at his
disposal. General James, the New York postmaster, gave a dinner in
his honour at the Union League Club, where I made my first and last
speech--consisting of nine words of horrified thanks for coupling “a
chip of the old block,” as the proposer called me, with the “Chief of
the British Postal Service.”
A ludicrous wound to vanity helps it to stick in the mind--my father
wore no braces, and I copied him, but--well, in his case no belt
was necessary, whereas I was slim. It suddenly dawned on me, as I
spluttered my brief words, that a line of white was showing between
my waistcoat and the top of my trousers. The close of my speech was
hurried, my bow was cautious; I was extremely relieved to sit down
again.
In the lovely autumn weather, we saw Canada at its best, and the trip
decided my future. My father welcomed it as a happy solution. I came,
therefore, to Toronto at the age of twenty, with £100 a year allowance,
and a small capital to follow when I should have found some safe
and profitable chance of starting life. With me came--in the order
of their importance--a fiddle, the “Bhagavad Gita,” Shelley, “Sartor
Resartus,” Berkeley’s “Dialogues,” Patanjali’s “Yoga Aphorisms,” de
Quincey’s “Confessions,” and--a unique ignorance of life.... I served
my first literary apprenticeship on the _Methodist Magazine_, a monthly
periodical published in Toronto, and before that licked stamps in the
back office of the Temperance and General Life Assurance Company, at
nothing a week, but with the idea of learning the business, so that
later I might bring out some English insurance company to Canada.
The first taught me that, just as I had no ambition to write, so,
likewise, I possessed no talent; the second merely made articulate
the dislike I felt for anything to do with Business. It was the three
months in the insurance office that caused me to accept eagerly the job
on the _Methodist Magazine_ at four dollars a week, and the reaction
helped to make the work congenial if not stimulating.
The allowance of ten dollars a week was difficult to live on, and I
had been looking everywhere for employment. It was through a daughter
of Sir Thomas Galt, a friend of my father’s on our previous trip to
Canada, that I obtained this job--sixteen shillings a week, hours ten
to four.
Dr. Withrow, editor of the leading Methodist magazine, and of various
Christian Endeavour periodicals for children and young people, was a
pleasant old gentleman, who went about in a frock coat and slippers,
had a real sense of humour and a nice wife and daughter. His editorial
den was in his own little house, and my duties were to write an article
every month for the magazine, which was illustrated, and also to write
a few descriptive lines of letterpress to accompany the full-page
illustrations for the numerous Christian Endeavour and Methodist
periodicals for young people and children. He taught me the typewriter,
and with my shorthand I took most of his letters at dictation, and
certainly earned my money. My monthly articles in the magazine were on
such subjects as Christmas in England, Life at a Moravian School, The
Black Forest, Travel in the Alps--anything that my limited experience
enabled me to describe at first-hand, and on the whole the old
gentleman seemed satisfied. The description of the children’s pictures,
however, always made him chuckle, though he never said why, and I wrote
dozens of these a day, describing the picture of “King Canute and the
Sea,” “Elijah in a Chariot of Fire,” “A Child Blowing Bubbles,” “The
Wood-boring Beetle,” etc. etc.
He would dictate some of his articles of travel to me, and I would take
them down in shorthand, and he often made such grotesque mistakes in
facts that I quietly corrected these as I wrote, and when I read out
the sentence to him he would notice the alteration and look at me over
his spectacles and say:
“Thank you. Yes, I was wrong there. The fact is, I have so many
articles to write that I compose two at a time in my mind, and they
get muddled up. An editor should always be accurate, and Methodist
readers are cranky and hard to please.” He was a Methodist parson
himself, which did not prevent him saying exactly what he thought. He
lunched off dates and bananas, which he kept in a bag beside his desk,
and that same desk was in such disorder that he never could find what
he wanted, and I was not surprised to learn that, before I came, the
printers got the wrong papers, and that many of the children’s pictures
got descriptions underneath that did not belong to them--for instance,
a boy blowing a bubble was published over a few lines describing the
habits of snakes, “as seen in our illustration,” and so forth.
I got on so well with the little Methodist that he wanted to come to
the evening French classes I was giving at fifty cents a lesson to some
of the clerks in the insurance office, and to bring his daughter with
him. He said a little more knowledge of French would be very good
for him when he took his conducted tours of Canadian Methodists to
Switzerland; but I did not rise to this, and persuaded him to wait till
I could get a more select class to meet, perhaps, at his own house,
where a girl could more suitably attend. For, to tell the truth, some
of my pupils had a habit of coming slightly drunk--or, as they called
it, “with a jag on.” He, however, would not wait, so I lost two good
pupils!... Dr. Withrow, patient little man of kindly disposition! His
faded black frock-coat, his spectacles high on his puckered forehead,
his carpet slippers, his tobacco-stained white beard, his sincere
beliefs and his striped trousers of a pattern I have always since
labelled mentally as “Methodist trousers”--it is a gentle little memory
tucked away among unkinder ones, and I still hear him giving me my
first and only lesson how to write. His paraphrase of “fatal facility”
stays with me: “Fluency means dullness, unless the mind is packed with
thought.” It stays with me because the conversation led to my asking if
I might write an article for the monthly on the subject of Buddhism.
Behind it lay an ever keener desire to write something on Hegel, whose
philosophy I felt certain was based on some personal experience of
genuine mystical kind.
“From what point of view?” he asked, his forehead puckering with
amazement.
“That of belief,” I said, my mind bursting with an eager desire to
impart information, if not also to convert.
He passed his hand across his forehead, knocking the spectacles
off. Then, catching them with a fumbling motion which betrayed his
perturbation, he inquired: “But, of course, Mr. Blackwood, not your
_own_?”
The voice, the eyes, the whole attitude of the body made me realize he
was prepared to be shocked, if not already shocked.
“Yes,” I replied truthfully, “my own. I’ve been a Buddhist for a long
time.”
He stared for some time at me without a word, then smiled a kindly,
indulgent, rather sceptical smile. “It would be hardly suitable,”
he mentioned, as I felt his whole being draw away from me as from
something dangerous and unclean. Possibly, of course, he did not
believe me; I am sure he prayed for me. Our relations seemed less
cordial after that; he read most carefully every word I wrote in his
magazine and children’s pages, but he never referred to the matter
again.
My Methodist job, none the less, was a happy one; this first regular
wage I had yet received in life gave me the pleasant sensation that I
was launched. My connexion with Methodism ceased, not because I was
dismissed or had failed to give satisfaction (indeed, the editor had
just told me my salary was to be raised!), but because all the capital
I should ever have was sent to me about that time from England--about
£2,000--and I went into partnership with a farmer outside Toronto and
bought some forty head of pedigree Jersey cattle.